sin, skin, & seed thomas murphy, [email protected] 18 april ... · sin, skin, & seed thomas...

Sin, Skin, & SeedThomas Murphy, [email protected] 18 April 2003

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Sin, Skin, and Seed:Mistakes of Men in the Book of Mormon

Thomas W. Murphyhttp://faculty.edcc.edu/~tmurphy

April 18, 2003Sunstone Symposium West

San Francisco, CA

White and DelightsomeSpencer W. Kimball

“I saw a striking contrast in the progress ofthe Indian people today.... The day of theLamanites is nigh. For years they have beengrowing delightsome, and they are nowbecoming white and delightsome, as theywere promised. In this picture of the twentyLamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twentywere as light as Anglos, five were darker butequally delightsome. The children in thehome placement program in Utah are oftenlighter than their brothers and sisters in thehogans on the reservation. “

Changing to whiteness

“At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl--sixteen--sitting between the dark father and mother, and it wasevident she was several shades lighter than her parents--onthe same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to thesame sun and wind and weather.... These young membersof the Church are changing to whiteness and todelightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he andhis companion were donating blood regularly to thehospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.”Spencer W. Kimball

w Improvement Era, Dec. 1960, pp. 922-923.

Who are the Lamanites?

• I tell those who come to my office that a Lamanite is adescendant of one Lehi who left Jerusalem six hundred yearsbefore Christ and with his family crossed the mighty deep andlanded in America. And Lehi and his family became theancestors of all of the Indian and Mestizo tribes in North andSouth and Central America and in the islands of the sea, …

• Not until the revelations of Joseph Smith, bringing forth theBook of Mormon, did any one know of these migrants. …Now the Lamanites number about sixty million; they are in allof the states of America from Tierra del Fuego all the way upto Point Barrows, and they are in nearly all the islands of thesea from Hawaii south to southern New Zealand.

• Spencer W. Kimball, Ensign, July 1971, p. 7

Folk Biology

• This presentation examinesthe use of folk biology tonaturalize social relations inthe Book of Mormon.

• It identifies problemsMormons face in thetwenty-first century as weencounter modernbiogenetic understandingsof similar body images.

• Latter-day Skeptic’sperspective

Sin, Skin, & Seed

• Is the Book of Mormon’s assumption thatskin color reflects sinfulness consistent withbiogenetic understandings of humanphysical variation?

• Is the Book of Mormon’s assumption of apatriarchal seed transmitted from fathers tosons consistent with modernunderstandings of biogenetic procreation?

• Is an Israelite heritage of Nephites andLamanites reflected in the genes andbiology of American Indians?

Mistakes of men.

• “And now if there be fault, itbe the mistake of men;wherefore condemn not thethings of God.” 1830 titlepage

• “I give unto men weaknessthat they may be humble; …if they humble themselvesbefore me, and have faith inme, then will I make weakthings become strong untothem.” Ether 12:27

Book of Mormon’s nineteenthcentury folk biology

• Humility may demandviewing Mormonscripture as fiction.

• Book of Mormon’s viewof Indian origins andskin color rooted innineteenth centurybiblical hermeneutics.

• Book of Mormon’s viewof seed is drawn frompatriarchal models ofprocreation & kinshipin the Bible.

Native American Objections

• Jace Weaver (Cherokee), Yale University• Mormons perpetuate “the old slur that

Native Americans were descendants ofthe Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, a beliefperpetuated by those who could notaccept that indigenous people coulddevelop any degree of ‘civilization’without fertilization from the OldWorld.”

• Tom Goldtooth (IndigenousEnvironmental Network) calls Mormonevangelization “ethnocidalindoctrination.”


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Indian Origins:Nineteenth century views

• Dan Vogel has traced thepopular belief that Indianswere descendants of ancientIsrael from sixteenth centuryto nineteenth century

• Other popular beliefs includedIndian origins in the scatteringof people after the tower ofBabel or of Canaanite lineage

• Isrealite heritage combinedwith myth of an ancient race ofwhite mound builders by EthanSmith (1825) and Joseph Smith(1830).

Curses and dark skin:Nineteenth century views

• Association of curses withdark skin rooted in colonialbiblical interpretations ofNoah’s curse of Canaan (sonof Ham) to be a servant inresponse to Ham’sobservance of his drunkenfather’s nakedness (Gen. 9)

• Book of Mormon reflects latedevelopments in history oflegend

Genesis 9 in Biblical context

• Social context of Gen. 9 most likely rootedin 6th-9th century BCE retrospectiveportrayal of Canaanites purportedlyconquered in 10th century BCE

• Israelite conquest of Canaan questioned bybiblical archaeologists & genetic research

• No explicit biblical linkage between curseand skin color in the Bible

• Only some of Canaan’s descendantsidentified with Africa

• Ancient slavery not linked to skin color

Evolution of a myth

• 3-4th centuries BCE, readers begin tointerpret story as perennial curse on‘Hamites.’

• Earliest rabbinic sources ambiguous andconnection with skin color disputed.

• Scholars favoring an early association of thecurse with sin & African skin color date it tothe Talmud in 2nd & 3rd centuries CE.

• Christian fathers in 2nd & 3rd centuries CEestablish Ham as first magician andirredeemable arch sinner.

Evolution of a myth (cont.)

• Jewish & Christian Medieval legends of Noahexplain provenance of servitude, dispersion ofhumans, societal structure & origin of magic.

• Muslim exegetes in tenth century explicitlylink curse of Ham to darkened skin of “theblacks”

• By the 1560s French Calvinists identifyingIndians as descendants of Ham and inheritorsof curse.

• By the 1670s ‘curse of Ham’ regularlyemployed as justification for African andIndian slavery in British colonies.

Evolution of a myth (cont.)

• The Serviceable Man (Cotton Matther, 1690)identifies Indians as Canaanite inheritors ofcurse of Ham

• Eighteenth century curse of Canaan/Hamlinked to cursed seed of Cain and a corruptpriesthood

• Ethan Smith (1825) claims Indians have anotion of the “the death of Abel, by themurderous hand of Cain’ and a “corruptsuccession of the high priesthood in ancientIsrael.”

Racial myth inMormon scripture

• Delicate balancing of various nineteenth centuryexplanations of Indian origins

• Jaredite party comes from Tower of Babel• Mulek, descendent of Zedekiah, comes from

Jerusalem• Lehi and Laban, descendants of Joseph, come from

Jerusalem• Joseph had married Asenath, an Egyptian• Book of Abraham (1:21-24) would subsequently tie

all Egyptians to the curse of Ham/Canaan• Separation of Nephites from Lamanites &

destruction of Nephite civilization

Book of Mormon:Links curse explicitly to dark skin.

• “And he had caused the cursing to come uponthem, yea, even a sore cursing, because oftheir iniquity. For behold, they had hardenedtheir hearts against him, that they had becomelike unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white,and exceedingly fair and delightsome, thatthey might not be enticing unto my people theLord God did cause a skin of blackness tocome upon them. …

• And cursed shall be the seed of him thatmixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursedeven with the same cursing.” 2 Ne. 5:21-23.

Physical Anthropology Today

• There is no biological foundation for thebelief that people’s skin color changesaccording to adherence to or deviance fromreligious principles and practices.

• A growing number of biologists andphysical anthropologist seriously questionthe existence of races, as distinct biologicalcategories of people.

• Cleary the meanings that we apply tophysical differences between humans arecultural rather than biological in origin.


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Human skin color

• Critical factor in skincolor is quantitativeand qualitativedifference in pigmentmelanin

• Difference probablyevolved in response togeographic variation inUV exposure

• Darker skin protectsagainst skin cancer,lighter skin mayprotect against rickets,and cold injury

Abraham’s Seed

• While the ideas of adark skin as a curse forsin and of an Israeliteorigin of Indians owemore to nineteenthcentury biblicalhermeneutics, theconcept of apatriarchal seed ofAbraham is biblical inorigin.

• Carol Delaney,anthropologist atStanford University

Ancient Hebrew concepts ofgender and procreation

w “Rather than reflecting natural facts, the meanings of fatherand mother, paternity and maternity emerge relative to atheory of procreation. In this theory, the male is construedas the creative one: he is the one who “begets” and bymeans of his “seed” imparts the life-giving essence thatdefines a child. The female role is to nurture the seed-childimplanted in her and to give birth.” Delaney 1998: 18w This bias can be plainly seen in the biblical description of

the births of Manasseh and Ephraim. “And unto Josephwere born two sons … which Asenath the daughter ofPotipherah priest of On bare unto him” (Gen. 41:50).

Seminal seed

• Abraham’s posterity is imagined as his seed and portrayed inalmost exclusively male terms.

• Biblical authors claimed creative powers of women forthemselves and their male Creator God.

• Just as Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph transmitted the seed of theirpaternal predecessor Abraham, so too does the Book ofMormon patriarch Lehi carry the seed of Joseph to a promisedland. Nephi, Lehi’s son, and his brethren continue to transmitthe seed of their father Lehi. The Book of Mormon extends itspromises to the seed of Lehi, Nephi, Laman, Joseph, Jacob andAbraham but never to the seed of Sariah, the unnamed wivesof Nephi and Laman, Asenath, Rachel, or Sara.

Naturalizing white authority

w Racialization of seed in Book of Mormon claims authorityfor white men, portrayed as just & holy.w “And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to

the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was acurse upon them because of their transgression and theirrebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi,Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men.w And their brethren sought to destroy them, therefore they

were cursed; and the Lord God set a mark upon them, yea,upon Laman and Lemuel, and also the sons of Ishmael, andIshmaelitish women.”

Denunciation of Lamanite culture as“incorrect traditions.”

w “And this was done that their seed might bedistinguished from the seed of their brethren, thatthereby the Lord God might preserve his people,that they might not mix and believe in incorrecttraditions which would prove their destruction.wAnd it came to pass that whosoever did mingle his

seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the samecurse upon his seed. “ (Alma 3:6-9)w Book of Mormon conflates biological features with

cultural practices to endow white men withauthority, reifying and naturalizing that privilege.

Biogenetic reproduction today

• Males do not have a patriarchalmonopoly on creative powers.

• Male and female each accountfor half the creative geneticendowment (23 chromosomeseach).

• Women contribute more:nurture fetus for nine months,give birth, nurse, etc.

• Book of Mormon’s concept of acursed male seed planted in afemale’s womb is a racist andsexist folk biological (cultural)construction.

Molecular Anthropology

• New findings from genetics have confirmedanatomical, archaeological, and linguisticdata that all indicate American Indiansderived from Northeast Asian populations,approximately 20-30,000 yrs. ago.

• No intimate linkage exists between DNA ofJews and any known population of modernor ancient American Indians.

• Lamanites could not possibly be “theprincipal ancestors of the American Indians”as claimed in the current introduction to theBook of Mormon

Distribution of foundingAmerican mtDNA lineages

• 98% belong to A, B, C,or D

• 2% appear to be X6/X7(closely related to C &D) or Brown’s X

• 99.4% traceable backto Asia

• Separation from Asianlineages approximately25,000 years ago

• Greatest affinity withMongolia, Manchuria,Southern Siberia


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South America

East Asia

Central Asia

Central America

North America

North Asia Northeast Asia

Canada

Alaska

Polynesia

ABC

DXother

Australia

Greenland

Europe, Africa

Middle EastKey

Asian & Native American mtDNA(Courtesy of Simon Southerton)

Source: Richards et al. 1996; Macaulay et al. 1999

0057871262Europeans

21235771044Middle East

Maternal DNA Lineage (%)Population H,V J K T U W,I, X M L

European and Middle East MtDNA Lineages

Ancestral lineage

Europeans Native AmericansAltaians

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7

24

12

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Global X Lineage Family Tree

Source: Derenko et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998, Southerton 2002

Isthmus of Panama

Land of Zarahemla

Land Southward

Land Northward

Land of Nephi

EAST SEA

WESTSEA

Hill Cumorah

Traditional Book of Mormon Geography

NARROW NECK OF LAND

Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Land of Zarahemla

Land SouthwardLand Northward

Land of Nephi

EASTSEA

WESTSEA

2nd Hill Cumorah

500 miles

The Limited Geography

NARROW NECK OF LAND

Yet, at least 98.6% of Mesoamerican mtDNA isalso traceable back to Asia.

mtDNA Frequency, * = ancient

17.4 4.313.065.223Aztec, Tlateloco*

0.033.333.333.315Zapotec 0.0 0.0 7.192.914Mixtec (Baja) 0.013.313.373.415Mixtec (Alta) 0.0 6.231.362.516Mixe

3.7 7.414.822.251.927Modern Maya

11.089.0 0.0 0.09Maya, Copán*4.00.0 8.0 4.084.025Maya, Xcaret*OtherD(%)C(%)B(%)A(%)nPopulation

Ancient mtDNA

• All Asian founding lineages present inancient mtDNA

• Continuity between past and present• Ancient & modern Mesoamerican mtDNA

(Aztec, Maya) includes A-D (high frequenciesof A, low frequencies of B)

• Copan Maya samples of C & D may vary frompattern

• At least 98.2% ancient Mesoamerican mtDNAtraceable to Asia

• One unidentified sample may be X (alsotraceable to Asia).

Y-Chromosomes

• Paternal lineagesconfirm likelihood ofSiberian origin

• 1st founding haplotype:DYS199T/1G/M3

• 2nd foundinghaplotype: 1C/M45

• These two >90%• # of additional

founding haplotypes?• 20-30,000 years ago• 2nd migration, 7-

9,500 years ago?

What are the experts saying?

• “Genetic research, particularly that using mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers, provides quite emphatic refutation ofany such relationship between Jews and Native Americans,”David Glenn Smith, UC - Davis.

• “I don’t think there is one iota of evidence that suggests a losttribe from Israel made it all the way to the New World. It is agreat story, slain by ugly fact,” Michael Crawford, U. ofKansas.

• "I don't know of any data that suggests particular similarity ofNative American populations to any population of the MiddleEast,” Dennis O’Rourke, U. of Utah

• "Archeologists and physical anthropologists have not foundany evidence of Hebrew origins for the people of North, Southand Central America,” Stephen L. Whittington, U. of Maine


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What are LDS and former LDSexperts saying?

• “It's pretty clear that A, B, C, D and Xs are alsofound in Asia.” BYU has “a large sample of DNAsfrom South America, primarily Peru, about 6,000samples of which we have typed mitochondriallyand we find the same types of evidence that havebeen found by other researchers that primarilythose mitochondrial DNAs are A, B, C, D and Xs andsome others.” Scott Woodward, BYU biologist

• “Current evidence suggests that Native Americanshave a genetic history representative of Asia andnot the Middle East.” Michael Whiting, BYU biologist

• Simon Southerton, Australian geneticist and formerLDS bishop, calls DNA “the most damning scientificevidence facing the Church today,”

BYU’s highly publicized Molecular Genealogy Project“moved” early in March 2003 (three years after it began) The costs of Mormon beliefs:

Whitening American Indian Children

• Mormon efforts to turn American Indian children “white anddelightsome” through adoption and intermarriage began asearly as the 1840s and continues unofficially today.

• In 1967 Cordell Anderson, a former LDS missionary, set upthe Paradise Valley Plantation in Guatemala where he “had touse every trick he knew to convince them (Indians) that theyshould let their children attend the plantation school” and hewould unofficially adopt dozens of parentless ormalnourished children in hopes of “converting Indian Israel”and fulfilling the prophecy “that they will become a white anddelightsome people.” Ensign, July 1971, p. 24.

• Between 1954 and 1996 the official Mormon Indian PlacementProgram placed more than 70,000 Indian children in urbanwhite Mormon foster homes. Quietly phased out.

Baby Autumn

• December 8, 2002• Lorraine Martinez Cook

shared the tragic story ofher newborn granddaughter(mixed heritage of Mexican,Apache and Yaqui). She hasreasonable suspicions thatan LDS bishop persuadedthe birthmother towardadoption, and LDS FamilyServices persuaded the birthmother to subvert thepaternal rights of Cook’snon-Mormon son.

• “Baby Autumn” remains inan undisclosed Mormonhome in Utah.

Summary

• Mormons have a moral and ethicalresponsibility to relegate the following ideasto the category of mistakes of men.w A dark skin is a curse from God for wickedness.w Creative power is embodied exclusively in a

seminal seed.w The Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the

American Indians.w Religious conversion turns Native children “white

and delightsome.”• To escape these errors Mormons may need

to reconsider how we approach scripture.

Conclusion

• Mormon folk biology reflects self-interestedmistakes of white men.

• While Mormons share the mistaken understandingsof the creative power of seminal seed with JudeoChristian and Islamic traditions, the folk biologicalconcepts linking sin, skin, and Native Americanorigins remain predominantly ours. Most othertraditions have rejected these ideas as outdatedfolk biology.

• Unlike other religious traditions that gave birth tothem Mormons have endowed linkages of sin andskin color and claims of a Hebrew ancestry forAmerican Indians with the status of the word ofGod.

“I like the color I am.”

• “Only one thing I don’tunderstand,” he grins. “It[the Book of Mormon] sayswe’ll be a white anddelightsome people someday.I like the color I am. In fact, Idon’t know any Indian whowants to change.” LarryEchohawk, LDS Pawnee

• Ensign, Dec. 1975, p. 29

• For more information please see:• http://faculty.edcc.edu/~tmurphy

Recommended Reading

• A special thanks to Simon Southerton for the use ofseveral of his slides and a summary of his research.

• Alfred Cave, “Canaanites in a Promised Land: TheAmerican Indian and the Providential Theory ofEmpire,” American Indian Quarterly 12 (Fall 1988):277-297.

• Michael H. Crawford, The Origins of NativeAmericans: Evidence from anthropological genetics(New York: Cambridge U. Press, 1998).

• Carol Delaney, Abraham On Trial: The Social Legacyof Biblical Myth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press,1998).

Recommended Reading

• Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The BiblicalJustification of American Slavery (New York: OxfordU. Press, 2002).

• T.M. Karafet et al. “Ancestral Asian Source(s) of NewWorld Y-Chromosome Founder Haplotypes,”American Journal of Human Genetics 64 (1999):817-831.

• Andrew Merriwether, “A Mitochondrial Perspectiveon the Peopling of the New World,” in The FirstAmericans, edited by Nina G. Jablonski (SanFrancisco: California Academy of Science, 2002),295-310.


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Recommended Reading

• Thomas W. Murphy, “Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy,and Genetics,” in American Apocrypha, edited byDan Vogel and Brent Metcalfe (Salt Lake City:Signature, 2002), 47-77.

• Thomas W. Murphy, “Laban’s Ghost: On Writing andTransgression,” Dialogue 30 (Summer 1997): 105-126.

• Thomas W. Murphy and Simon G. Southerton,“Genetic Research a ‘Galileo Event’ for Mormons,”Anthropology News 44.2 (February 2003): 20.

• George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospeland Native American Cultural Genocide(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1993).

Recommended Reading

• James Treat, ed. Native and Christian:Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity inthe United States and Canada (New York:Routledge, 1996).

• Stephen L. Whittington and David M. Reed,Bones of the Maya: Studies of AncientSkeletons (Washington D.C.: SmithsonianInstitution Press, 1997).

• Jace Weaver, ed. Native American ReligiousIdentity: Unforgotten Gods (Maryknoll, NY:Orbis Books, 1998).

sin, skin, & seed thomas murphy, [email protected] 18 april ... · sin, skin, & seed thomas...

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