I think its the position of most educated Mormons now.
Don't know, haven't taken a poll. It's certainly a dramatic departure from the historic position of the Mormon Church.
Joseph Smith undoubtedly believed that which he wrote on the title page of the Book of Mormon. It is not found anywhere within the text of the book nor did he claim it as revelation. It merely represented what he personally felt to be an accurate statement. Turns out he was wrong.
And here you start down the path to destroying Mormon theology. If the founder of the Church, supposed recipient of divine revelation, and all of his prophetic heirs, have all been utterly, deeply wrong about what the founding text is about, you have built the entire religion on a foundation of sand.
(and then you add the fact that Smith didn't know Egyptian from Irish, and was repeatedly duped into believing gibberish was Egyptian, etc.)
Over time, a lot of things happened and they held a variety of differing opinions on the matter. As early as 1875, George M Ottinger, a faculty member at the University of Deseret (later the University of Utah) suggested that other groups besides the people whose story is told in the Book of Mormon had colonized the American continent. In the early 1900s LDS General Authorities were saying much the same thing. B. H. Roberts insisted that migrations from northeast Asia over the Bering Strait were absolutely indisputable. LDS publications were teaching this as early as 1902.
The official position of the Mormon Church, as disseminated by men supposed to be receiving revelation from God, was that Indians are Lammanites.
In 1927, LDS Scholar Janne Sjodahl wrote that students should be cautioned against the error of supposing that all the American Indians are the descendants of Lehi, Mulek and their companions. [It is] not improbably that American has received other immigrants from Asia and other parts of the globe.
Yes, scholars use scholarly methods to figure out the truth. Religious revelation--not so much.
In 1929, long, long before the DNA issue was ever brought to light, Anthony W. Ivins, a counselor to the LDS Prophet, said, We must be careful in the conclusions we reach. The Book of Mormon teaches the history of three distinct peoples, or two peoples and three different colonies of people, who came from the old world to this continent. It does not tell us that there was no one here before them. It does not tell us that people did not come after. And so if discoveries are made which suggest differences in race origins, it can very easily be accounted for, and reasonably, for we do believe that other people came to this continent. This same line of thought continued to be taught in essays written by noted LDS scholars throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
Gotta love those scholars. Scholarship works. Revelation fails. And so, therefore, does Mormon theology.
You can't have it both ways. Either these apostles were right--which you agree they weren't--or they were not receiving divine revelation, in which case the house of cards that is LDS theology falls down.
Finally, Bruce R. McConkie, who oversaw the editing of the 1981 version of the Book of Mormon, inserted the statement to the effect that the Lamanites were the principal ancestors of the American Indians, did so of his own volition. Had another of the General Authorities been given that assignment, the text would likely have read differently. (McConkie made a number of statements over the years which were his opinion only, and which did not reflect the views of the Church as a whole.)
It has always been taught that the migration involved two nuclear families and one single male. That has never changed.
Apparently Mr. McConkie was not receiving divine revelation.
Also, that position was a retreat, a concession to the modern scientific view.
The Book of Mormon does not specifically state this. There are, however, numerous clues throughout the book that this is the case. There are groups such as the Amalekites, whose origin is unknown, who came under Nephite power. Other groups are described as Lamanitish and Ishmaelitish, indicating a foreign origin. Early on in the book, Nephi write that he was made king over his people. Had there been only a couple of dozen people, there would hardly have been a need for a king. It is also mentioned that early in their history, the Nephites also were involved in an economy which involved trade with other groups of people. These facts have been noted for years and are not desperate reversals of the LDS position as you would have people believe.
I repeat. The history laid out in the BoM does not include a single human being living here before the fictional settlers arrived. Zero. Bupkus. Zip. Nada.
And as I have shown above, there have always been LDS leaders who believed otherwise.
There have been scholars who believed otherwise, not Joseph Smith, not Brigham Young, and not the apostles of the Church.
And I can understand why you want to believe that there was an official position when there really wasnt and isnt one.
This is simply false.
It wasnt destroyed by scientific advances in the 1980s because it didnt exist. There have always been a variety of different viewpoints, but despite what you say, one was no more official than the next. The very real possibility of Lehis group arriving on an already populated continent has been considered by LDS scholars and the Churchs leadership for over 100 years.
And so you toss LDS theology out the window to rescue the veracity of the BoM, adding a pretzel-like interpretation of the text.
So now that you've discarded a fundamental tenet of the religion, and a clear, obvious, literal reading of your founding text, was it worth it?
Well, were kind of damned if we do and damned if we dont, huh? We cant win either way.
Correct. When your beliefs are incorrect, there is no good way to defend them.
