:The Book of Mormon, one of the four books of scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see Standard Works), is an account of a number of Hebrew individuals who, as a small part of one of the Lost Ten Tribes, emigrated from the Middle East to the Americas during biblical times and later grew into large civilizations. There is generally no support amongst mainstream historians and archaeologists for the historicity of these events.

The Mormons further believe that the tribe of the Lamanites was visited in what is now America and western New York by Jesus Christ following his resurrection from the dead.

They also avow that these books, as translated from the golden tablets by Joseph Smith, are the divine word of God as recorded by prophets in the Americas. The LDS consider the BOOK OF MORMON to be an addition to the Bible. Joseph Smith is revered as a prophet like Jeremiah and Isaiah, divinely inspired and instructed by God.

Since the late 1990s and the pioneering work of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and others, scientists have developed techniques that attempt to use genetic markers to indicate the ethnic background and history of individual people. The consensus view is that the Native Americans have very distinctive DNA markers, and that they are most similar, among old world populations, to the DNA of people anciently associated with the Altay Mountains area of central Asia, near the intersections of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. There is little significant support outside the LDS for the hypothesis that these peoples originated as migrants from the Middle East.

Overview of the genetic challenge to the Book of Mormon story


The genetic challenge

The genetic challenge centers on the claims of the Book of Mormon that the Lamanites, descended from Lehi, are a "remnant of the House of Israel" and the "principal ancestors of the American Indians", as is stated on the 1981 edition's introduction.[1] A literal reading of the 1981 introduction to the Book of Mormon suggests that modern-day Native Americans are descended from the party of Israelites that migrated to the New World around 600 BC from the Jerusalem area. If this were the case, the DNA of Native Americans would be expected to show correlations with Middle Eastern genetic markers, consistent with Hebrew descent.

LDS researchers compare existing genetic evidence with the Book of Mormon story

Some researchers such as LDS anthropologist Thomas W. Murphy and former-LDS molecular biologist Simon Southerton have emphasized that the substantial collection of Native American genetic markers now available are not consistent with any detectable presence of ancestors from the ancient Middle East, and argued that this poses substantial evidence to contradict the account in the Book of Mormon. Both Murphy and Southerton have published their views on this subject (Southerton 2004).Followup of genetic claims in the media.

Southerton's work was later used as a source for an article written by William Lobdell and published in the LA Times on 16 February 2006, which contains the following.

“For Mormons, the lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans is no minor collision between faith and science. It burrows into the historical foundations of the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old transcription that the church regards as literal and without error.”

Lobdell's article prompted a response from LDS supporters, including several articles referenced on the official LDS web site (see external links below).

The origin of groups described in the Book of Mormon

Statements regarding the Hebrew ancestry of Book of Mormon people

An introductory paragraph added to the Book of Mormon in the 1981 revision states in part: "After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians." (see lds.org) That addition from 1981 was changed in a 2006 edition, that stated only that "the Lamanites...are among the ancestors of the American Indians." This change was in harmony with the claims of the Book of Mormon itself, and what some Latter-day Saints had long perceived.

For example, in 1929 President Anthony W. Ivins of the LDS church's First Presidency cautioned church members:

“We must be careful in the conclusions that we reach. The Book of Mormon teaches the history of three distinct peoples … who came from the old world to this continent. It does not tell us that there was no one here before them. It does not tell us that people did not come after. And so if discoveries are made which suggest differences in race origins, it can very easily be accounted for, and reasonably, for we do believe that other people came to this continent. ”[2]