The Salt Lake Tribune: Single word change in Book of Mormon speaks volumes
HawaiiMuskrat
Single word change in Book of Mormon speaks volumes
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:11/08/2007 06:38:19 AM MST
Posted: 6:31 AM- The LDS Church has changed a single word in its
introduction to the Book of Mormon, a change observers say has serious
implications for commonly held LDS beliefs about the ancestry of
American Indians.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe
founder Joseph Smith unearthed a set of gold plates from a hill in
upperstate New York in 1827 and translated the ancient text into
English. The account, known as The Book of Mormon, tells the story of
two Israelite civilizations living in the New World. One derived from
a single family who fled from Jerusalem in 600 B.C. and eventually
splintered into two groups, known as the Nephites and Lamanites.
The book's current introduction, added by the late LDS apostle,
Bruce R. McConkie in 1981, includes this statement: "After thousands
of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the
principal ancestors of the American Indians."
The new version, seen first in Doubleday's revised edition, reads,
"After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites,
and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians."
LDS leaders instructed Doubleday to make the change, said senior
editor Andrew Corbin, so it "would be in accordance with future
editions the church is printing."
The change "takes into account details of Book of Mormon
demography which are not known," LDS spokesman Mark Tuttle said
Wednesday.
It also steps into the middle of a raging debate about the book's
historical claims.
Many Mormons, including several church presidents, have taught
that the Americas were largely inhabited by Book of Mormon peoples. In
1971, Church President Spencer W. Kimball said that Lehi, the family
patriarch, was "the ancestor of all of the Indian and Mestizo tribes
in North and South and Central America and in the islands of the
sea."
After testing the DNA of more than 12,000 Indians, though, most
researchers have concluded that the continent's early inhabitants came
from Asia across the Bering Strait.
With this change, the LDS Church is "conceding that mainstream
scientific theories about the colonization of the Americas have
significant elements of truth in them," said Simon Southerton, a
former Mormon and author of Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA
and the Mormon Church.
"DNA has revealed very clearly how closely related American
Indians are to their Siberian ancestors, " Southerton said in an e-
mail from his home in Canberra, Australia. "The Lamanites are
invisible, not principal ancestors."
LDS scholars, however, dispute the notion that DNA evidence
eliminates the possibility of Lamanites. They call it
"oversimplification" of the research.
On the church's official Web site, lds.org, it says, "Nothing in
the Book of Mormon precludes migration into the Americas by peoples of
Asiatic origin. The scientific issues relating to DNA, however, are
numerous and complex."
Mormon researcher John M. Butler and DNA expert further argues
that "careful examination and demographic analysis of the Book of
Mormon record in terms of population growth and the number of people
described implies that other groups were likely present in the
promised land when Lehi's family arrived, and these groups may have
genetically mixed with the Nephites, Lamanites, and other groups.
Events related in the Book of Mormon likely took place in a limited
region, leaving plenty of room for other Native American peoples to
have existed."
In recent years, many LDS scholars have come to share Butler's
belief in what is known as the "limited geography" theory. By this
view, the Nephites and Lamanites restricted their activities to
portions of Central America, which would explain their absence from
the general American Indian genetics.
Kevin Barney, a Mormon lawyer and independent researcher in
Chicago, welcomes the introduction's word change.
"I have always felt free to disavow the language of the [Book of
Mormon's] introduction, footnotes and dictionary, which are not part
of the canonical scripture," said Barney, on the board of FAIR, a
Mormon apologist group. "These things can change as the scholarship
progresses and our understanding enlarges. This suggests to me that
someone on the church's scripture committee is paying attention to the
discussion."
-- Peggy Fletcher Stack can be contacted at pst...@sltrib.com or
801-257-8725. Send comments about this story to
religio...@sltrib.com.
Posted by Phil M.
bi...@polhemus.cc
I wonder: If I start attending Joel Osteen's church here, just a couple of miles from where I'm sitting now, do you think there's time to make it right?
Just asking.
(Better cancel the "missionary split" for this week).