times story
what does our mormon readership (hi emily) think of this story? most interesting part:
Unofficially, church leaders have tacitly approved an alternative interpretation of the Book of Mormon by church apologists — a term used for scholars who defend the faith.
The apologists say Southerton and others are relying on a traditional reading of the Book of Mormon — that the Hebrews were the first and sole inhabitants of the New World and eventually populated the North and South American continents.
The latest scholarship, they argue, shows that the text should be interpreted differently. They say the events described in the Book of Mormon were confined to a small section of Central America, and that the Hebrew tribe was small enough that its DNA was swallowed up by the existing Native Americans.what's the deal with that?!
12 comments:
I'm not sure what you want me to say.
so you don't have any problem with "tacit approval" of an interpretation arguing that native americans aren't primarily of middle eastern descent? i'm just wondering if this is now widely accepted as a possibility.
Personally, I've never put much stock into Native Americans/Polynesians/etc. being direct descendants of the Lamanites. It's not what my focus of the B of M is. I've also never put much stock into contrarian scientists looking for ways to disprove the faith. So I remain pretty unaffected by the "jolting" discovery. I thought the church spokesmen, members and Jan Shipps said it well: that science will never prove or disprove the Book of Mormon; that the book's central purpose is to testify of Jesus Christ and it does that beautifully; and that, for most members, geologic or DNA evidence does not a testimony of the Gospel make or break.
I imagine that Times and Seasons has a more scholarly and instructive discussion on the matter. I just read something on there about a guy who thinks much of the Bible is mythical in nature, such as the stories of Jonah and Job. Yet he still is a faithful, believing Latter-day Saint, even if other LDS people think he's wrong about that.
Anyway, I am feeling my defences going up and I don't want to have to defend my faith, because it would just make me mad, so I'm not going to. Maybe later.
well, i'm very surprised. you're basically saying that the book of mormon's historical assertions are irrelevant. that's fine. i'm not saying you need to defend anything. it's just new to me that this position could be mainstream rather than simply a marginalized, borderline-heretical sunstoneism.
Is this Neil or Diana?
you made a funny.
I guess I would wonder how much of these revised interpretations make it into the missionary discussions in Latin America and Polynesia, since the traditional interpretation is such a large selling point for the religion, particulary in those areas of the world.
"Steve, on your mission in Chile, did you use the descendants-of-Lamanites point to convert people to the Gospel? Was it a big selling point?"
"Not in the least."
Brothers, please don't be so quick to find fault, when there is much that you don't, or have chosen not to, understand. Thank you.
I don't really want to start a family flamewar, but...
Joseph Smith certainly thought of native Americans as Lamanites (see D&C 28, D&C 54).
Also, here's JS from History of the Church, as quoted on fairlds.org and linked to from lds.org:
The Book of Mormon is a record of the forefathers of our western tribes of Indians; having been found through the ministration of an holy angel, and translated into our own language by the gift and power of God, after having been hid up in the earth for the last fourteen hundred years, containing the word of God which was delivered unto them (the ancestors of the American Indians). By it we learn that our western tribes of Indians are descendants from that Joseph who was sold into Egypt, and the land of America is a promised land unto them, and unto it all the tribes of Israel will come, with as many of the Gentiles as shall comply with the requisitions of the new covenant.
Theoretically just (or nearly) as canonical, here's Spencer Kimball from a 1971 Ensign, quoted in the same article:
With pride I tell those who come to my office that a Lamanite is a descendant of one Lehi who left Jerusalem some 600 years before Christ and with his family crossed the mighty deep and landed in America. And Lehi and his family became the ancestors of all of the Indian and Mestizo tribes in North and South and Central America and in the islands of the sea, for in the middle of their history there were those who left America in ships of their making and went to the islands of the sea.
(The author of the article I linked to on fairlds goes on to say how none of this is at odds with the DNA record; I don't know enough to disagree, although apparently lots of geneticists do.)
Anyway, I don't think it's that surprising that "Lamanite = Native American" is how I (and I guess Neil) understood the doctrine.
I will take Steve at his word that the heredity connection wasn't a big deal to Chilean converts.
Ryan, thanks for the links. I haven't had a chance to read all those articles linked to from lds.org, but I intend to.
This is a quote from Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve, interestingly given 13 years ago. Apparently, it wasn't solid doctrinal fact that every Native American is directly descended from the Lamanites, despite SWK's mention of it:
"Speaking for a moment as one whose profession is advocacy, I suggest that if one is willing to acknowledge the importance of faith and the reality of a realm beyond human understanding, the case for the Book of Mormon is the stronger case to argue. The case against the historicity of the Book of Mormon has to prove a negative. You do not prove a negative by prevailing on one debater's point or by establishing some subsidiary arguments.
For me, this obvious insight goes back over forty years to the first class I took on the Book of Mormon at Brigham Young University. . . . Here I was introduced to the idea that the Book of Mormon is not a history of all of the people who have lived on the continents of North and South America in all ages of the earth. Up to that time I had assumed that it was. If that were the claim of the Book of Mormon, any piece of historical, archaeological, or linguistic evidence to the contrary would weigh in against the Book of Mormon, and those who rely exclusively on scholarship would have a promising position to argue.
In contrast, if the Book of Mormon only purports to be an account of a few peoples who inhabited a portion of the Americas during a few millennia in the past, the burden of argument changes drastically. It is no longer a question of all versus none; it is a question of some versus none. In other words, in the circumstance I describe, the opponents of historicity must prove that the Book of Mormon has no historical validity for any peoples who lived in the Americas in a particular time frame, a notoriously difficult exercise. One does not prevail on that proposition by proving that a particular . . . culture represents migrations from Asia. The opponents of the historicity of the Book of Mormon must prove that the people whose religious life it records did not live anywhere in the Americas."
A good quote, and granted, a much harder task. I guess we'll still have to wait for the final doctrinal word.
All this hubbub about whether or not the Lamanites lived and where they lived when the point is that Christ lived. I'm not discounting the importance of understanding the facts, but neither are my beliefs shaken, if that was the point.
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