Recovery to Mormonism

Don’t DNA and population science disprove the Book of Mormon?

The argument has become more and more prevalent among anti-Mormons and ex-Mormons.  The Book of Mormon is allegedly not true because Lehi’s family couldn’t have populated the entire New World.  They can’t be the sole ancestors of the American Indians, even if one decides that every American culture we have evidence of before 600 B.C. can be accounted for by the presence of the Jaredites. 

The thing is . . . the Book of Mormon never says that the Book of Mormon peoples were the only inhabitants of the Americas.  The blessings the Lord gives to the Lamanites are extended to all American Indians—but the book never states that every inhabitant was a descendant of Lehi.  There could have been other people on the continents.  Many others.

How could Lehi’s family produce such a huge population in such a short amount of time?  It probably didn’t.  The Book of Mormon is not meant to be a complete record of the early American peoples.  It probably only covers, in fact, a small area of the Americas—and not both continents.  Its primary concern is with the doctrine of Christ, and, after that, it exists as a record of two warring kinship groups, the Lamanites and Nephites.  But every Nephite and every Lamanite was probably not the literal descendant of Nephi or Laman.

The Lamanites, from the beginning, outnumber the Nephites.  As most of Lehi’s family actually fled with Nephi, and became the Nephites, the Lamanites would have had to have allies from the very beginning.  And that the Nephites and Lamanites were not all Lehi’s descendants is not mere speculation.  There are quiet mentions of other people scattered throughout the Book of Mormon—in several cases (see 2 Nephi 5:5, Alma 52: 32), “others” are referred to, whose identity is never made certain.  A group of Zoramites does not seem to be wholly Zoramite—“many of them are our brethren,” would be an odd statement to make if everyone were indeed of the same source—see Alma 31: 35.  The Nephites refer to other Nephites (of which Zoramites were a faction), Lamanites, and Mulekites (the Nephites’ non-kin allies) as their brethren.  So who are these others?  They are not named, but we must assume they were present.

Mormon Apostle Boyd K. Packer asserted that the Book of Mormon is really not intended as a history of the Native American peoples.  That is not its focus, nor should it be assumed to be such.1

So, about this DNA issue, then.  Didn’t some scientists prove that Native American DNA wasn’t at all Middle Eastern, but was closer to Asian DNA?  We can answer this partly in the same way we answered the last question—Lehi’s family was not the only group of people on the American continent, nor even the only group represented in the Book of Mormon.  The Mormon Church does not claim that they were.  There is nothing in the Book of Mormon that would make a scientific conclusion that Middle Eastern DNA does not exist in a modern Native population incompatible with it.

But let’s look at this DNA testing.  The “proof” that Native Americans have not the slightest Hebrew blood in them is, firstly, simply a lack of evidence.  Secondly, the purpose of the study was not, in fact, to look for Hebrew ancestry—but was used by anti-Mormons after its publication as proof that the Book of Mormon was wrong.2  Thirdly, and most importantly, when testing DNA ancestry, it is impossible to get a complete record of who a person’s ancestors were.  That part of DNA that can be tested is both a very small section of DNA and only travels through the mother’s line.  As you might expect, large chunks of genealogical information could easily be lost—and are.  Fourthly, the study hardly covered all Native Americans—it was conducted on 75 of the existing 500 populations. 3

We also don’t really know what Lehi’s DNA would have looked like. 4 Would it look like modern Jewish or even Middle Eastern DNA?  Quite possibly not.  We don’t know.

DNA testing is, in short, a relatively new science and these results may not be wholly authoritative.  It would not, however, matter if they were.

1. Book of Mormon demographics (This is the source of most of the demographics section) Also see this blog on Book of Mormon DNA for more examples.

2. Tempest in a Teapot (Brant A. Gardner))

3. DNA and the Book of Mormon (Cooper Johnson)

4. Same.