An Easter egg is a fun hidden feature or message. You get an Easter egg when you type DO A BARREL ROLL in the Google search box. There are Easter eggs hidden in the Book of Mormon, too. Who knew?
In the Book of Mormon, the prophet Alma writes a Hebrew style poem centered around the “interpreters,” which were a pair of stones provided by God to Book of Mormon prophets for the purpose of translating ancient records. A recent paper in the journal Interpreter (no joke) provides evidence that Alma’s poem was originally written in Hebrew, and that he composed it using the Hebrew word urim where the English version has interpreters. If this is indeed the case, it highlights a couple of interesting Easter eggs in Alma’s poem.
Urim is short for Urim and Thummim, the name of the instrument used by the ancient Israelites to receive God’s word. A few years after the Book of Mormon was published, Joseph Smith began referring to the interpreters (and his other seer stones) as Urim and Thummim, apparently considering Urim and Thummim to be a class of revelatory instruments. Alma may have similarly considered it appropriate to refer to the interpreters as urim.
The English Bible tells us very little about the Urim and Thummim. It doesn’t tell us what the instrument was made of, what it looked like, or how it functioned. It doesn’t tell us what urim means, either, and the origin of the word is a subject of intense debate. The ancient translations of this word in the Septuagint (ancient Greek Bible used by Jesus) suggest that its principal connotations were “manifestation” and “light.” These same connotations are also reflected in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Aramaic Bible) rendering of Exodus 28:30:
And you shall put into the breastplate the Urim, which illuminate their words and make manifest the hidden things of the House of Israel.
We’ll see how Alma creatively integrates the connotations of manifestation and light into his intepreters poem.
Alma’s poem tells of an ancient prophecy and of it’s fulfillment, and of a nation that was destroyed because of its dark deeds. Alma uses repetition as a poetic device to establish the theme of manifesting, or revealing, what is hidden. In Alma’s poem (Alma 37:21–26) below, the words and phrases shown in bold all express the idea of manifestation.
And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye keep them, that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works—or the secret works of those people who have been destroyed—may be made manifest unto this people—yea, all their murders and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people—yea, and that ye preserve these directors. For behold, the Lord saw that his people began to work in darkness; yea, work secret murders and abominations; therefore the Lord said, if they did not repent they should be destroyed from off the face of the earth. And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations. And now, my son, these interpreters [urim?] were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled, which he spake, saying: I will bring forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their abominations; and except they repent I will destroy them from off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter possess the land. And now, my son, we see that they did not repent; therefore they have been destroyed, and thus far the word of God hath been fulfilled; yea, their secret abominations have been brought out of darkness and made known unto us.
While the subject of this poem is the importance of the interpreters, the theme is clearly manifestation (the idea of manifestation is repeated nine times in the five sentences), fitting very nicely with one of the principal connotations of urim!
Alma incorporates the other principal connotation of urim–“light”–into his poem in a fascinating way. First, notice that the “interpreters” that “were prepared” are the fulfillment of a prophecy that the Lord would “prepare…a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light.” As the fulfillment of the prophecy, the interpreters must be light-emitting stones, at least metaphorically. Incidentally, Cornelis Van Dam, arguably the foremost expert on the Urim and Thummim, believes urim to have been the verifying light that emitted from what was probably a single stone (The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel, p. 230).
Alma does even more with the connotation of light. Just as he uses repetition of an idea to establish the theme of manifestation, he uses repetition of words and ideas to establish a dark mood. Then out of that dark mood, he shines a light as if from the interpreters (or urim).
The dark mood becomes starkly evident in the text of the poem when all neutral words are removed. The sequence of words below represents Alma chapter 37 up to and including the interpreters poem. It consists of all nouns (except proper nouns) and adjectives that have connotations of physical or metaphysical light or darkness. The positive/light words are in capital letters and negative/dark words are in bold. The interpreters poem is underlined:
SACRED WISE HOLY SCRIPTURES mysteries BRIGHTNESS BRIGHTNESS HOLY foolishness WISE WISE SALVATION WISDOM error KNOWEDGE SALVATION incorrect REPENTANCE KNOWLEDGE REDEEMER stiffnecked sin iniquities KNOWLEDGE REDEEMER mysteries WISDOM SACRED SACRED SACRED chaff SACRED hell DILIGENT DILIGENT mysteries darkness secret secret murders robbings plunderings wickedness abominations darkness secret murders abominations destroyed darkness LIGHT secret darkness wickedness abominations darkness LIGHT secret abominations LIGHT secrets abominations destroyed secret abominations darkness.
Notice that words with positive connotations prevail until the interpreters poem begins, then it’s almost uniform darkness to the end of the poem. The only words that break the darkness are three instances of LIGHT. The effect of this contrasting mood is that the interpreters (or urim) appear even brighter as they “shine forth in darkness unto light.” Brilliant!
To the average reader of the English text, Alma’s poem may seem repetitive and depressing, but the “enlightened” reader who knows the ancient connotations of urim can appreciate the Easter eggs Alma has hidden between the lines.
