Religion in the News
By JENNIFER DOBNER
The Associated Press
January 11, 2008

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The introduction to the 2006 edition of the Book
of Mormon has a new word: among.

It sounds trivial, but to some it represents a huge change to
teachings that have been passed on for generations within The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The new wording comes in a passage about American Indians, who have
long been presented by Mormon leaders as direct ancestors of a lost
tribe of Israel known as the Lamanites.

"After thousands of years all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and
they are among the ancestors of the American Indians," the new
introduction reads.

In previous editions, the phrase was "are the ancestors."

What's the big deal? Church defenders say there is nothing important
in the change.

But skeptics view it differently. The issue is that church
missionaries have long portrayed Book of Mormon stories as fact. To
them, it looks like the new wording is a quiet concession that DNA
research accurately contradicts the scriptural claim.

"Now they're going to say, 'We got that wrong?'" said Edmonds
Community College professor of anthropology Thomas Murphy in Lynnwood,
Wash.

A Mormon, Murphy said he predicted the church would ultimately concede
the Lamanite story was folklore and not science in a 2002 essay that
appeared in "American Apocrypha," a collection of writings about the
Book of Mormon.

Murphy said the use of "among" makes a somewhat deceptive change. It
gives the appearance that the institutional church is moving to a
position more consistent with science.

"In a way, this is a mask for a more serious problem," said Murphy,
who was also threatened with excommunication in 2002. "The Book of
Mormon is entirely inconsistent with the archaeology, the DNA,
actually with all the evidence we have from the ancient Americas."

Mormons believe the Book of Mormon was translated with a seer stone by
founder Joseph Smith from a set of gold plates buried in upstate New
York. The faithful consider it the word of God and a valid testimony
of Jesus Christ's work in the ancient Americas. First published in
1830, it has been translated into 105 languages.

The introduction — where the change has been made — was added in 1981
and thought to be drafted by the late Bruce R. McConkie, a member of
the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-most powerful church
governing body.

John L. Sorenson, professor emeritus of anthropology at the church-
owned Brigham Young University, said that altering what's understood
to be an opinion doesn't change the church or the text of the book
itself.

"Some people may want to twist this matter of a slight word change
into something that they themselves want to communicate," said
Sorenson. "An editorial commentary is all that has been changed. ...
They might have decided to put more commas in."

Sorenson's own scholarship preaches a "limited geography" theory of
Book of Mormon stories. Its premise is that the book chronicles the
lives of people who lived in a small region of Central America. Mormon
scholars moved away from any absolute beliefs about the ancestral
lines of Indians, said Sorenson, who called the change a "backhanded"
acknowledgment from church leaders of the scholarly drift.

"It's impossible for me to see what all the fuss is about," he said.

Bob Rees, a retired UCLA literature professor and a former editor of
the Mormon Dialogue quarterly, is also puzzled. A central tenet of
Latter-day Saint beliefs includes the principle of continuing
revelation and an open religious canon, so change should be expected,
Rees said.

"God speaks of the (Mormon) church as being a living church and if it
is, that means it's not static, there's an opportunity for change," he
said. "The history of science is the history of revising axioms. The
things that we know and were certain of 100 years ago, 50 years ago,
even 10 years ago, we now have to say, 'Wow, we didn't know.'"

As a believing member, however, Rees said he would have liked church
leaders to explain the decision and eliminate the "great opportunity
for rumor and innuendo."

Church officials have offered only a limited explanation.

"That change takes into account details of the Book of Mormon
demography which are not known," church spokeswoman Kim Farah said,
adding that the change will also appear in future editions of the
book.

A church Web site also addresses the issue. "The scientific issues
relating to DNA," it says, "are numerous and complex."

http://www.truthandgrace.com/mormonhistory.htm

http://www.truthandgrace.com/rigdon1.htm