The Mormon Faith & Black Folks
Question #47
Q. Is it true that The Book of Mormon teaches that God
cursed the Lamanites with a dark skin?
Yes, but to leave it at that would be to give a false
impression. The Book of Mormons does not teach that all dark-skinned
peoples are cursed. It teaches that it was a curse for Israelites to
have dark skin; because it was a sign that they had broken their
covenant with God to remain separate from all other peoples. The Lamanites in The
Book of Mormon are Israelites; the descendants of Israel through Lehi of
Manesseh.
That the ancient Israelites were white-skinned is
attested by most Bible-scholars. Evangelical scholar Arthur C. Custance
paraphrases the eminent Bible-scholar and archeologist A.H. Sayce by stating
that the native populations of the Middle East were dark-skinned--
“But the Semitic population according to A.H.Sayce
(Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, London, 1893, p.26) distinguished
themselves with racial pride from other peoples by their own light colored
skin, and claimed that Adam too was a white man. They were his racial
descendants.” (Noah’s Three Sons, p.152)
*Israelites Commanded Not To Marry Other Peoples
The ancient Israelites were a white-skinned people.
They were the pure descendants of Adam and Eve. The very name Adam means
“to blush, to turn red in the face”. The Israelites were commanded by God not
to intermarry with people of other nations or races. This command was not
because the Israelites were superior. In fact, the Israelites were less
civilized than the Egyptians or the Canaanites or the Philistines that they
lived next to. The LORD commanded that the Israelites not intermarry with other
nations for two reasons:
1. They lived next to Hamitic peoples. If they
intermarried with Hamites, they could come under the Curse of Cain; thus
disqualifying them from the Priesthood of God. But God wished to make them His
Priesthood.
2. If they intermarried with other nations, even other
white nations, they would loose their distinctiveness as a people, and
they would become amalgamated with those other pagan peoples. They would have accepted the language,
culture, and heathen religion of those foreign peoples. This would have
frustrated the Will of God because He wanted them special and set apart from
all other nations; including white Gentile nations. If the Israelites
were pure Adamites, and if Adamites had red hair and extremely light skin, then
even intermarriage with other, darker, white nations would have turned their
skin a darker hue; a sign of a intermingling.
Evangelical Bible-scholar Arthur C. Custance writes:
“Now in the famous six-sided prism of [the Assyrian
king] Sennacherib, the king refers to the conquered Canaanites as Gim-Ri
Sal-Mat Kakad-du-u (“Blackness of the Head People”). In this case it seems
that Canaan could have been a black child, the homozygous offspring of his
mulatto parents, Ham and his wife. The black people have quite a remarkable
series of high cultures to their credit, and are almost born metallurgists. So
were these ancient Canaanites.” (Noah’s Three Sons, p.152)
African-American write John L. Johnson writes:
“Canaan is the most talked-about black character in
the Bible. The Sidonians, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgasites, Hivites,
Arkites, Sinites, Arbadites, Zemarites...,were all black nations living in the
land during Israel’s invasion.” (The Black Bible Heritage, p.27)
The Prophet Moses prayed to the LORD:
“I pray thee, if I have found grace in they sight,
shew me now they way...and consider that this nation is they people....If they
presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. For where shall it be knwn here
that I and they people have found grace in thy sight? Is it now in that thou
goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the
people that are upon the face of the earth.” (Exodus 33:12,15,16)
Hundreds of years later, because the Israelites had
sinned by rejecting the true Prophets, and worshipping other gods, the LORD
allowed the Assyrians and the Babylonians to conquer the Northern and Southern
Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Northern Kingdom, the Ephraimites, were lost
among the nations of Europe and Central Asia. The Southern Kingdom, the Jews,
were captured by the Babylonians, but they returned from Babylon to the land of
Israel (Palestine). Not all Jews went to Babylon. A few stayed. Some who stayed
were Levites; the Priests of God. Because the Assyrians had removed the ten
Northern Tribes (the Ephraimites) this left a lot of land available, and this
land was settled by numerous non-Israelite peoples; Canaanites, Egyptians,
Assyrians, and others. The Bible says that the Israelites had once before
intermarried with the ‘people of the land’:
“And the children of Israel dwelt among the
Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites:
And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to
their sons, and served their gods.
Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against
Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim, king of
Mesopotamia: and the children of Israel served Chushan-rishathaim eight years.”
(Judges 3:5,6,8)
When the majority of Jews returned from the Babylonian
Captivity their leader, a Prophet named Ezra, noticed that many of the
Israelites had taken Canaanite wives. This saddened him, and he was determined
to keep Israel separated from Gentiles (non-Israelites); especially those of
Hamitic lineage. The Prophet Ezra writes:
“Now when these things were done, the princes came to
me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not
separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their
abominations, even the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites,
the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.
2 For they have taken of their daughters for
themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves
with the people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath
been chief in this trespass.
3 And when I heard this thing I rent my garment and my
mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and my beard, and sat astonished
until the evening sacrifice.
4 And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my
heaviness; and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and
spread out my hands unto the LORD my God.
5 And said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush
[show blood in the face] to lift up my face to thee, my God: For our iniquities
are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up into the heavens.”
(Ezra 9:1-6)
The Bible goes on to say that the people gathered and
cried, and confessed their sins of marrying “strange wives” (meaning
non-Israelite wives). Ezra commends them to separate (divorce) themselves from
their wives. The people do so. The Bible says:
“Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have
transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.
Now therefore make a confession unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do his pleasure:
and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange
wives. Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou
hast said, so must we do....Let now our rulers of all the congregation stand,
and let all of them that have taken strange wives in our cities come at
appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and the judges
thereof, until the fierce wrath of out God for this matter be turned from us.”
(Ezra 10:10-14)
The Israelites actually separated from their foreign
wives and children; which to us today seems a very cruel thing to do. Yet,
Israel had been commanded to remain separated from other peoples, and
the Israelites obeyed.
The Jews considered all goyim (a Hebrew word
meaning ‘foreign nations’--usually translated into English as “Gentiles”) to be
‘unclean’; because they ate things and did things which were considered to be
‘unclean’ to Jews and other Israelites. Thus, the Jews got into a habit of
referring to Gentiles as “swine” (pigs); because pigs were very unclean
animals.
*The Samaritans and Canaanites
The Canaanite and foreign wives and children of the
Israelite men who divorced them, at the command of Ezra the priest, settled in
Samaria (the land in northern Palestine which the Ephraimites had once
settled), and became known as “ Samaritans”. The Samaritans were thus partly
Jewish (of the tribe of Judah--one of the sons of Israel). They were also part
Canaanite, and probably had other lineages as well. Yet, because of their
Hamitic lineage, they were forbidden to ‘enter the Congregation of the LORD’;
meaning they were forbidden to be ‘Jews’ or ‘Israelites’. Thus, they continued
amongst themselves. They practiced the Way of the LORD (the religion of
Israel which is today referred to as Judaism). They considered
themselves the Chosen People of God; because they had Israelite lineage. But
because they also had Hamitic lineage, they had darker skins than the Jews. The
Jews referred to them as “dogs”; which means “servants”. It was Noah who pronounced
a curse upon Canaan, the son of Ham and Egyptus; that he would be a “servant of
servants” to his brethren (the children of Shem and Japheth). The Samaritans
were forbidden from worshipping in the Temple at Jerusalem. Jews were forbidden
to eat from a Samaritan table, or to associate with them in any meaningful way.
Such association might lead to marriages; which were forbidden. So, the
Samaritans built their own temple, on Mt. Gezerim, in Samaria. They established
their own priesthood, and ordained their own priests and high priests, in
imitation of the Levitical Priesthood which they--as Hamites--did not have.
Before Jesus’ death he said to His Apostles (all
Jews):
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs
neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under
their feet, and turn again and rend you.” (Matt. 7:6)
Obviously, Jesus was not speaking of literal dogs and
literal swine (pigs) or literal pearls. He was talking about Gentiles and
Canaanites and “that which is holy”. Most scholars believe He was talking about
the Gospel; that it shouldn’t be presented to Gentiles and Canaanites, but to
Israelites only. This seems to contradict other statements of Jesus, after His
death, where He specifically tells His Apostles to take the Gospel and make
disciples of “all nations”. Some believe He was not referring to the Gospel as
the “pearl”, but to the Priesthood of God.
*Lamanites and Amerinds: Three Views
The Book of Mormon is a religious history of a small colony of Jews who came to the New
World. The two main groups in this history are the Nephites and the Lamanites.
The Nephites are named after Nephi, the third son of Lehi; a Jewish prophet
contemporary with Jeremiah. The Lamanites are the descendants of Laman and
Lemuel; the first and second sons of Lehi. Laman and Lemuel rebelled against
Lehi and later Nephi, and separated themselves and their wives and children
from the Nephites once they were established in the Americas. It says that God
cursed the Lamanites with a “skin of blackness”:
“And the skins of the Lamanites were dark
according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon
them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their
brethren...and this was done that their seed night be distinguished from the
seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might perserve the
people....” (Alma 3:6,8)
The interpretations of what that means are as follows:
1. The Lamanites were changed in an instant into
Indians. In a “poof” they went from a white-skinned bearded Semitic people into
a smooth-skinned, beardless, Mongolian people known today as Amerinds, or
American Indians. This is the
Folk-Mormon view.
This view was very popular with Mormons in the 19th
and early 20th century; when most Mormons were simple farmers, and
not sophisticated thinkers. Most Mormons believed that The Book of Mormon
was the history of North and South America, and that there were no people
living in the continents when Lehi and his family landed around 600 B.C. Mormon
scholars have proved that all events recorded in The Book of Mormon happened in
an area the size of Palestine, and could not have occurred throughout North and
South America. Archaeology and genetic
studies have throughly refuted the Folk-Mormon view that Amerinds are the pure
descendants of Lehi. Scientific studies have proven that Amerinds are the descendants of the Tuvan
people of Siberia; although Amerinds probably have a little Caucasian in them
as well. Amerinds have been in the
Americas for at least 12,000 years, and probably a lot longer than that.
2. The Lamanites went around without clothing, but
only wearing a loin-cloth. Their white skin became blackened by the sun. They
were tanned. This is the Sunstone-Mormon view. Why the LORD would call a
good tan a “curse” is beyond us.
3. The Lamanites intermarried with the native peoples
of the Americas at that time, and thus became a colored (dark-skinned compared
with the Nephites) people. This is the Mormon-scholar
view. This occurred when the sons of Mormon farmers began going to universities
in the early 20th century. Many came back and looked at The Book of
Mormon in a new way; relying not on the traditions of their fathers,
but rather looking deeply at what the text actually says and what it
does not say.
A dark-skin was a curse to an Israelite not
because dark skin is bad in itself (it is actually a protection from the
ultraviolet rays of the Sun), but because it was a sign that the
Israelites had abandoned their covenant with the LORD, and intermingled with a
non-Israelite people. And the LORD told them that if they intermarried with
Gentiles, He would curse them; not the Gentile peoples, but the
Israelites who had disobeyed Him. An Israelite with a dark skin is a
descendant of an Israelite who disobeyed the LORD by intermarrying with a
“strange wife”.
It says in The Book of Mormon that a “skin of
blackness” came upon the Lamanites so that “they might no be enticing unto my
people.” (2 Nephi 5:21)
To Semitic peoples as dark skin is not ‘enticing’;
unlike Europeans who often try to ‘tan’ their skin to make themselves ‘more
enticing’ to members of the opposite sex. To Semites a white skin is enticing.
Still today among Arabs a white skin among females is highly prized, but a dark
skin is considered unattractive. Whether or not we agree with this, these are
the facts of the Semitic mentality.
*The Canaanites: General Term for Various Peoples in
the Land of Canaan
Some Mormons reject the Mormon-scholar view because
they read The Book of Mormon and they can’t find any mention of native
peoples other than the Nephites and the Lamanites. Mormon-scholars point out to
these doubters that the term “Canaanite” meant people living in Canaan who were
not Israelite.
In Canaan, at
the time of Abraham and afterwards, there lived Hamitic, Semitic, and
Indo-European peoples. They were collectively
called “Canaanites”. Not all the
Canaanites were descendants of Canaan; although through intermarriage with real
Canaanites they probably all became so. The Israelites were commanded not to
intermarry with people of other nations; so they alone were not “Canaanites”.
Everyone in Canaan who was not an Israelite was a Canaanite. In the same way, the Lamanites were
everyone in The Book of Mormon who was not a Nephite (an
Israelite who was a descendant of Nephi and who did not intermarry with
Gentiles).
The Bible does not mention any children of Adam and
Eve besides Cain, Abel, and Seth. Yet Mormons who believe in the First
Humans Theory and the Folk-Mormon View of The Book of
Mormon (they often go hand-in-hand) accept that notion that they existed;
even though the Bible doesn’t mention them. Yet they believe that native
peoples before Lehi and his family did not exist in the Americas; because The
Book of Mormon doesn’t mention them (except for the Jaredites, who were
utterly destroyed long before the
Nephites arrived). This of course is a contradiction.
When Laman and Lemuel rebelled against Nephi and
separated from the Nephites, their descendants eventually discovered and
intermarried with Amerinds; thus breaking the covenant with the LORD and
falling under a divine curse. The
Jewish Lamanites fell under a curse; not the Amerinds themselves. The
white skins, beards, and other Semitic features of the original Lamanites would
have been lost over time; when the Mestizo (half white and half Amerind)
descendants of would have intermingled with more and larger Amerind genetic stocks. The 10 to 20
original Israelites which included Laman, Lemuel, and their wives and children,
would have been completely absorbed, in only 6 or 7 generations, by the
Amerinds. By the 10th generation, all the remnants of Caucasian blood
(genes) would have been gone; washed
out.
*Lamanites NOT Inferior to Nephites
But The Book of Mormon in no way presents the
Lamanites as inferior or less righteous than the Nephites. In fact, the
Lamanites are usually, but not always, presented as more righteous. The
white-skinned Nephites, because they had not intermingled with other nations,
had become prideful because of their white-skins. The Nephite prophet Jacob
warned the Nephites (around 450 B.C.):
“BUT behold, I, Jacob, would speak unto you that are
pure in heart. Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with
exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions, and he will plead
your cause, and send down justice upon those who seek your destruction.
2 O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads
and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if
your minds are firm, forever.
3 But, wo, wo, unto you that are not pure in heart,
that are filthy this day before God; for except ye repent that land is cursed
for your sakes; and the Lamanites, which are not filthy like unto you,
nevertheless, they are cursed with a sore cursing, shall scourge you even
unto destruction.
4 And the time speedily cometh, that except ye repent
they shall possess the land of your inheritance, and I will gather the
righteous out from among you.
5 Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate
because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins, are
more righteous than you;....
8 O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of
your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be
brought with them before the throne of God.” (Jacob 3:1-5,8)
Mormons today call Amerinds “Lamanites”. Over
thousands of years it is probably true that most Amerinds have Lehi and Laman
as ancestors; just like if a Chinese family went to Africa in 600 B.C. and
intermingled with black Africans, within only 6 or 7 generations their
descendants would not appear in any way Chinese. Over thousands of years
their descendants would intermarry with other black Africans, and there would
be millions of black Africans who would be the descendants of that Chinese
family; even though they would have no Chinese features whatsoever, and would
have no “Chinese blood” (genes) in them; it having been completely washed out by the 10th
generation.
*Evidence of Semites in Ancient America
When the Spaniards first went to South America,
specifically the Andes Mountains, they found the Incas. The Incas were the
noble or ruling class. They were
lighter skinned and taller than the peoples they ruled, and they had slight beards.
All of the other Amerinds are completely beardless; like the Tuvans of
Siberia. This may show that the Incas,
who ruled over many native Amerinds, were a remnant of Lamanites who had kept
to themselves over thousands of years. The Incas were Amerinds who probably had
a Lamanite bloodline, and they had lighter skin and slight beards because they
still had some Semitic Caucasian blood
in them.
There are sculptures and pottery in Central and South
America that show men with beards and Semitic features. These sculptures are
very old; some dating back to 600 B.C.; around the time that Lehi and his
family came to the New World.
*Nephites destroyed because of white-racial-pride
Now, because the Nephites had not intermarried with
the Gentile nations of the Americas (the Amerinds), they remained
white-skinned. This created a feeling of pride and superiority in the Nephites.
They began to look down upon the Lamanites; like the Jews looked down upon the
Samaritans. Various Nephite prophets came and warned them not to be prideful
because of their white skins. The Nephites sometimes listened, but other times
they did not:
“AND now it came to pass in the eighty and sixth year,
the Nephites did still remain in wickedness, yea, in great wickedness, while
the Lamanites did observe stictly to keep the commandments of God, according to
the Law of Moses.”(Helaman 13:1)
When people rely upon their egos and not God they
become prideful, and when they become prideful they harden their hearts;
meaning they loose feeling for spiritual things. This is what Pharaoh did, and
why the LORD sent horrible plagues upon the Egyptians; because his pride
hardened his heart.
In The Book of Mormon we read how the LORD sent a
Lamanite prophet to warn the Nephites to repent or God would destroy them. His
name was Samuel the Lamanite, who declared to the Nephites:
“Therefore, thus saith the Lord, Because of the hardness
of the hearts of the people of the Nephites, except they repent I will
take away my word from them, and I will withdraw my spirit from them, and I
will suffer [put up with] them no longer, and I will turn the hearts of their
brethren [the Lamanites] against them.
9 And four hundred years shall not pass away before I
will cause that they shall be smitten; yea, I will visit them with sword and
with famine and with pestilence.
10 Yea, I will visit them in my fierce anger, and
there shall be those of the fourth generation who shall live, of your enemies,
to behold your utter destruction; and this shall surely come except ye
repent, saith the Lord; and those of the fourth generation shall visit your
destruction.” (Helaman 13:8-10)
This white racial pride of the Nephites
continued to grow over the centuries; notwithstanding the warnings from their
prophets. They continued to be prideful and to harden their hearts
against the LORD, His Prophets, and His Laws. Eventually, this
white-supremacist pride caused the LORD to decided to destroy the Nephites utterly,
and use the dark-skinned Lamanites to do it. The Prophet Mormon wrote to his
son Moroni shortly before this destruction, and said:
“Behold, my son, I will write unto you again if I go
not out soon against the Lamanites. Behold, the pride of this nation, or
the people of the Nephites, hath proven their destruction except they
repent.” (Moroni 8:27)
The Nephites did not repent. Their own white racial
pride caused their utter destruction. The prophet Moroni wrote:
“BEHOLD I, Moroni, do finish the record of my father,
Mormon. Behold, I have but few things to write, which things I have been
commanded by my father.
2 And now it came to pass that after the great and
tremendous battle at Cumorah, behold, the Nephites who had escaped into the
country southward were hunted by the Lamanites, until they were all
destroyed.” (Mormon 8:1-2)
The Nephites and Lamanites had one last great battle,
and the Lamanites utterly destroyed the Nephites; only leaving Moroni
and a few others alive. Those Nephites that went south were utterly destroyed.
Moroni then took the sacred records of the Nephites, and the few Nephites who
were left traveled north, and over the
course of many years, they traveled
hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles in order to escape the Lamanites;
who were bent on completely exterminating the Nephites. Before his death (about
421 A.D.) Moroni took the sacred records, on plates of gold, and deposited them
in a hill near what is now the village of Palmyra, in what is now the Iroquois
area of northwestern New York State.
Fourteen hundred years later this same Moroni, as an angel, appeared to Joseph
Smith and instructed him to retrieve the record. It became known as The Book
of Mormon.
The Book of Mormon speaks thus about pride:
“For behold, saith the prophet, the time cometh
speedily that Satan shall have no more power over the hearts of the children of
men; for the day soon cometh that all the proud and they who do wickedly
shall be as stubble; and the day cometh that they must be burned.” (1 Nephi
22:15)
“For the day of the Lord of Hosts soon cometh upon all
nations, yea, upon the proud and lofty, and upon every one who is lifted
up, and he shall be brought low.” (2 Nephi 12:12)
“O the wise, and the learned, and the rich, that are
puffed up in the pride of their hearts, and all those who preach false
doctrines, and all those who commit whoredoms, and pervert the right way of the
Lord, wo, wo be unto them, saith the Lord God Almighty, for they shall be
thrust down to hell!” (2 Nephi 28:15)
“And it also came to pass that whosoever did belong to
the church that did not repent of their wickedness and humble themselves before
God-I mean those who were lifted up in the pride of their hearts-the
same were rejected, and their names were blotted out, that their names were not
numbered among those of the righteous.” (Alma 6:3)
So, in conclusion, the Lamanites are presented as
cursed in their skins; because they, as Israelites, disobeyed the LORD
and intermingled with other peoples.
But The Book of Mormon presents them usually as a
righteous people; more righteous than the white-skinned Nephites. And The Book of Mormon is
primarily a Nephite record. The
Book of Mormon is a history about a white-skinned people (the Nephites )
whom the LORD utterly destroyed because of their white racial
pride.
The Book of Mormon contains condemnations of both the
Nephites and the Lamanites. It contains hard truths about both peoples. The
Nephites no longer exist, but the Lamanites do. Those who are too prideful to
accept what The Book of Mormon says about their ancestors, both good and
bad, are not the Elect of God.
The Nephites thought they were favored of God because
of the whiteness of their skins; proof that they were not ‘cursed’ like the
Lamanites. But The Book of Mormon declares:
“Behold, the Lord esteemeth all flesh as one; he that
is righteous is favored of God.” (1 Nephi 17:35)
Brigham Young
declared:
“The Lamanites, or Indians, are just as much the
children of God as we are. So also are the Africans.” (Journal of Discourses
11:272)
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