Science & Archaeology
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Are Native Americans “Lamanites”?

Didn’t the Church quietly change the introduction from ‘principal ancestors’ to ‘among the ancestors’ because DNA killed the book?

Bible

The Bible answers

Bible · Acts 17:26

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.

NRSVUE

From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth.

Our explanation

Of one blood all nations. Lehi does not have to be every ancestor to be an ancestor.

Modern Revelation

Doctrine and Covenants 3:18–20

The Book of Mormon was preserved that the Lamanites might come to the knowledge of their fathers and believe the gospel.

Faithful answers

Gospel Topics Essays

Book of Mormon and DNA Studies

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The introduction is not scripture. Scripture never said ‘100% of all Native Americans descend only from Lehi.’ A bottlenecked immigrant party leaves a faith claim and a covenant name — Lamanite — that Restoration prophets still use for remnant peoples of that record. Changing a 1981 heading is not hiding DNA. It is refusing to overclaim.

Lehi can be among the ancestors without being the only ancestor. That is population genetics 101 and also just reading Jacob 7 and Alma 22 carefully.

  • The Book of Mormon itself mentions others (Mulekites; hints of prior peoples).
  • Covenant identity is not a haplogroup.
  • The DNA essay is on the Church’s own site. ‘They hid it’ is a story from 1995.
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