“And Thus the Lord Caused Stones to Shine in Darkness”

Alan C. Miner

According to Randall Spackman, the Babylonian deluge story has been preserved in three similar stories . . . all of which appear to have been known in Mesopotamia by the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. The Babylonian "Noah" was called Utnapishtim. In his boat were carried "stone things" which protected it. These miraculous stones also may have had special light-giving functions. The Babylonian story of Utnapishtim related his boat to the moon, a crescent-shaped vessel which sailed safely through the dark heavens illuminated by a miraculous source of light.

The deluge of the Bible came when "there were giants in the earth" and "God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Genesis 6:4-5). Warned by God of the impending flood, Noah, his sons, and their wives built an ark, loaded various creatures into it, and survived the great flood in safety. The biblical story refers to a special light source, tsohar, which is translated "window" in the King James Version of Genesis 6:16. Von Rad acknowledged that the meaning of tsohar was not certain, but he accepted the word "roof" as the "best translation." Speiser's translation attempted to reach a middle ground; he read the word as "sky light." Despite this confusion, Nibley has noted that hundreds of years ago, a number of rabbis concluded that tsohar was a light-giving stone. [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, pp. 101-104, unpublished]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

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