Posted on 11/08/2007 5:23:05 PM PST by Colofornian
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."
Boo!
And don't mess with the albino monk assassin squads, either.
Better watch out or the Spanish Inquisition will get you!
Well, the alleged reason why Hill & Huck won't campaign in Utah is 'cause their wagon train originally hitched up in Arkansas & certain Mormons were known to dress up in WarPaint on 9/11.
I’m a Laminate, myself.
They play on my team.
Watch it! My musket is loaded!
(somewhere)
You’ll make a GREAT private investigator then!
Yes, oh my (looking whiter & brighter every day, IMA)
OK, if you & Resty are 2 of the Musketeers, who's the 3rd?
My son, the missionary!
Oh, the Catholic converter Campion called out about.
(BTW: If NONE Of the key distinctive doctrines that LDS teaches about its faith are in the Book of Mormon, why are LDS missionaries intentionally disengenous by having folks they visit read the BoM to pray about it? I mean, it comes across as a used car dealer who does a bait & switch with an leader...)
Oh, you didn't know that this marvelous vehicle we have on sale comes with flesh paint 'cause nobody mentioned that to you yet?
Oh, you didn't know that this marvelous work & wonder didn't come in 3 shades of glory?
Oh, you didn't know that, you took can not only drive this vehicle, but be the maker of it?
Oh, you didn't know that when the first lemon car came out that it was actually a matter of celebration within the auto industry? (Yeah, it's what we call an "upward lemon")
Oh, you didn't know that Priesthood Dealerships which gives us the authority to sell these vehicles wasn't mentioned in the paperwork we handed you?
Oh, you didn't know that we salvage salvage-yard vehicles by car-washing them by proxy 'cause that just wasn't mentioned in that "fulness of the everlasting what-you-need-to-know-about-vehicles-to-heaven" document we left with you to pray about?
***Watch it! My musket is loaded!
(somewhere)***
One hand made by Browning?
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."
Ping for later
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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Where are the men who have assailed this work? Where is their influence? They have faded away like dew before the sun.
We need have no fears, we Latter-day Saints. God will continue to sustain this work; He will sustain the right.
If we are loyal, if we are true, if we are worthy of this gospel, of which God has given us a testimony, there is no danger that the world can ever injure us.
We can never be injured, my brethren and sisters, by any mortals, except ourselves.
If we fail to serve God, if we fail to do right, then we rob ourselves of the ability and power to grow, to increase in faith and knowledge, to have power with God, and with the righteous" (Gospel Standards, p. 85-86). ~ President Heber J. Grant
Yeh, right!!! more like activities restricted to the "limited geography" of Joseph Smith's imagination --
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.
Ya think???
"The record is now published in many languages as a new and additional witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God and that all who will come unto him and obey the laws and ordinances of his gospel may be saved.Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: "I told the brethern that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."
About this edition: Some minor errors in the text have been perpetrated in past editions of the Book of Mormon. This edition contains corrections that seem appropriate to bring the material into conformity with prepublication manuscripts and early editions edited by the Prophet Joseph Smith.
And many of the LDS organization's 'apologists' ...
...feel free to disavow most ANYTHING that upsets their tight little world view.
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