DNA and The Book of Mormon

The Origin of Homo sapiens

LDS Church Position• Adam our great progenitor, "the first man," was, like Christ, a pre-

existent spirit, and like Christ he took upon him an appropriate body, the body of a man, and so became a "living soul." The doctrine of the pre-existence, --revealed so plainly, particularly in latter days, pours a wonderful flood of light upon the otherwise mysterious problem of man's origin. It shows that man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father, prior to coming upon the earth in a temporal body to undergo an experience in mortality. It teaches that all men existed in the spirit before any man existed in the flesh, and that all who have inhabited the earth since Adam have taken bodies and become souls in like manner.

Alternative Hypotheses

Alternative scenarios of human evolution

Fagundes N J R et al. PNAS 2007;104:17614-17619

©2007 by National Academy of Sciences

Trellis model with recent expansion into the Americas

Migration of Homo sapiens

Human Migrations

What does The Book of Mormon imply for the peopling of the Americas?

• Israelite relationship• “After thousands of years, all were destroyed

except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.”

• “After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians.”

What does DNA tell us?

• DNA extracted from teeth, more than 10,000 years old, found in a cave on the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island, off southern Alaska (Nature, 2005)

• Matched tribes throughout the Americas

What are the implications for The Book of Mormon?

• Asian origin of the Native Americans• Much older origin of the Native Americans• Is this a problem for The Book of Mormon?

Critics

• Thomas Murphy - "the Book of Mormon is a piece of 19th century fiction. And that means that we have to acknowledge sometimes Joseph Smith lied.”

• Simon Southerton – “The Book of Mormon was created in the mind of Joseph Smith and is not a historical account of former inhabitants of the American continent.'' – Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the

Mormon Church 2004

Hugh Nibley• As Hugh Nibley explained in 1952, in an article printed in the official publication of the Church at the time,

the Book of Mormon identified Asia as a source for ancient Native Americans long before anthropologists did. The essay was "The World of the Jaredites," Improvement Era, Vol. 55, June 1952, from which I quote:

• That account [the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon] tells us that at the very dawn of history, many thousands of years ago, a party of nomad hunters and stock raisers from west central Asia crossed the water--very probably the North Pacific--to the New World, where they preserved the ways of their ancestors, including certain savage and degenerate practices, and carried on a free and open type of steppe warfare with true Asiatic cruelty and ferocity; it tells us that these people moved about much in the wilderness, for all they built imposing cities, and that they produced a steady trickle of "outcasts" through the centuries. A careful study of the motions of the Jaredites, Mulekites, Nephites, and Lamanites should correct the absurd oversimplification by which the Book of Mormon as a history is always judged. It will show as plain as day that the Book of Mormon itself first suggests the Asiatic origin of some elements at least of the Indian race and culture long before the anthropologists got around to it. The scientists no longer hold that one migration and one route can explain everything about the Indians. The Book of Mormon never did propound a doctrine so naive.

The Latest Genetic DataRosenberg et al. 2005PLoS Genetics

Li et al. Science 2008

Summary

• The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ is exactly what it claims to be — a record of God’s dealings with peoples of ancient America and a second witness of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. The strongest witness of the Book of Mormon is to be obtained by living the Christ-centered principles contained in its pages and by praying about its truthfulness.

• Recent attacks on the veracity of the Book of Mormon based on DNA evidence are ill considered. 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.