The Story of the Two Stones

When Ammon (not the son of Mosiah) was among the people of Limhi, Limhi brought him the twenty-four plates containing the record of the Jaredites that Limhi’s people had found when they searched in vain for the land of Zarahemla.  Limhi was very anxious to see the plates translated, and so he asked Ammon if he could translate.  Ammon said he couldn’t but that there was someone in Zarahemla (Mosiah) who could translate them: “I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records; for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God. And the things are called interpreters, and no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not and he should perish. And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer” (Mosiah 8:13).  Ammon seems to be referring to some kind of Urim and Thummin that Mosiah had to translate records of an ancient date.  We know that Mosiah’s grandfather, also named Mosiah, had translated “a large stone brought to him with engravings on it” and that he did so “by the gift and power of God” (Omni 1:20).  On it was a record obtained from Coriantumr, the last of the Jaredites who died with the Mulekites.  We don’t know how Mosiah translated this stone, but perhaps it was the same means by which his grandson could later translate the full account of the Jaredites.   

                In the story of the Jaredites, when the brother of Jared went into the mount Shelem to present his stones to the Lord, he also received interpreters for future translation.  He went up with sixteen stones but came down with eighteen; sixteen were touched to provide light in their vessels, but two others were for later translation of his record.  The Lord told him: “And behold, these two stones will I give unto thee, and ye shall seal them up also with the things which ye shall write. For behold, the language which ye shall write I have confounded; wherefore I will cause in my own due time that these stones shall magnify to the eyes of men these things which ye shall write” (Ether 3:23-24).  From the Doctrine and Covenants we know that these very stones were preserved into the latter days.  The three witnesses were promised “a view of the plates, and also of the breastplate, the sword of Laban, the Urim and Thummim, which were given to the brother of Jared upon the mount, when he talked with the Lord face to face” (Doctrine and Covenants 17:1).  It appears that these two stones made it all the way from the time of the brother of Jared to our day.  When the prophet Joseph obtained the plates out of the Hill Cumorah, he obtained two stones as recorded in the Saints book: “Buried with the plates, Moroni said, were two seer stones, which Joseph later called the Urim and Thummim, or interpreters. The Lord had prepared these stones to help Joseph translate the record.”  My guess is that these were the very two stones that the brother of Jared received on the mount Shelem four or five millennia before.    

                If these two stones were indeed buried with the plates by Moroni for Joseph to uncover and use, then the question is how they got from the Jaredites to the Nephites.  One possibility is that the people of Limhi found them along with the plates and these were carried to the Nephites when they escaped with Ammon and his brethren.  If this were the case, then the “interpreters” that King Mosiah had would have had to have been from somewhere else (since he already had them according to Ammon when the people of Limhi returned to Zarahemla).  Another possibility is that Coriantumr brought them with him when he met up with the Mulekites.  These then would have been passed down among the Mulekites and then given to the first Mosiah after he and the Nephites came from the land of Nephi to the people of Zarahemla.  If this were the case, he likely received them when the stone was brought to him sometime after the people united.  To me this seems most likely given the purpose of the stones: they were given by the Lord specifically to translate the things that the brother of Jared wrote.  Mosiah II (and later Moroni) read the words of the brother of Jared directly and translated them, and so it makes sense that he would have had these stones specifically made for that.  Joseph Smith did not translate the words of the brother of Jared directly but translated Moroni’s account of the Jaredites.  Perhaps Coriantumr, who had rejected the word of the Lord throughout his life, performed one redeeming act by carrying the interpreters—perhaps at the inspired request of Ether?—to the Mulekites to fulfill the great purposes of the Lord in bringing to us the story of the Jaredites.