In
the past few years, DNA studies have been used to provide what may be
the
strongest and most convincing evidence so far
against the authenticity of The Book of Mormon. But being the
"strongest evidence so far" against The Book of Mormon is a
relative thing, akin to selecting the best smelling skunk in your
local forest. No matter which one smells best, relatively speaking,
you still need to approach this beast with caution.
The
DNA arguments, like many others against The Book of Mormon, can be
extremely misleading. Like skunk spray, they can catch you by
surprise, blind you, and leave you in a really foul condition.
It's
time to point out the skunk and explain the danger, even though it
presents itself as a simple black and white issue. Some of the
seemingly persuasive DNA arguments are genuinely misleading, even, if
I may use a harsh word, absurd — if one actually knows what The
Book of Mormon teaches.
The
typical DNA-based argument against the Book of Mormon runs like this:
1. The
Book of Mormon teaches that all Native Americans are descended
exclusively from Hebrews.
2. DNA
studies of Native Americans show that their ancient ancestry is
exclusively Asian, with no trace of Jewish ancestry.
3. Therefore,
The Book of Mormon cannot be true. The case for it is simply
destroyed.
Simple,
black and white. But the argument reeks, as I discuss at some length
in my LDSFAQ
(Mormon Answers) page on DNA and The Book of Mormon.
Most critically, though, is the absurdity of the first statement:
"The Book of Mormon teaches that all Native Americans are
descended exclusively from Hebrews." The Book of Mormon teaches
no such thing.
In
fact, a careful reading of it points to the existence of non-Hebrew
lines even in the small territory encompassed by the book, and says
nothing to rule out extensive non-Hebrew populations across the
hemisphere. Blake
Ostler offers incisive insight
on this:
Any
person who believes that The Book of Mormon is what it claims to be
will also take seriously what The Book of Mormon itself claims with
respect to its geography. For those who have taken the time to
actually map out and look at the distances involved in The Book of
Mormon, the assertion that The Book of Mormon claims to be a history
of all inhabitants of ancient America is absurd on its face.
And
even if the writers of The Book of Mormon made such a claim, clearly
those involved in the record keeping (assuming these to be historical
persons) could not possibly have known from their epistemic position
that their assertion was true. They simply did not have the extensive
geographical knowledge necessary to make such a claim. (Blake Ostler,
“Assessing the Logical Structure of DNA Arguments against The
Book of Mormon," Sunstone,
Dec. 2004, pp. 70-72.)
My
DNA page is supplemented with several appendices. In Appendix 1,
“What
The Book of Mormon Really Claims,”
I show that LDS scholars long ago recognized that The Book of Mormon
deals with a limited geography covering only a tiny fraction of the
New World. It permits other migrations both before and after Lehi and
his tiny boatload of people set foot in the New World in 600 B.C.
Now
if twenty or so people step onto a hemisphere already populated with
millions, what genetic evidence of that ancient group must we expect
to find 2,000 years later? Even if large portions of their
descendants had not been wiped out by war and disease, what would the
mix of Native American DNA today look like if those ancient newcomers
were a tiny drop in a vast bucket of ancient New World DNA?
These
are fundamental questions. How can the evidence be said to disprove
The Book of Mormon if we don't know what we are testing for? The
problem is even more severe when we realize that we have no idea what
Lehi's DNA looked like.
The
DNA of modern Jews is widely scattered in its characteristics, and we
have no idea what the "Hebrew DNA" of Lehi and his family
would have to be in order to test for it. We can't even rule out that
it wasn't squarely within the mix of DNA signatures (haplotypes) that
are found today in Native Americans.
The
real problem is not that the DNA evidence challenges The Book of
Mormon, but that it challenges common but arguably lazy assumptions
Latter-day Saints have made about The Book of Mormon. Many have
assumed and even taught that this majestic revelation about important
ancient migrations to the New World explained all the ancient origins
of Native Americans. In the absence of other information, this was an
easy assumption to make, but today we know better.
This
is not back-pedaling in response to new DNA arguments; it's what
serious LDS scholars were explaining decades before the DNA evidence
came out. The real problem has been failure to include the proper
academic nuance to conclusions drawn from The Book of Mormon.
Challenging
the rigor of terminology used by Church teachers and leaders, and
challenging the accuracy of assumptions they have made about the
text, is quite a different thing than challenging the authenticity of
The Book of Mormon. Perhaps many LDS leaders failed to develop an
accurate understanding of the secular details of The Book of Mormon
text. (In fact, there is interesting evidence that The Book of Mormon
text is far "smarter" than Joseph Smith, consistent with
his role as mere translator, not author or even academic scholar of
the text.)
Perhaps
the diversity of Native American origins has not been adequately
appreciated when people have given sermons about Book of Mormon
peoples and their descendants today — descendants whose DNA may
primarily stem from non-Hebrew sources, whether they were Asiatic
migrants from Siberia or the possibly Asiatic migrants known as
Jaredites in The Book of Mormon.
What,
Jaredites? Yes, the most ancient migration to the New World described
by The Book of Mormon, the one that probably had the greatest impact
upon the genes of the hemisphere, was the ancient Jaredites who
originated from somewhere in the Old World. Long before DNA studies
were out, LDS scholar Hugh Nibley argued that they were Asiatic
already in 1952, where Part 10 of his Improvement
Era
series on "The World of the Jaredites" began with "Men
Out of Asia," one of several places where he links Jaredites to
Asia (see the middle of “A
Permanent Heritage” for the "Men Out of Asia"
quote).
But
weren't the Jaredites all destroyed? Yes, the civilization was
"destroyed" and their last prophet saw a terrible civil war
in which two armies wiped each other out. But when crazy wars like
this take place, the smart folks get out of town, and The Book of
Mormon says nothing that precludes remnants of Jaredite peoples from
scattering and surviving.
In
fact, there is evidence that Jaredite populations were intermingled
with Nephite populations, probably via the Mulekites. Centuries after
the great Jaredite war, Jaredite names are cropping up among the
Nephites, and are typically associated with people who don't really
buy into Nephite religion. This includes names like Korihor, the
atheist, reminiscent of the ancient Jaredite name Corihor, and the
Nephite dissenter Coriantumr. See “Nephites
with Jaredite Names”
in Hugh Nibley's book, Lehi
in the Dessert; The World of the Jaredites.
Wait
a second: If The Book of Mormon teaches that possibly Asiatic
Jaredites came to the continent long before the Nephites and
flourished here, and if Jaredite genes and influences persisted even
in the heart of the small geography covered by The Book of Mormon,
not to mention the possibility of having spread elsewhere, then what
exactly is the problem with finding Asian genes in the Americas
today?
Well,
the Asian genes we find today may have come to the New World much
earlier than the Jaredites — but again, that's OK because The
Book of Mormon does not claim to describe all origins of all peoples.
It does, however, expressly leave the door open for Asiatic genes, as
Nibley noted in 1952.
Which
brings us back to the real question. If The Book of Mormon is true,
what genetic results must we absolutely expect to find in the
Americas? And if the expected results haven't been found, does it
prove the Book is false, or merely that the search is not yet
complete?
Without
knowing what Lehi's DNA was like, how do we test for its presence?
And even if we knew what his DNA haplotype was, is there any reason
to expect it to have survived, if he was just one person on a
continent of millions in 600 B.C.?
There
are many important conversations to be had in light of science and
The Book of Mormon, but resigning from the Church and throwing The
Book of Mormon out the window because of the misleading DNA-based
attacks on The Book of Mormon would be a tragic overreaction.
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.