DNA and the Book of Mormon

Does DNA evidence disprove the Book of Mormon?  After all, doesn’t the Book of Mormon claim that American Indians descended from the House of Israel?  And don’t DNA studies show that these American Indians actually have an Asian origin? 

Genetic studies (about 100) have been performed on 75 of the known 500 American Indian groups.  The results show that the genetic signatures of these populations resemble those of modern-day Asians. 

So, all right.  Does this mean the Book of Mormon is false?  No.  First, for this to actually prove the Book of Mormon false, it would have to be Mormon belief in doctrine that the only ancestors of American Indians were Israelites.  And even Joseph Jr., the translator of the Book of Mormon and founder of the Church, didn’t deny that other groups of people (beyond Book of Mormon ones) might have lived in the American continents.  Intermarriage would have been a real possibility, especially after the fall of the major civilization in the Book of Mormon, the Nephites.

We don’t know how large the Book of Mormon populations were at their peak, and they were often depleted by war.  By the end of the history, there may not have been many left.  Other peoples could have easily assimilated them and their Middle-Eastern DNA could have, therefore, disappeared almost entirely during the following centuries.  The DNA of modern American Indians could indeed be more Asian than Middle-Eastern and do nothing to disprove the Book of Mormon. 

Also, discovering a people’s far-off ancestry through DNA is far from an exact science.

Official Statement from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church)

"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…"1

Latter-day Saints See the Possibility of Other Groups

Critics of the Book of Mormon have latched onto the idea that Joseph Smith Jr. believed that the ancestor of the American Indians was Abraham.  They have, therefore, ignored that nothing Joseph said would deny them other ancestors.  No one has one ancestor and only one, especially when one goes back that many centuries. 

"In a statement made in 1835, Joseph Smith described the visit of an angel to him twelve years earlier: ‘He told me of a sacred record which was written on plates of gold. I saw in the vision the place where they were deposited. He said the Indians were the literal descendants of Abraham.’

A sociologist at BYU, Matthew Roper, responded thus to the prophet’s comment: "My great-great-grandfather is John Whetten, but it would not be reasonable to assume that in making this statement I am declaring that I have no other ancestors. Joseph Smith’s statement plainly allows for Abraham to be one ancestor among many others." 2 

And although the following appeared in a Mormon publication (and therefore might be assumed to be false or at least biased), it does present a possibility that Mormons weren’t the only ones who saw connections between Israel and American Indians.  This account was written by Don Juan Torres, who was the king of the Mayans’ last grandson—and was cited in Times and Seasons, which was edited by John Taylor and Joseph Smith.  Don Juan stated that "the Toltecas themselves descended from the house of Israel, who were released by Moses from the tyranny of Pharaoh, and after crossing the Red Sea, fell into Idolatry. To avoid the reproofs of Moses, or from fear of his inflicting upon them some chastisement, they separated from him and his brethren… passed from one continent to the other, to a place which they called the seven caverns, a part of the kingdom of Mexico." 3 

Hugh Nibley, LDS historian, believed this was very significant.  Don Juan claims Israelite ancestry, but the story he tells bears little or no resemblance to the Book of Mormon.  The group he mentions is not one of the ones mentioned in the Book of Mormon, but departed by a different method, in a different time.  The veracity of the account is not important.  What is interesting here is that Joseph Smith and John Taylor were happy to publish it, even though it did not directly coincide with the Book of Mormon.  The possibility of other people or other groups in the Americas did not worry them.

Even in 1909, a member of the Seventy, B.H. Roberts easily accepted the idea that the American coast may have been visited by Norsemen.  Likewise, the possibility of Asian groups migrating to the Americas over the Bering Strait did not trouble him—rather, he thought it was very likely.  Additionally, he said, "The records now in hand, especially that of the Jaredites, are but very limited histories of these people. Thus, even in Jaredite and Nephite times voyages could have been made from America to the shores of Europe, and yet no mention of it be made in Nephite and Jaredite records now known." 4

Hugh Nibley wholly believed other people were brought to the Americas by God. He said, "Now there is a great deal said in the Book of Mormon about the past and future of the promised land, but never is it described as an empty land. The descendants of Lehi were never the only people on the continent, and the Jaredites never claimed to be." 5

Other scholars note that one of the qualities that the Book of Mormon shares with the Bible is this: they both stand as records of small groups of people in specific areas.  Is the Bible supposed to be an account of every nation in the Middle East?  No—its primary concern is the Israelites, their enemies and friends and any other group of immediate and concrete interest.  Any group outside of that is not mentioned, nor are most of the groups mentioned given careful or extensive treatment.  The Book of Mormon’s focus is also tight and perhaps tighter.  It’s a shorter work and an abridgement of a compilation of texts, rather than a compilation of texts (as the Bible is). 

Ariel Crowley, a scholar of the Book of Mormon, said this in 1961: "The Book of Mormon is no more the history of all peoples and doings of past ages on the American continents than the Bible is a history of all the peoples and nations of the East. Each covers its own time and provenance and makes no pretense beyond that… The Book of Mormon attests the presence of the blood of Israel. It is not in the least impugned by extraneous proof that other blood, by other migrations, found this land and mingled with the peoples there."6

And, again, the Book of Mormon isn’t supposed to be a complete history, any more than the Bible is.  This is not its purpose.  As it was abridged in the last, waning years of the Nephite civilization, by one of its last, a man called Mormon—as it was abridged in these circumstances, Mormon distilled only the essentials.  In Mormon belief, most of these essentials were religious in nature.  Mormon had many records at hand to draw from, and any number of them could have had extensive details about other people—but these were not essential to the religious thrust of the text.  (Even if they might be convenient for “proving” the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon’s main purpose isn’t to prove itself historically.  Is any book’s?) We don’t know what Mormon had—we don’t have these records. 

Book of Mormon May Reference Other Groups

Abridged, tight as it is, the Book of Mormon may still contain evidence that the groups named in the Book of Mormon weren’t alone in the Americas.  The story of the Book of Mormon is that of Lehi’s family and their descendants and, yet, from the beginning, there may have been contact with other groups.  Early on in the Book of Mormon, Lehi’s son, Nephi, flees into the wilderness to escape his older brothers, who are plotting against him.  Says the text, "I, Nephi, did take my family, and also Zoram and his family, and Sam, mine elder brother and his family, and Jacob and Joseph, my younger brethren, and also my sisters, and all those who would go with me. And all those who would go with me were those who believed in the warnings and the revelations of God; wherefore, they did hearken unto my words." 7

Nephi specifies, very carefully, which members of his immediate and extended family flee with him—indeed, he is so very specific that the identity of “all those who would go with me” is left ambiguous.  Who could be included in that phrase?  At this point, Lehi’s family splits into two, the unfaithful (who will be the Lamanites) and the faithful (who will be the Nephites).  Nephi has just named almost everyone, save Laman and Lemuel and the sons of Ishmael, all of whom traditionally lump together.  So who’s left to go with Nephi who isn’t mentioned?  It’s possible that there were people outside Lehi’s group who became involved and believed and followed Nephi.  Nephi refers to his group as the "people of Nephi," 8 "a term that may be suggestive of a larger society including more than his immediate family."9

The Lord will later tell Nephi, "Wherefore, I will consecrate this land unto thy seed, and them who shall be numbered among thy seed, forever, for the land of their inheritance; for it is a choice land, saith God unto me, above all other lands, wherefore I will have all men that dwell thereon that they shall worship me, saith God." 10

Again, “them who shall be numbered among thy seed,” isn’t entirely specific.  The people of Nephi include more than Nephi’s descendants, or there would be no need to use this phrase at all.  And the scripture states clearly that the land is blessed for others besides Nephi’s direct descendants. 

Matthew Roper shares other Book of Mormon evidences in his review of Nephi’s Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations.

Some further evidences of other Book of Mormon peoples can be found here: Book of Mormon DNA.

DNA Testing Not Completely Accurate

DNA testing modern populations to find their ancestry is, at that, a new science.  It’s still changing and developing.  John Relethford, geneticist, said, "Although working in such a young and developing field is exciting, it is also frightening because the knowledge base changes so rapidly".11

So far, it’s impossible for a DNA test to accurately pinpoint every aspect of someone’s genetic lineage.  The procedure used now can’t track more than a small portion of someone’s ancestry, in fact.  It tests only two things—the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, the first passed on by men, the latter by women. 

Many DNA tests were performed in Iceland, and, testing so, "traced the matrilineal and patrilineal ancestry of all 131,060 Icelanders born after 1972 back to two cohorts of ancestors, one born between 1848 and 1892 and the other between 1798 and 1742." 12 The writers of the study admitted that their results were badly skewed, "with the vast majority of potential ancestors contributing one or no descendants and a minority of ancestors contributing large numbers of descendants."13

It was, therefore, impossible to accurately trace the ancestry of this Icelandic population after only 150 years.  What the scientists found did not cohere to records.  DNA testing is complex and can’t tell us everything and may even tell us the wrong thing.  That the DNA Lehi’s family introduced into the population of the Americas would be undetectable is not really surprising. 

Another geneticist explains why using mitochondrial DNA (MDNA) to identify the origins of any population has serious limitations:

• MDNA passes from mother to child. However, it won’t pass if the woman has a son—it only passes from mother to daughter.  If she has no daughters, her MDNA will not be passed on.  Her descendants will not carry her signature in their MDNA and would not, therefore, be traced to her.
• The combination of maternal and paternal DNA is “regular DNA.”  By itself, MDNA is only a small portion of a genetic signature.  It’s useful for the purposes of genetic testing because it remains constant from generation to generation.  But because it’s so small, the view it gives us of anyone’s (or any group’s) genetic make up is pretty limited. 
• When a woman marries into a new population, she introduces her MDNA into that population.  The gene structure and markers of future generations change accordingly. 

"With this in mind, let’s imagine we have ten generations of a family tree in front of us, beginning from the top down to the bottom, over the ten generations. If we are only considering MDNA, as we look at any individual in the 10th generation at the bottom of the chart (which, let’s say, represents the current generation), because of the above limitations, we, by no means, have an accurate understanding of the original genetics of this population." 14

The Book of Mormon hasn’t been disproved and won’t be by this particular criticism, but the issue of DNA and the Book of Mormon is far from closed.

(1) DNA and the Book of Mormon Los Angeles Times, 16 February 2006
(2) Roper, MatthewReview of Nephi’s Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations. Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2003. Pp. 91–128
(3) "Facts Are Stubborn Things," Times and Seasons 3 (15 September 1842): 922.
(4) B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God. 2:356-57
(5) Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 218–19.
(6) Ibid., 145.
(7) 2 Nephi 5:5–6
(8) 2 Nephi 5:9
(9) Roper, MatthewReview of Nephi’s Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations. Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2003. Pp. 91–128
(10) 2 Nephi 10:18–19
(11) Relethford, J.H. Genetics and the Search for Modern Human Origins. Wiley-Liss: New York (2001); quotation from p. 205.
(12) Butler, John. “Addressing Questions Surrounding The Book of Mormon and DNA Research”. FARMS. February 2006.
(13) Helgason, A., Hrafnkelsson, B., Gulcher, J.R., Ward, R., Stefansson, K. "A population-wide coalescent analysis of Icelandic matrilineal and patrilineal genealogies: evidence for a faster evolutionary rate of mtDNA lineages than Y chromosomes." American Journal of Human Genetics 72: 1370-1388 (2003).
(14) Johnson, Cooper. DNA and the Book of Mormon. FAIR – Defending Mormonism.