Glowing Stones in the Book Of Mormon and Elsewhere (Lots of Elsewheres!)

We've had stones on here before – seer stones. Everybody should have one. A billion people used them just like Joseph Smith and I have thoroughly chronicled every single one according to name, date, size and whether or not they taste at all salty.

They do taste salty, FYI. All of them. Salty like the bottom corner of a bag of Rold Gold.

I actually have no insight into the flavor of seer stones. I didn’t categorize anything either, just to clear things up. The previous stone-topic was about using the stones like a seer – gazing into them and seeing whatever you need to see OR want to see. You really should read that post. It covers so much more.

This post, though, is about stones as a source of light. It’s a super strange thing that only Mormons believe can exist - except not only Mormons believe it. There are loads of examples in Jewish Lore where mighty prophets use light-emitting stones to accomplish great works - I found a Chinese reference too. Most of the listed prophets you’ve heard of before. One you maybe haven’t. I’m pretty excited about that one. 

Let's get to it:

Bro of Jared

The Book of Ether is like a mini Book of Mormon inside the Book of Mormon. It’s potent, rich and full. It starts off with the Brother of Jared – a man whose name was so long Moroni probably saw it, sighed, hung his head a little bit, and then thought he’d rather painstakingly engrave Jared’s name a bunch of times.

The Brother of Jared, under divine direction, built a bunch of ships to carry his people to the new world. These ships were kind of submarine-ish and would be very dark when floating through the ocean.

Now this:

“When the brother of Jared expressed his concern about the lack of light in the barges which the Lord had instructed his people to build, the Lord responded, “What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels?” (Ether 2:23). In response to this invitation, the brother of Jared “did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass” (Ether 3:1).

“He then asked the Lord to “touch these stones ... with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness” (Ether 2:4). As petitioned, the Lord touched them “one by one” (v. 6), which caused them to “shine in darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not cross the great waters in darkness” (Ether 6:3)”.  (https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/where-did-the-brother-of-jared-get-the-idea-of-shining-stones)

That is the first reference to glowing stones in modern-ancient literature. Joseph Smith hadn't read it elsewhere, found it interesting, and then scribbled it down while he lazily lounged under an apple tree after a nap. 

It throws some people for a real loop. God is a God of miracles – but He’s not a God of that miracle! 

Not only is He a God of that miracle, He seems to have a bag of gleaming stones in a heavenly side table or something. There are loads of stories!

Chinese and Greek fireside stories, for instance, have long widened eyes with flickering flames and tales of glowing stones. In the book The Diamond: A Study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk-lore, author Berthold Laufer talks about how so many of these reported stones only luminesce with reflection, but:

"The classical and Chinese reports of stones emitting rays of light in darkness, accordingly, have nothing to do with this optical phenomena." (The Diamond: A Study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk-lore, Volume 15, Issues 1-2 By Berthold Laufer) 

The rest of these examples are from super-cool Jewish lore.

In the Book of Genesis God said “Let there be light” on day one but didn’t create the sun until day four. What was that first light? Ancient Jewish legend fills the gap:

Adam

"When the world was first created, God filled the world with a sacred light, known as the primordial light...When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the first thing they lost was that precious light...But God preserved one small part of that precious light inside a glowing stone, and the angel Raziel delivered this stone to Adam after they had been expelled from the Garden of Eden, as a token of the world they had left behind. This jewel, known as the Tzohar, sometimes glowed brightly and sometimes was dim." (Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004 P. 85)

And Adam didn’t put that stone in his pocket when he sailed off into the great beyond. He passed it from prophet to prophet – until Noah used it to sail into the great beyond. a wicked big storm.

Noah

“Concerning the Ark, Genesis mentions windows only twice. The second reference is in Genesis 8:6. “"Noah opened the window of the Ark which he made."” Here’s where it gets interesting. In this verse, the Holy Spirit inspired the use of the word challon, “a window.” In the first reference, however, He used tsohar, “a light.” Tsohar comes from the Hebrew root tsahar, “to glisten.”

“Did God perhaps instruct Noah to build “a light that glistened”?

“Of the 24 times tsohar is used in the Old Testament, it is translated “window” only once. The 23 other occurrences refer to “noon” or “the noonday sun…

“… An ancient Hebrew tradition says the tsohar was a very large pearl or gem that Noah hung in the rafters of the Ark, which powered itself and illuminated the Ark. That’s highly speculative to consider, of course, but it is something we have come across in our research.” (https://arkencounter.com/blog/2012/09/07/when-is-a-window-not-a-window/)

The legend has it passing down through all the prophets. I’m just hitting a couple here. Abraham is one of them. When with him not only does the tsohar glow – but it also has healing qualities:

Abraham

“Abraham wore a glowing stone around his neck. Some say that it was a pearl, others that it was a jewel. The light emitted by that jewel was like the light of the sun, illuminating the entire world. Abraham used that stone as an astrolabe to study the motion of the stars, and with its help he became a master astrologer. For his power of reading the stars, Abraham was much sought after by the potentates of East and West. So too did that glowing precious stone bring immediate healing to any sick person who looked into it.” (http://www.umsl.edu/~schwartzh/samplemyths_7.htm)

There’s another example of a seafarer lighting his barge with the stone. And by ‘barge’ I mean the warm innards of a biiiiiiiig fish:

Jonah

“[Rabbi Tarphon] further notes that Rabbi Meir spoke of a pearl being suspended inside the fish to give light to Jonah like the noonday sun, and by which Jonah was able to see all that was in the sea (see Pirque de Rabbi Eliezer 10). Zohar Exodus 48a tells a similar story, noting that the eyes of the fish shone like the noonday sun and that its interior was illuminated by a precious stone.” (https://publications.mi.byu.edu/pdf-control.php/publications/jbms/6/2/S00006-Glowing_Stones_in_Ancient_and_Medieval_Lore.html)

Here’s the new one. It’s pretty exciting. It’s described as “An Apocryphal Work” that was first translated into English in 1898.  It is “Ascribed to Philo of Alexandria,
 Author: Leopold Cohn” It involves a prophet whose spiritual feats aren’t in the Bible. Hugh Nibley thinks maybe, possibly you’ve heard of him – Zenos the lost prophet from the Book of Mormon. He makes a strong, very strong claim. You can read about that here. It's the entire magazine – so search the term Zenos. The article starts with the second hit. 

Now back to the stones. This one is new! To me!

Cenez

“And these were the precious stones which the Amorites kept holy places. And their value was beyond all reckoning, since, when one walked by night, a lamp was not needed, so brilliant was the natural light of the stones. But that which shone most was one which was cut in the fashion of ...... For even if one of the Amorites was blind, he went and set his eyes upon it and recovered his sight…

Then there was a stone switch-out by an angel. The replacements seemed to glow too:

"…And when God had said this, Cenez took the stones from the place where they were, and, as he moved them, a light was diffused over them like the light of the sun, and the earth shone there-with. And Cenez put the stones in the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, together with the Tables of Stone, even as he had been commanded, and they are there to this day.”(https://www.jstor.org/stable/1450716?seq=20#page_scan_tab_contents)

The point here is when Oliver Cowdry put quill to paper and wrote about glowing stones as Joseph Smith dictated from his own stone - it wasn’t a brand new concept. It works. It’s not a coincidence.

It works because it absolutely is what Smith has said it is from the beginning. An ancient record – similar to the ancient records up there. It's people, an awfully long time ago, writing about what they knew.

And one thing they knew is that, apparently, God sometimes hands out glowing stones like eggs on Easter.