Book of Mormon DNA Apologetics

[nao crer]

DNA evidence which does not support the idea of ANY ancient Americans being descended from Semite stock beginning circa 2500 BC (the "Jaredites") or 600 BC (the "Lehites.") Also, the population figures of the "Jaredites" as stated in the BOM---which states that at least two million of them were killed in battles circa 600

BC---mandate that the Jaredites and their enemies would have necessarily been

the dominant culture in the region, rather than just a small minority which

intermarried with, and were swallowed up, by a larger population of Asian-descended peoples. That being the case, then we should be able to find

"Jaredite" (Semite) DNA relationships in spades among modern Amerinds, if the

"Jaredites" existed as recently as 2600 years ago. But we don't.

[charity]

Yet.

[dacook]

There are other details in the text that demonstrate the presence of others in the text,...

I think I may have found one last night;

(Alma 31:35.)

35 Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee.

Alma is talking about the Zoramites, who were ostensibly part of the Nephite nation. Yet he says "many" of them were their brethren, not that the Zoramites all "were" their brethren. This strongly implies that some of the Zoramites weren't their brethren.

Alma is talking to those he took on his mission to the Zoramites, including Ammon, Aaron, Omner, & Himni, so it doesn't work with the rest of the text that they were Lamanites, as Ammon and his brothers referred to Lamanites as their brethren:

(Alma 19:14.)

14 Now Ammon seeing the Spirit of the Lord poured out according to his prayers upon the Lamanites, his brethren, ...

Who were the Zoramites who weren't the brethren of Alma and his Nephite companions? They weren't Nephites or Alma would have included them as brethren. They weren't Lamanites or they would have been identified as such, or included in "brethren" per the usage of Ammon et. al.

It looks to me like they were some third group, referred to only obliquely.

[Stormin' Mormon]

Again, I find it interesting that such notions, convincing or not, came about because of a shift in scientific knowledge.

Brant answered this question best.

Nevertheless, I have to ask Dimbulb, why do you think it such a bad idea to change one's interpretations of old ideas as new scientific information comes to light? Won't you please allow us the luxury of engaging current scientific evidence?

Can we even win in this game? If we ignore new evidence we are accused of being parochial, unintelligent yokels, deceived and suffering from a cognitive dissonance. And at the same time, the likes of Dimbulb will not allow us to interact with new scientific evidence. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

[juliann]

Again, I'm really not arguing against the presence of others, whoever they might be. I just find it interesting that no one ever thought to look for others until science, and the aforementioned textual problems, demanded it.

Well, that is not exactly true. What happens is that certain things become more prominent or popular...but it does not necessarily mean that they were never there. One of the brick walls the DNAsters ran head-first into was LDS scholars pointing out mention of "others" as far back as a 1930's Sunday School manual. If you take notice, there has been no response to the scientists that countered their nonsense other than a few empty slapdown articles from them in Dialogue.

Do you find change problematic? Or is it just problematic if "science" propels inspection of traditional beliefs? Where are you coming from here? What did you think of Brant's analysis? This is where BOM research is going to be headed. Do you think the BOM should only be a spiritual guide with a hands off attitude to standard critical tools used on other ancient texts?

[cinepro]

So, everyone alive in the Americas starting around 400 a.d. became the principal ancestors of the American Indians. Anyone care to argue with that?

It should be pointed out that in order for the anti-Mormons to "win", they don't have to prove the Book of Mormon is false. While that would certainly be one victory, there is another strategy that could work.

This second strategy would be to have the Book of Mormon lose its meaning. Which is to say, that the Book of Mormon could still be "true" to members of the Church, but no one cares, because it doesn't actually mean anything to anybody.

One way to do this would be to make it lose its focus to such a degree that it stops being relevant. 175 years ago, the Book of Mormon was extremely relevant. It answered questions about where the American Indians came from. Who they were. Why they were here. And most importantly, what God's plan was for them in the very near future. Along with Joseph Smith's millenial prophecies and language of the time, these were pressing matters for early Church members. They needed to convert these descendants of Lehi, so they could blossom like a rose and build a temple, right before Christ returned.

Since then, I think the Book of Mormon has lost some of its meaning and focus. We don't need it to explain much anymore. It doesn't tell us where the American Indians, Mayans, or other peoples came from. It doesn't tell us what they believed. It only tells us about a small, insignificant sub-culture that blended in and never made an archaeologically substantive contribution to ancient America. (For those that disagree, please tell me what would have been different in the archaological record had the Jaredites and Lehites not journeyed here...?)

And now we see some apologists working towards the ultimate meltdown of Book of Mormon claims: in the end, the Book doesn't really apply to anyone particular, but at the same time, it could apply to anyone that we want it to. Just who is supposed to "blossom like a rose"? It could be anyone! Navajos, Incas, Mexicans, Chileans. Maybe all of them. Or none. Where they live today or who theire "ancestors" are doesn't matter. It only matters if the Church says it matters, and even then, most Church leaders (and the Introduction to the Book of Mormon) are operating from their cultural blindness and ignorance of genetic statistics and DNA dilution.

This is all a part of the "Limited Geography" of the Book of Mormon, where Book of Mormon claims will be continually reinterpreted to be smaller and smaller, with the insistence that we just can't expect these people to have left a solid record. The logical conclusion, and last of the "Limited Geography" claims will have shrunk the Book of Mormon geography down to a 6.5" x 4" book sitting on a desk, while the claims and prophecies are general enough not to apply to any particular time or place, and thus will never be falsified or unfulfilled.

On that day, when FARMS finally publishes a paper arguing that the Book of Mormon "text" actually says these people didn't actually live in a historical sense (and that it doesn't matter, because chiasmus proves it's still a "true" book), will apologists see that for every battle about "DNA" that they won, they were actually losing the war. Which Church leaders will have known all along, as they continue to speak in area conferences in Mexico, Hawaii, the Tonga, and South America, declaring their audiences all be "Children of Lehi", as if there is some component of their family tree that is stastically different from other races of Church members to the degree that it actually means anything.

[dimbulb]

Excellent post, cinepro. It seems to me that the point of this whole exercise is to diminish the falsifiability of the book. If one keeps reducing the footprint of the Book of Mormon, one will likely never find any solid evidence that proves or disproves the existence of Jaredite, Nephite, and Lamanite communities. Rather, the textual evidence becomes primary, and we are told that the text matches perfectly for a particular time and place.

I well remember one of my Latin American history professors standing up the first day of class and saying, "If you are here because you want to see some evidence for the Book of Mormon, you might as well drop the class. Anyone who says there is solid evidence for the Book of Mormon in Latin American history and archaeology is lying." We then went on to learn about Olmecs and Incas, not Nephites and Lamanites.

[Homestar Runner]

Interesting line of reasoning, Cinepro. But I would advance the notion that the BoM's main claim, leaving all other claims that are currently made (or have been made in the past and then diffused or discarded) is that Jesus Christ is real, and exactly what He claims to be, and the Bible is what it claims to be.

Certainly, we take other things from it. We look at our civilization and point to parts of the BoM signifying impending doom. We used to look at the Native Americans and point to the BoM as crucial to understanding their roots. We use it to justify and criticize the war in Iraq. But all these are secondary to it's main purpose - testifying of the reality and divinity of Christ.

Thoughts?

HSR

[dimbulb]

Certainly, we take other things from it. We look at our civilization and point to parts of the BoM signifying impending doom. We used to look at the Native Americans and point to the BoM as crucial to understanding their roots. We use it to justify and criticize the war in Iraq. But all these are secondary to it's main purpose - testifying of the reality and divinity of Christ.

Then it doesn't really matter if Nephites existed or if any of it ever happened, does it? Why couldn't it be "inspired fiction"?

[Homestar Runner]

Please be clear that I am not insisting on a literalist interpretation of the text. My comment was on how belief changes in the face of external knowledge.

Fair enough, but what exactly is your opinion about this process?

Would you rather we refuse to modify our beliefs based on new information? Do you do this yourself?

Would you rather we take the new information as a sign that other beliefs are false? Do you do this yourself?

Is there another option, and do you do it personally?

I'm under the impression that separating things into known and believed quantities, and then modifying beliefs based on gains in knowledge, is the right way to go about it. If you have a different way you think is better, please share it.

HSR

[dimbulb]

I'm under the impression that separating things into known and believed quantities, and then modifying beliefs based on gains in knowledge, is the right way to go about it. If you have a different way you think is better, please share it.

I tend to do the same. Of course, I'm not claiming revelation when I state my beliefs.

[Addictio]

I thought I'd post this letter to the Editor of Sunstone on the "Others" issue. I expect the current issue of Sunstone is out now, though I haven't seen it yet. I understand Blake has a rejoinder to my letter in it.

In the next little while I should have a link available to a much more comprehensive discussion to which this letter to the Editor serves as Introduction. In the letter, I didn't have space to address many other issues. In the longer piece, for example, I address the "all those who would go with me" passage upon which Blake, Brant and others often rely for evidence of "others." In order to do a better job of assessing the issues raised by the "Others" topic, features of the entire Book, not just Nephi's and Jacob's record, need to be considered.

Dear Editors:

Blake Ostler's second article addressing Book of Mormon historicity in light of DNA issues, "DNA Strands in the Book of Mormon," is a serious but wholly unsuccessful effort to defend a theory of Lehite origin and identity which, despite its recent ascendancy, is fraught with problems that Ostler appears not to recognize, and clearly does not assess.

As I told Blake when I importuned him on the street about this, certain problems in his article resulted from his incomprehensible failure to acquire and read my er, world-famous, unpublished paper presented at the 2004 Sunstone symposium, "The Secrets of NIMs: When the Book of Mormon Was Dictated, Were There 'Others' In It?" His article repeats the popular myth, for example, that the theory of Lehite identity adopted by many contemporary advocates of BofM historicity concerns the "limited geography theory" of the text, a theory Ostler claims was first discussed in the 19th Century. The current theory of Lehite identity, however, while it typically assumes a limited Mesoamerican setting, is not even about the narrative's geographic scope. Rather, it is the result of a separate evolution in understanding regarding the relationship between the BofM immigrants and the ancient indigenous inhabitants of this hemisphere. The general position Ostler is advocating about the relationship between those two groups has been called by different names, including the Amerindian "Others" theory. The current version claims that, in terms of their biological and genetic identity, a majority of the actors in the Book of Mormon were Amerindians. I'll refer to it here as the Amerindian Majority Theory, or AMT.

By way of background, the evolution of LDS beliefs about the relationship between the Book's Israelite immigrants and indigenous Amerindians occurred in four discernible stages:

Stage One: BofM immigrants and descendants inhabit an otherwise-empty hemisphere. (Joseph Smith and contemporaries; 1830)

Stage Two: BofM immigrants and descendants are only a sub-group of hemispheric inhabitants; separate indigenous "others" existed elsewhere in the hemisphere during BofM times. (Roberts and Nibley never moved past this stage.)

Stage Three: Indigenous "others" become actors in the text, but only on the

[Kevin Christensen]

Starting with the text of the Book of Mormon, as Sorenson does with Mormon's Map, comprehensively dealing with the geographic statemens in the New World, puts limits on both the upper and lower limits of the text. As John Clark explains in the current FARMS Review, some of the proposed New World geographies fail because they are too small.

Hence, I find myself unimpressed with cinepro's substance, though the rhetoric is notably colorful and passionate.

This is all a part of the "Limited Geography" of the Book of Mormon, where Book of Mormon claims will be continually reinterpreted to be smaller and smaller, with the insistence that we just can't expect these people to have left a solid record. The logical conclusion, and last of the "Limited Geography" claims will have shrunk the Book of Mormon geography down to a 6.5" x 4" book sitting on a desk, while the claims and prophecies are general enough not to apply to any particular time or place, and thus will never be falsified or unfulfilled.

I've been showing the new Journey of Faith DVD to my home teaching familes. What impresses me are the specifics of time and place, and that the 90 minute DVD could have been much longer. There are many more Old World specifics to be discussed, such as mentioned in Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem and elsewhere.

And I am personally impressed with the work that Sorenson, Gardner, John Clark, Jakeman, Allen Christenson, and Diane Wirth have done in relation to New World. Those who ignore all of their work do not impress me, no matter how colorful and passionate the rhetoric. There is no engagement with the substance of their work.

I have written several things on the limiits of falsification. Falsification as such happens only to a specific set of expectations, that is, within a paradigm. Paradigms as such are neither verified or falsified, but are rather, assessed in relation which one best explains the data we have. If Orson Pratt, for example, annotated a Book of Mormon text with notes suggesting a hemispheric geography, that is one thing. That such annotations clearly failed the test of the text itself, as is made clear in Sorenson's sourcebook, is another. The question in paradigm debate is, which paradigm is better? In several essays comparing Sorenson's views with those of several other proposed geographies, John Clark has always framed the question in those terms. Which is better?

My favorite specific prophesies in the Book of Mormon are those toward the end of 1 Nephi 13, which states clearly that subsequent to the publication of the Book of Mormon, other texts would come forth and demonstrate that the writings of the 12 were true, and that they would also restore plain and precious things that had been lost. For her presentation at the Library of Congress Margaret Barker herself cited that passage as prophetic.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[Pahoran]

So, everyone alive in the Americas starting around 400 a.d. became the principal ancestors of the American Indians. Anyone care to argue with that?

It should be pointed out that in order for the anti-Mormons to "win", they don't have to prove the Book of Mormon is false. While that would certainly be one victory, there is another strategy that could work.

This second strategy would be to have the Book of Mormon lose its meaning. Which is to say, that the Book of Mormon could still be "true" to members of the Church, but no one cares, because it doesn't actually mean anything to anybody.

One way to do this would be to make it lose its focus to such a degree that it stops being relevant. 175 years ago, the Book of Mormon was extremely relevant. It answered questions about where the American Indians came from. Who they were. Why they were here. And most importantly, what God's plan was for them in the very near future. Along with Joseph Smith's millenial prophecies and language of the time, these were pressing matters for early Church members. They needed to convert these descendants of Lehi, so they could blossom like a rose and build a temple, right before Christ returned.

Since then, I think the Book of Mormon has lost some of its meaning and focus. We don't need it to explain much anymore. It doesn't tell us where the American Indians, Mayans, or other peoples came from. It doesn't tell us what they believed. It only tells us about a small, insignificant sub-culture that blended in and never made an archaeologically substantive contribution to ancient America. (For those that disagree, please tell me what would have been different in the archaological record had the Jaredites and Lehites not journeyed here...?)

And now we see some apologists working towards the ultimate meltdown of Book of Mormon claims: in the end, the Book doesn't really apply to anyone particular, but at the same time, it could apply to anyone that we want it to. Just who is supposed to "blossom like a rose"? It could be anyone! Navajos, Incas, Mexicans, Chileans. Maybe all of them. Or none. Where they live today or who theire "ancestors" are doesn't matter. It only matters if the Church says it matters, and even then, most Church leaders (and the Introduction to the Book of Mormon) are operating from their cultural blindness and ignorance of genetic statistics and DNA dilution.

This is all a part of the "Limited Geography" of the Book of Mormon, where Book of Mormon claims will be continually reinterpreted to be smaller and smaller, with the insistence that we just can't expect these people to have left a solid record. The logical conclusion, and last of the "Limited Geography" claims will have shrunk the Book of Mormon geography down to a 6.5" x 4" book sitting on a desk, while the claims and prophecies are general enough not to apply to any particular time or place, and thus will never be falsified or unfulfilled.

There's only one problem with all that specious argumentation, Cinepro, and that is that it completely misses the point of what The Book of Mormon is about.

Completely.

Not just a little bit, but entirely.

For your edification, in the probably vain hope that you actually care, here is the single most authoritative description of the meaning, purpose and relevance of The Book of Mormon. This was put forward by those dastardly FARMS apologists, as they sneakily tried to "work towards the ultimate meltdown of Book of Mormon claims," as recently as March, 1830.

Wherefore, it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites

[Addictio]

Just a note regarding Cinepro's comments.

Pahoran may not like the tone in which they were expressed, but certain points Cinepro mentioned are quite obvious. As the accepted geography shifted from hemisperic to mesoamerican and (more importantly, in my view) the role of the indigenous Amerindians evolved from Stage One to Stage Four (see my post above), at least two things C mentions perforce happened. One is that the Book lost much of its perceived/asssumed explanatory power. Whether that has any impact on its religious message or its value as scripture may be debatable, but most LDS don't think so.

Second, the above shifts have necessarily involved a re-interpretation of the text, which is still going on. When Meldrum and Stephens (JBMS 2003) urge that the term "Lamanite" should now be interpreted as a reference to all inhabitants of the hemisphere alive at the death of Moroni, consider what this does to the assertion of the Title Page that the Lamanites are a "remnant of the house of Israel." (That's also how the Book consistently refers to the modern-era Lamanites.) Why are M&S suggesting that being a Lamanite and hence a member of the house of Israel actually has nothing to do with a person's ancestry, religion, culture or ethnicity? Because at Stage Four, if you want to continue to maintain that all Amerindians are Lamanites and hence "of the house of Israel," you have to jettison ancestry as a necessary element of that status.

When the changed biological context dictates that you can no longer meaningfully define a modern-era Lamanite as a member of the house of Israel by direct descent or lineage, you have to come up with another way of understanding or interpreting the term. Hence M&S's above proposal, or Sorenson and Roper's suggestion that being one of "Lehi's children" simply means having him as one of your statistical ancestors. Take your pick. As a matter of evolving LDS doctrine or belief, everyone's free to choose.

When we move from religious doctrine to discussion or debate about the Book's ancient authorship, is this shifting or evolution in the nature of the claims the Book is understood to be making relevant? Sure, sometimes. Did the ancient Nephite authors think of and write about ancestry and its significance (or consequences) in the statistical sense mentioned above? I don't know anyone who thinks so. Does it matter?

[dimbulb]

Thanks, Addictio. I had no idea that the theories had shifted so much so as to include all inhabitants of the hemisphere as nominal Lamanites (well, other than Homestar Runner's having said it). I'm learning something every day.

[Homestar Runner]

I'm under the impression that separating things into known and believed quantities, and then modifying beliefs based on gains in knowledge, is the right way to go about it. If you have a different way you think is better, please share it.

I tend to do the same. Of course, I'm not claiming revelation when I state my beliefs.

Please point me to the place where someone claimed revelation about NA genetic ancestry.

HSR

(Tryin' reel hard to keep my reaction to Rimmer out of the conversation)

[Homestar Runner]

Too late. Now I want to push you out of an airlock. Smarmy git.

[USU78]

Why should we accept a Stage I -> Stage IV paradigm in analyzing development of ideas about BoM geography, populations, etc?

I don't find the letter's author's view of events particularly compelling.

Why should I?

[dimbulb]

Does a First Presidency proclamation count? Here's one from 1845:

[dimbulb]

Too late. Now I want to push you out of an airlock. Smarmy git.

Yeah, I have that effect on people.

I wasn't trying to be smarmy. I just have never heard the argument made that you made before: that Lamanite includes all the peoples of the Americas, whether descended from Lehi or not. That's an interesting development worth pondering.

In the words of Kryten:

Who would allow this man, this joke of a man, this man who could not outwit a used tea bag, to be in a position where he might endanger the entire crew? Who? Only a yoghurt. This man is not guilty of manslaughter, he is only guilty of being Arnold J. Rimmer. That is his crime; it is also his punishment. The defence rests.

[charity]

I had better stop reading for a while. The whole Stage I -IV thing seems to be way over thinking.

[dimbulb]

I had better stop reading for a while. The whole Stage I -IV thing seems to be way over thinking.

Seems to me a logical way to deal with some of the textual issues. Not saying I agree with it, but it's interesting.

[Brant Gardner]

dimbulb:

Can you tell me what the motivation was for these 19th-century people positing the presence of others?

It really isn't anything more than the natural progression of people examining the text and comparing it to the real world. This process began around 1842 when the Stephens and Catherwood book, Travels in Yucatan, becames popular. The Mesoamerican ruins sparked interest and cause all kinds of rethinking (or perhaps thinking at all) about where the Book of Mormon took place. After that publication, various others began to look at the text seriously. The ideas about the text have evolved with the sophistication of the scholars looking at it. I haven't seen anything that shows anything as particularly reactionary to outside claims. The most obvious is Robert's Study of the Book of Mormon which shows an interaction with scholarly data - and someone who didn't have the background or data to deal with it.

What most people forget with the current furor over DNA is that blood type analysis showed the very same thing around 50 years ago. I don't remember seeing any reaction to that in Book of Mormon analysis. The more trained archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists who have looked at the text, the more such things are presumed - not reacted against.

You might look at similar developments in the understanding of the Bible. There is very much the same kind of shift from naive assumptions to more precise investigations. It isn't a reaction against anything, but rather a natural development of scholarship - one hopes that it happens in all fields. What I find ironic is that the current analysis of the Book of Mormon is being described as reactionary when it demonstrably preceeded the data against which it is supposed to react. A more dispassionate position would be that the use of DNA data contra the Book of Mormon is actually the reactionary position. Take a look at the positions of those who propose it. They virtually insist that no interpretation of the text could possibly be correct except the most naive and conservative reading that dates only to 1830-1842 at best.

[Brant Gardner]

gabriel:

DNA evidence which does not support the idea of ANY ancient Americans being descended from Semite stock beginning circa 2500 BC (the "Jaredites") or 600 BC (the "Lehites.")

True, at least so far. I have learned not to be overly adamant about what hasn't yet been found. However, the absence of a determination of link doesn't mean that such people weren't here. If you want to use scientific research as an argument, you should understand it. There are very logical reasons why a small contribution of DNA might get lost in a larger gene pool - particularly if you are sampling thousands of miles away from where it might even be possible to find it.

Also, the population figures of the "Jaredites" as stated in the BOM---which states that at least two million of them were killed in battles circa 600

BC---mandate that the Jaredites and their enemies would have necessarily been

the dominant culture in the region, rather than just a small minority which

intermarried with, and were swallowed up, by a larger population of Asian-descended peoples.

Wow. How do I even begin to unravel that odd piece of logic. If you take a look at the argument, the mixing of the peoples happened right at the beginning - depending upon how you define Jaredite chronologies, over 1,000 years before there were the large populations you are talking about. You have your Book of Mormon scholarship wrong and that leads to a very incorrect conclusion.

That being the case, then we should be able to find

"Jaredite" (Semite) DNA relationships in spades among modern Amerinds, if the

"Jaredites" existed as recently as 2600 years ago. But we don't.

Logic problem again. Please tell me the odds of finding specific DNA traces from say 100 people who lived over 2,000 years ago in an area that was already populated with thousands? You are welcome to cite scientists to support your thesis, if you can find any.