Racial Language Misunderstood
The book of Mormon claims for itself to contain human errors, repeatedly. When a human takes dictation, they hear things wrong occasionally, or remember them incorrectly. When a person hears, sees or receives knowledge or information by the Spirit and then must translate that into human language, errors also occur. We should not suppose that the work of God absolves us from the conditions of mortality, or that people such as Moses had an easier time receiving revelation or were not required to have as much faith as us. Rather, they show us what is possible for ourselves and revelation comes to them the same way it comes to us.
The Divine intention with written records is not to produce perfection because literalism or fundamentalism is divisive, whereas vagueness allows flexibility of interpretation. If the text is perfect, then individuals will assume the role of authorities on the basis of having had more time with the text. Other individuals will begin to defer to their knowledge and not take the time to seek for themselves. With ambiguity of interpretation, individuals may grow in knowledge and evolve in understanding with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is the ultimate goal of scripture - spiritual development, rather than blind obedience. In addition,
God may be limited to interacting with the world through human beings that have the gift of perception, and must work with what he/she/it has to work with. This may not be based on a prophet’s personal righteousness as it is often assumed, as God chooses vessels from various backgrounds, in all their human frailties. The qualifications are submission to learning and growing and allowing transformation. Think of there being rules for interfering similar to ghosts having to talk through psychic mediums. God interferes in the world through the medium of the prophet because of his or her ability to hear and willingness to participate. This idea poses an answer to the problem of Theodicy, which asks why an all powerful God allows suffering. Humanity becomes ultimately responsible for alleviating its own suffering by submitting to the promptings of God.
In areas of translation where Joseph Smith is translating a sentence that sounds similar to what he knows is contained in the King James Version, we should expect a higher probability that he will make assumptions and record the sentence exactly as he remembers it in King James. This is human nature, as when hearing things, we naturally perceive what we expect or are familiar with, even when it is often not the case. We frequently assume what a person means before they finish speaking. Critical arguments against the Book of Mormon assume first that for Joseph to have been a prophet and provided a divine translation, it must be absolutely free of error, a requirement not present in any other human discipline. It also defies logic, because if God wished to prove anything without requiring human beings to tap into the Source of truth, the Holy Spirit, he could write it in the sky with his finger for all to read.
We have instances in the record where mistakes occurred and the scribe struck through the text and made a correction as if quickly while receiving dictation. The accounts record that Joseph would pause if he felt that he was not understood and repeat the word or line. We can expect that he would have to be listening for such a spiritual prompt. If there were times that he caught such mistakes, we can assume that because he is human, that there were times when he failed to listen for such promptings, as episodes in his life and later revelations demonstrate. Additional explanations for the corrections would involve Joseph gaining a better picture of what he was translating as he continued reading and obtained the context. Such context would change the interpretation of a word, as often the same root word can be translated several ways depending on the usage in context.
Are there any reasons to doubt the translation in 2 Nephi 5? Yes. 2 Nephi 5:21 reads, “And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.”
The people that Nephi is referring to are descendants of Israelites, who are not white, and are considered to be not Native Americans, but “among the ancestors of the Native Americans,” who are not black. Immediately, we should note that we are not talking about Europeans and Africans. No one looked at Native Americans and thought they were black. Joseph Smith was acquainted with African slaves, who were black, and he knew the difference.
A flint stone is not black. It is a form of quartz that can range from a dark grey to white. Therefore the properties that we are looking for to compare to a flintstone is something other than its color. A flint is used to make tools because it splits apart in layers or flakes. The Lamanites split off from the other group like flint. Secondly, the sin this verse is referring to is “iniquity,” which word is also rendered “inequity,” or “inequality,” which is condemned throughout the Book of Mormon because it striates society, causing class division, like a Flint. Flint is also used as a striking or cutting tool. The Lamanites are repeatedly referred to throughout the book as a tool of providence to scourge and chasten the Nephites. Scriptural language is euphemistic and symbolic rather than literal.
As the Book of Mormon is a translation, one root word will have several derivatives. The same Nephite root can be rendered as skin, covering or garment. Consider that you have skin, and you also take the skin of animals to use as blankets or to wear as clothing. Therefore you are said to “wear skins.” Later when you make garments out of wool or other material, you are already accustomed to saying the word “skin,” which is also a general word for covering for the person’s own bare skin. We have many examples of this in the English language. In Alma 49:6 (Alma 21:155 RLDS), it uses all three forms of the root in a poetic word-form that we 21st Century Americans call a “play on words.”
“Yea, and they had also prepared themselves with shields and with breastplates, and they had also prepared themselves with garments of skins, yeah, very thick garments to cover their nakedness,” with nakedness rendered by an inversion of “to cover.” This would be similar to writing, “With a bow in my hair, I drew an arrow and shot my bow from the bow of the ship and took a bow.”
In alliteration, we use separate words in close proximity that all start with the same letter. In the example in the text, Alma uses the same exact word in close proximity in three different contexts, giving the words different meanings. Plays on words and other poetic forms are common throughout ancient semitic writings. A Nephite reader of the original would have picked up cues on how the word was to be interpreted for that usage. Remember that Alma wrote in Nephite, not English, and wrote for a Nephite audience, and even though he may have known by revelation that one day a people in the far distant future would read it, he cannot be assumed to know much about their language and customs, so he wrote in the manner of his own people just as prophets we familiar with in the bible did. This poetry would be appreciated by Nephites or ancient Jews, but naturally causes confusion to someone like Joseph Smith, who doesn’t know what to look for when translating it.
Many would, and indeed do, object to the idea of errors in translation on the grounds that David Whitmer described the process of Joseph seeing one word at a time on the stone, which would not go away until he had it recorded correctly, but this is not Joseph’s account, but the account of someone who was anxious to assert the perfection of the record, and though it may bear resemblance to the actual translation process, we have no way to know to to what degree. What we do know is that the book emphatically claims human error and that Joseph did change some words in the second edition, reflecting errors in translation.
For his 1840 reprint of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith changed several instances of the word “white” to the word “pure,” suggesting that perhaps all of them should have been rendered this way. In 2 Ne 30:6 (RLDS 12:84), the word “skin” was changed to “garment.” While the the words bear relation to each other and the less appropriate used by accident in a translating and rushed book publication setting, the indicated more correct words lose all racial connotation often implied by the former. After his death, the Utah church changed them back to match the original edition and their understanding of the passages. Some opponents of Joseph Smith and the Restoration like to give the Utah LDS church the final word on the interpretation, but this would lead to false conclusions.
The Utah LDS Church is a contested authority for many reasons, and I give a few for those who need them in order to break the connection to embarrassing and incorrect traditional interpretations. It is only one of several splinter groups of Joseph Smith’s church, and was officially ruled in US court during the Temple Lot Case to not be the legal continuation of the original church, a matter that was heard again by Congress during the Reed Smoot case with a similar conclusion. It can be argued that such was all but admitted by Brigham Young during the Kirtland Temple Suit when he withdrew his case against James J. Strang after reading his Answer and realizing the hopelessness of trying to prove himself the true successor and seeing no profit in being bested by Strang in what would essentially become a debate on public record. Handing over the valuable property to his main rival Strang is nothing short of an admission and a loss.
From the point of view of those who remained members of the original church under James Strang’s presidency, Young and the 9 other apostles who went with him were all legally excommunicated for insurrection and usurping God’s authority. They were determined in US Court to have drastically altered the doctrines of the church, and they did not have a copyright to the Book of Mormon allowing them to print it, and cannot therefore be viewed as authoritative on the interpretation of the text. Nor should their authority be assumed in any other matter taken to affect the entire movement merely because in the twentieth and early part of the twenty-first centuries, their church would become the largest. They did not always comprise the largest group of Mormons, and likely will not always, as projections do not bear this out. The fact that the translator made this correction in a subsequent edition, demonstrates it as the preferred and most authentic word choice, and should alone settle the skin-garment-covering translation issue.
Throughout the book, a running metaphor made by the prophets is “I must rid my garments of the stain of your blood” or “stand with pure garments at the last day.” Examples can be found in: Alma 33:2, Alma 34:36, Alma 13:11, 1 Ne 12:10, Alma 5, 21, Alma 5:27 (see below for full texts). This hails back to a verse in Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
The divinity of the Book of Mormon does not rest on whether God punishes people by making them dark complected, even though that idea, offensive as it may be, may be drawn from an absurdly literal reading of the text. Many things in scripture are written in code so that they give one impression to the general public and another altogether to the spiritually enlightened. Dark complexion does not appear as a punishment, as apart from its utility in certain climates or the entirely arbitrary conditions imposed by selfish people, there is no objective benefit of one skin color over another, thus such a literal change cannot be viewed as a blessing or a curse. But ancient writers could plausibly hold any number of irrational opinions on whatever pretense. Such intertribal polemics and negative associations pervade history, especially when that group broke off and went against their cultural norms or because of conflict and resentments over loss of life might be at the receiving end of biased language, even from an otherwise righteous people. That alone might make any group appear loathsome and undesirable to mix with to another, without an inference that God himself is racist. People’s attitudes do not depend, and frequently are entirely without any objective basis in reality.
2 Nephi 26:33 states that God denies none, black and white, bond and free, male and female, etc., but all are invited to partake of his goodness. So if there are ambiguities leading some to justify interpretations of racial division in the above verses, this verse positively asserts equality in God’s view and practice in much more powerful terms than the bible’s assurance that God is no respecter of persons, which contains the same sentiment. And if the God who inspired the Book of Mormon stands firm for equality, Joseph Smith did not fail to uphold His values as leading an early movement with not only fully integrated congregations, but with ordained black ministers, even former slaves, in authority over them. While this progressive inclusivity was not unique in the American religious scene, it was still a noble example of wisdom, equity and bravery, and combined with Smith’s presidential campaign platform on which he proposed to redeem the slaves from bondage two decades prior to Lincoln likely contributed to Smith’s assassination. As Joseph ordained black saints to the priesthood in his congregations, His true successor James Strang did so also, never for a moment considering the existence of any obstacle on the basis of race.
Without any legal claim to the First Presidency, Brigham Young led a splinter group to Utah, re-baptizing them along the way, reversed Joseph’s ordinations of black men, stripping them of honors bestowed by their prophet in the church they believed in and instituted the policy of discrimination that Mormonism has since been known for and the doctrines offered to justify it. He also is responsible for reversing Joseph's second edition word changes that clarified that the controversial verses were speaking idiomatically of garments rather than literal flesh in order to preserve their doctrines of exclusion. Such misguided interpretations and theological justifications, though abhorrent, may by discernment be appropriately taken as signifying their adherents’ level of spiritual attunement or unity with God and a sign of where the valid authority lies, so as not to waste the silver lining in a sky of gloom. I do not wish to make more of it than this, that the controversy of racial discrimination and the priesthood belongs to the branches descending from Young and not Joseph, and are not anyone else’s burden to bear, and the absolute belief in the supremacy of that institution and all of its traditions to the exclusion of all other sources of light, knowledge and welcome correction is not derived from anything taught by Joseph Smith.
In Jacob Chapter 3 we have an instance in verses 5 and 8 where skins should be replaced with garments. “O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their garments will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God.” In verse 9, the same root word appears to be used to refer to actual skin in a rebuke against racism among the Nephites who are falling into corruption and inequality, when he says, “Revile no more against them because of the darkness of their skins/garments, neither revile against them because of their filthiness, but ye shall remember your own filthiness, how theirs came because of their fathers,” but this instance likewise works with either understanding.
For one thing, the speaker uses the same word filthiness to refer to both the Nephites and the Lamanites, making it difficult to infer the intention of a racial slur by this word in the Nephite language without even a comparable synonym in our own. Are they unclean in their metaphorical garments because of sin and the failure to wash them in Christ’s blood because their fathers led them astray and did not teach them, or does this reference refer to the melanin in their skin or the literally unwashed animal skins they wear. Nephites discriminating against Lamanites for being mixed blood and having darker skin and features should not be wholly surprising if that is what one interprets here, but it should regardless not be taken as a fore drawn conclusion, nor a view God shares if they did, as scripture teaches us as much from the mistakes of God’s people as from their righteous acts. It should be noted that the book does not specifically mention other natives in the land, but their presence may be inferred due to the sudden and inexplicable increase in the Lamanite population, that they intermarried with natives where Nephites maintained what they considered ethnic purity. Jacob in this chapter berates the Nephites for their pride in materiality, in building a high society marked by fine clothing and inequality of the rich and poor, and looking down on Lamanites because they did not bathe as frequently and wore simple loincloths. Jacob assures them that this has no bearing on their worthiness. Even though the Lamanites had left the true faith they had brought over from Israel, they were in better shape at this time than the Nephites who were not living by theirs, notwithstanding their pretentious observances.
Further Examples of Idiom in the Book of Mormon to refer to one’s standing before God:
ULDS Alma 24:12-15 (RLDS Alma 14:34-40) 12 Now, my best beloved brethren, since God hath taken away our stains, and our swords have become bright, then let us stain our swords no more with the blood of our brethren. 13 Behold, I say unto you, Nay, let us retain our swords that they be not stained with the blood of our brethren; for perhaps, if we should stain our swords again they can no more be washed bright through the blood of the Son of our great God, which shall be shed for the atonement of our sins. 15 Oh, how merciful is our God! And now behold, since it has been as much as we could do to get our stains taken away from us, and our swords are made bright, let us hide them away that they may be kept bright, as a testimony to our God at the last day, or at the day that we shall be brought to stand before him to be judged, that we have not stained our swords in the blood of our brethren since he imparted his word unto us and has made us clean thereby.
In Alma, 24, though he refers to getting their physical swords of battle stained in the blood of their foes, the author switches back and forth to using the sword as a metaphor for their souls, providing the “swords” spotless at the last day. “Brightness” means clean, pure and holy.
1 Nephi 12:10 And these twelve ministers whom thou beholdest shall judge thy seed. And, behold, they are righteous forever; for because of their faith in the Lamb of God their garments are made white in his blood.
Alma 5:21 I say unto you, ye will know at that day that ye cannot be saved; for there can no man be saved except his garments are washed white; yea, his garments must be purified until they are cleansed from all stain, through the blood of him of whom it has been spoken by our fathers, who should come to redeem his people from their sins. 22 And now I ask of you, my brethren, how will any of you feel, if ye shall stand before the bar of God, having your garments stained with blood and all manner of filthiness? Behold, what will these things testify against you? 23 Behold will they not testify that ye are murderers, yea, and also that ye are guilty of all manner of wickedness? 24 Behold, my brethren, do ye suppose that such an one can have a place to sit down in the kingdom of God, with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and also all the holy prophets, whose garments are cleansed and are spotless, pure and white? 27 Have ye walked, keeping yourselves blameless before God? Could ye say, if ye were called to die at this time, within yourselves, that ye have been sufficiently humble? That your garments have been cleansed and made white through the blood of Christ, who will come to redeem his people from their sins?
As can be seen the culture and religious context of the Book of Mormon writers use the covering of skins or garments as symbolic of their worthiness, or the soul, and from extended literary sources, their priesthood, which was also an inherent and essential component of their covenant as God’s people and indicative of their standing in the next life’s Kingdom of God, and they held a preoccupation with concepts of staining and cleansing, from which their concept of the atonement of Christ derived. From either the writer or the translator, the word “skin” could as easily have appeared in the text in place of “garment,” referring to the skins that clothes are made of, and would have meant the same to a reader familiar with their ancient cultural context. “That your skins have been cleansed and made white through the blood of Christ.” Blood does not in reality make anything white, not garments, not swords, and not human skin, so why the literalist reading that assumes we are speaking of ethnicity in any of these passages? Upon a more thorough examination it is not mandated from the text itself, but from the preoccupation of modern society in the aftermath of some of the most barbaric and cruel practices being implemented in full scale, and with some of the most vicious of justifications meant to indoctrinate minds into denying basic humanity. You may rightly wonder, as I have, why the Lord’s inspired writers were not given the foresight to anticipate modern evils and choose a metaphor that could not be so hurtfully misconstrued. While I can’t answer absolutely, other than pointing out the assumptions the question makes about what is and is not subject to prophetic foreknowledge, I was led to admit the reality that all metaphors are subject to being misconstrued, and the history of Bible interpretation and resulting conflict proves that all scriptures can be misconstrued as well, and if there is a God, the ambiguity must be part of His plan, possibly to create room for personal growth through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Considering the prevalence of horrendous crime and suffering prevalent in our world, such as should make us ever the more eternally compassionate for all our fellow beings, the possibility that this ambiguity was allowed as a snare for the wicked to humble them before the judgment bar having revealed the corruption in their hearts is not without plausibility.
While we cannot infer that authors over 2000 years ago should be aware of what will be sensitive topics in our age. The lack of such sensitivity is evidence of its ancient date as even throughout the world today there are myriad interactions between people of all nations, kindreds, tongues and people who speak to and about each other in the context of racial differences, neither intending nor taking offense by it common here, for few of which have the sensitivity and the rawness that lingers here in the united states; and well we should, for European settlers had one of the largest and most pervasive and harsh systems of slavery, the longest running and the most cruelly supported with rhetoric, requiring an awful bloody war of rebellion to pry from its grasp of control. It was replaced with a century of segregation accompanied by an illegal and unchecked reign of terror against a people seeking the basic necessities and dignities of life, and after the presumed equality is belatedly enforced, the ways of oppression and systemic violence are perpetuated openly, yet denied by their fellow citizens. It is entirely fitting that our preoccupation with these issues, as a consequence of unparalleled societal evil, is unmatched in all history and in all the world. Thus while we cannot celebrate outdated metaphors as impossible to our minds to overlook as foreign words that resemble profanities, we can look on them with academic maturity without giving in to projecting upon ancient people of another time, culture, language and human experience the consequences of our own works of evil, while simultaneously supporting in Christian love those among us whose traumas are triggered by negative associations, seeing emotions as valid and genuine.
Alma 13:11 Therefore they were called after this holy order, and were sanctified, and their garments were washed white through the blood of the Lamb. 12 Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God.
In this section, Alma writes of the garments being sanctified of the Spirit being Pure, White and Spotless and it is the sin which is looked upon with abhorrence, giving us a further key that the filthiness spoken of the Lamanites in previous verses and similar context was not their skin color, as again they were of the same ethnic group as the Nephites, but unlike most of the world which formes social identity in connection with blood relation, we are speaking of a “peculiar people,” whose social identity was primarily a covenant with God and each other.
Alma 34:36 And this I know, because the Lord hath said he dwelleth not in unholy temples, but in the hearts of the righteous doth he dwell; yea, and he has also said that the righteous shall sit down in his kingdom, to go no more out; but their garments should be made white through the blood of the Lamb.
Let’s read the chapter as it might have been translated with alternate derivatives.
2 Nephi 5:
20 Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence. 21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their inequality. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were pure, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be beguiling unto my people the Lord God did cause a covering of darkness to come upon them. 22 And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome/abhorrent unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities. 23 And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done. 24 And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey.
To further support this reading, we turn to the Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 9:29-30 - “And Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him and he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant, and a veil of darkness shall cover him, that he shall be known among all men.”
We see a cursed one being known by a veil of darkness. This part is Joseph Smith’s addition to the text of Genesis and is a direct parallel to the verse in 2 Nephi 2:21, which does not carry the implication that we are speaking of race or skin color. The Joseph Smith Translation portion of Genesis is the key to interpreting the meaning of the Book of Mormon text. We interpret metaphorically rich ancient text as being about race only when we read it with a 21st Century lens.
Of concern to the writer is the difference between the two peoples in procuring food. The Nephites were planters and harvesters, the Lamanites were meat eaters. This is the plausible reason why the writer viewed them as idle and loathsome. Agriculture requires a greater amount of toil and patience to produce food than hunting and gathering. It requires systemization and technology, and if more sophisticated. Remember that the Nephites and Lamanites are cousins, not two different races.
The Mark of the Lamanites?
Alma chapter 3 (ULDS) describes the Amlicites rebelling against the Nephites and joining the Lamanites to become Lamanites. It states three times that they were cursed of God, like the Lamanites, that they marked themselves knowing that it fulfilled the curse of God and didn’t care and that the mark was a mark of red upon their foreheads. It was not a full body mark, and it was not a literal skin of blackness. Alma 3:4 also states that this was “after the manner of the Lamanites” or the same mark, and that it was to distinguish themselves from the Nephites. Therefore, the Lord placing a mark on them is actually more subtle, being that the Lord caused them to desire to distinguish themselves by a form of body modification or tattoo on their foreheads, making them easily distinguishable to Nephites, accomplishing the Lord’s desire to keep them separate from Nephites so that they don’t corrupt them with their ways. However, anyone who repented was accepted among the Nephites and the mark was removed. Thereafter, they were called Nephites. It says the curse was lifted also. Elaborating on verse 9, verse 10 explains that “mingling seed” indicates “being led away by Lamanites” rather than simply having children with them. It means actually moving among them, raising one’s children and adopting their ways, but most importantly breaking or trading one's own societal covenant for another, which for ancient Israelites would be viewed with abhorrence.
This rationale makes far more sense, even in 1830, when nobody thought that people could become black or white simply by sinning or repenting.
