My Working Hypothesis on Race in the Book of Mormon
Mormon adds a note in 3rd Nephi 5:20
I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi.
He says ‘Lehi,’ not ‘Nephi.’ Mormon was aware that a lot of crossbreeding had happened with the Zoramites, the Mulekites, and with the surrounding peoples who were not descendants of Lehi. Though Mormon here seems to be acknowledging some Lehite Lamanite ancestry for himself. It may be Mormon’s Lamanite ancestry that makes him fair to the Lamanites from time to time despite being of the sole survivors of a genocide himself.
The second notable thing here is that lineage was very important for the Book of Mormon peoples, especially for elites.
Which leads me to my extremely tentative working hypothesis about race in the Book of Mormon.
The middle east of the time could have been pretty racially homogenous (the African mixture now present seems to have been a product of the Islamic Middle Ages). When they arrived in the New World, the racial differences were a shock to them. The Lamanite party intermingled with the outside local people whereas the Nephite party didn’t, which is why the Nephite writers noted that the Lamanites were racially different (because they were largely or at least partly Amerindian) and which is why the Nephites started categorizing all outsiders essentially as Lamanites even though I believe most ‘Lamanites’ had zero connection to Laman and Lemuel.
over time the racial differences would have narrowed and in any case these differences were never 100% genetic the way we think of it, which is why you get stuff about people ‘changing’ race when they switch sides.
Eventually during the Nephite Modernity where the Nephites culturally conquer the surrounding ‘Lamanites’ the two groups get more and more intermixed. There may still be physical racial or ethnic differences but they are likely quite small and perhaps nearly imperceptible to an outsider. But at some point these categories reassert themselves, based either on a lineage-clan based system or else on small perceived racial differences or both, forming two new groups which then form separate mating pools which leads to the resurgence of apparent ethnic differences which to the extent they are physical could have some small genetic component but could also be because of different lifestyles and diets, etc.
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Jacob G.
September 26, 2024
Why does their have to be ‘surrounding peoples’? Is the main driver of this a need to fit Book of Mormon people into Native American history, with the problem that native languages are not at all semitic?
Within the text itself is there a requirement that there are others in the land? I know of two, both less convincing than when I first encountered them:
1. The Mulekite language was different enough from the Nephites as to be mutually unintelligible. Given they had only been apart a few hundred years, there must have been admixture with native languages to cause them to diverge to this degree. An alternate explanation from The stick of Joseph in the Hands of Ephraim: The Mulekites were a high court bunch and spoke the high class lingua franca of 600 BC: Aramaic – they argue that Aramaic names after the union prove this, such as the Aramaic ‘Alma’ instead of the Hebraic version of that name, which is ‘Elam’. In any case we don’t know the history of the Mulekite party. Nibley thought there was evidence that they had Egyptian, Greek, and Phoenician speakers among them.
2. Jacob and Shechem did not know each other, which is unlikely unless the population is much larger than can be accounted for by natural Nephite increase.
The assumption here is that Jacob was 75-80 at the time of their encounter. As you have noted in some of your recent posts on this subject, the timeline is a little odd, with the time between Jacob and successor being a lot longer than would be expected. You posit that ‘Jacob’ is used symbolically and should not always be read as the actual brother of the original Nephi. Perhaps they called their chief priests ‘Jacob’ the way they called their kings ‘Nephi’. Jacob had a very distinct voice, unlike anything else in the Book of Mormon, so if so, some further explanation is required IMO.
Or perhaps the early Nephites lived longer than the alloted three score and ten. The Jaredites who were still two hundred years or so from their demise in the land northward appear to have normally lived to 120 or so.
But there are good reasons to doubt the assumption that the Jacob and Shechem debate had to have occured within 65 years of the landing.
Zen
September 26, 2024
There are other little odd indicators, even among the Jaredites, that they were not alone.
I rather imagine it like how the US was a British colony and our country has that as its founding myth, yet any given citizen could be from all over the world.
G
September 26, 2024
The Americas appear to have been inhabited for a long time.
Surrounding people’s provides a parsimonious explanation for a number of things including the ones you’ve already mentioned, the fact that the early nephites were able to build a temple, the fact that the early lamanites so quickly had such a different culture and different material economy, and how quickly the Nephite-Lamanite split got parsed as a racial split. For me, it also helps make sense of the Nephites having concubines instead of just multiple wives.
Obviously people are free to believe otherwise and that doesn’t make them either unfaithful or ignorant.
I don’t recall ever having argued that ‘Jacob’ might have been a prophet title though its a really cool argument. I have recognized that the timeline in Omni doesn’t work unlss you assume ‘son’ means ‘descended from’ and ‘brother’ means ‘collaterally related’