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You're listening to episode 215 of Jimmy Aiken's Mysterious World,

where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason.

In this episode, we're talking about the mysterious Urum and Thumim

and how the Israelites used them to receive messages from God.

I'm Dom Bettenelli and join me today as Jimmy Aiken.

Hi Jimmy, howdy Dom.

The Bible records that the Jewish High Priest had two mysterious objects known as the Urum

and the Thumim. These objects could be used to inquire of God and receive messages from the Lord,

but scholars have been perplexed by what the Bible says about them.

What were the Urum and Thumim? How did they work?

And what do we know about them? Well, that's what we'll be talking about in this episode

of Jimmy Aiken's mysterious world. Jimmy, what do we know about the Urum and Thumim?

When do we first encounter them in the Bible?

There first mentioned in Exodus 28 in a passage discussing the priestly vestments that the

Jewish High Priest was supposed to wear. There were quite a number of different things that were

part of his attire when he was serving at the temple, but three of them are relevant for our

purposes. The effort, the breastpiece, and the Urum and Thumim that it contained.

It can be a little hard to visualize these just by reading the text of Exodus, so here's a

description that's taken from the volume on the Pentateuch in University Press' dictionary of

...