References in Popular Culture
In accordance with the view that Urim and Thummim could be translated as "Light and Truth", the Latin equivalent Lux et Veritas has been used for several university mottoes. Lux et Veritas is the motto of Indiana University and the University of Montana; similarly, Northeastern University's motto is Lux, Veritas, Virtus (Light, Truth, Virtue). Though Urim and Thummim itself is emblazoned across the open book pictured on the Yale University coat of arms, Lux et Veritas appears below on a banner.
The Urim and Thummim are also afforded some value as artifacts in some modern fiction:
- Thomas Mann has elaborated greatly on the definition of this term in "Joseph the Provider", the fourth book of his tetralogy "Joseph and His Brothers".
- A treasure hunt for the Urim and Thummim forms the central plot of the John Bellairs novel The Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost
- Their apparent desecration by an unknown vandal is a theme in the Arthur Conan Doyle short story "The Jew's Breastplate".
- In the Christian fiction novel The Face of God, by Bill Myers, the pastor Daniel Lawson and terrorist Ibrahim el-Magd race to find the Urim and Thummim, as well as the twelve stones of the sacred breastplate, in order to hear God's voice.
- In the novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, the king of Salem gives the main character Santiago two stones that the king calls Urim and Thummim. One of the stones is white, which is said to signify no, and the other is black, said to signify yes; a significance applicable when the stones are asked an appropriate question and drawn from a bag. The king himself had removed the stones from his shining golden breastplate.
The traditional rabbinical descriptions of the function of Urim and Thummim—transmitting messages by glowing—has been claimed by some proponents of paleocontact hypothesis to be evidence in support of that hypothesis.
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