In my teaching of Gospel Doctrine Lesson 6 last week, I read 2 Nephi 5:20-25 with my class, and we identified which phrases directly quoted the Lord and which phrases were Nephi’s commentary on those revelations.
The Lord spoke of a curse falling on the Lamanites: “They were cut off from his presence … they shall be loathesome unto thy people … they shall be a scourge unto thy seed.”
Nephi’s commentary on that curse introduced the ideas that “the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them” and “they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety.”
I suggested that “the skin of blackness” was Nephi’s assumption, bias, prejudice, and interpretation, which went beyond the terms of the curse the Lord actually placed on the Lamanites. There’s no question that the Book of Mormon teaches, here and elsewhere, that the Lamanite curse included their being marked with a “black” skin color – but it is possible to read those verses, and understand them as a faithful Latter-day Saint, attributing that idea to Nephi rather than to the Lord. It wouldn’t be the first time such an idea entered the culture by mistake, if it is indeed a mistake.
Now a reader named Rachael at Benjamin the Scribe’s post on these verses makes an observation that is worth repeating here as a follow-up to that lesson idea. She says that the headnote to Chapter 5 used to read – I’ve verified it in my paper copy of the scriptures – this way:
The Nephites separate themselves from the Lamanites, keep the law of Moses, and build a temple—Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites are cursed, receive a skin of blackness, and become a scourge unto the Nephites.
The headnote to this chapter in the online scriptures at lds.org now reads this way:
The Nephites separate themselves from the Lamanites, keep the law of Moses, and build a temple—Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites are cut off from the presence of the Lord, are cursed, and become a scourge unto the Nephites. About 588-559 B.C.
Notice what’s missing? Yeah. The old reference to the “skin of blackness” as an element of the curse. ((Incidentally, I hadn’t noticed until now that the date approximations that used to appear at the bottom right of each page have been moved to the headnotes throughout the Book of Mormon.))
No doubt the cynicism in some people will claim that this is merely a nod to political correctness, that the racial curse is still real but we don’t like to draw attention to it in polite society. Or maybe, like so many other quiet, unannounced edits to the non-scriptural bits meant to help us understand the Book of Mormon – like the originally unheralded change to the Introduction downgrading the claim that the Lamanites were “the” ancestors to “the principal ancestors” to “among the ancestors” of the American Indians, or the editing of “Nephite coinage” to “Nephite monetary system” in the headnote to Alma 11 – this change reflects closer readings, and a recognition that we have made assumptions in our understanding of the Book of Mormon that are neither supported nor required by the text.
Maybe the Lamanites aren’t the only ones with “traditions of their fathers, which are not correct.” (1 Mosiah 5)
[Edit: A 2013 post by Steve Tayman at Worlds Without End indicates that this change to the headnote had already been made by that date (2013).]
Alma chapter three contains many of the same distinctions. I’m not going to do the complete analysis that you did, but the dark skin is listed as a curse in the editorial comments. The direct quote in verse 14 says:
Thus the word of God is fulfilled, for these are the words which he said to Nephi: Behold, the Lamanites have I cursed, and I will set a mark on them that they and their seed may be separated from thee and thy seed, from this time henceforth and forever, except they repent of their wickedness and turn to me that I may have mercy upon them.
In verse 18 we get the same editorial voice pointing out that the Amlicites painted their foreheads red, putting a mark on themselves which fulfills the previous prophecy. So there does seem to be a certain amount of flexibility in determining what constitutes ‘the mark.’
Skin color is also a relative thing. One of my daughters was considered very blond when she served a mission in Brazil, but in Finland she would be a brunette.
I hope this makes sense, as I’m getting tired, and my brain is fading out on me.
I really think that this is a moot point. The original purpose was to make the Lamanites loathsome to the Nephites in order that the Lamanites would not be considered attractive to the Nephites and thus discouraging intermixing. That curse would only be taken away if the Lamanites repented of their sins.
In 3 Nephi Chapter 2, the Lamanites that are converted are numbered among the Nephites and the curse is removed from them. I would assume, although it is not explicitly stated in 4 Nephi Chapter 1, that the curse was removed from everyone because all of the Lamanites were converted.
I do not recall the curse being reinstated afterwards. The Nephites and Lamanites both became wicked, with the end result that the Nephites were destroyed as a people. There was hardly a need to make the Lamanites loathsome to a nonexistent people.
The only thing that we know is Mormon’s words they “became “a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people.” That darkness may have been a spiritual darkness just as well as a physical darkness.
Now that I have muddied the waters even more….
Glenn
It might be a moot point if it were restricted to the narrative of the Book of Mormon … but it spills over into the racism of today. That makes it a current issue.
The change in the chapter heading occurred in 2011. Mar in Perkins, known for his Blacks in the Scriptures lectures, discussed the changes in a letter on Feb 7, 2011.
Read it here: http://www.blacklds.org/changes-to-lds-scripture-headings-footnotes
Thanks Ender2K. It’s looking more and more like I’m the last person to “discover” this … which puts me uncomfortably in the position of those who haven’t discovered unpublicized historical events or interpretations on their own.
While searching just now to see whether this change has been discussed anywhere at lds.org, I see that “the Lord causes skin of blackness to come upon Lamanites,” citing to this verse and to Alma 3:6, remains in the “skin” entry in the Triple Index at lds.org. Perhaps the phrase “skin of blackness” should still be indexed in the sense of a concordance, but the attribution “the Lord causes” should be deleted for consistency with the headnote (or at least the exact wording of 5:21 could be cited to make the index listing a concordance listing rather than implying editorial agreement with the attribution; the “blackness” entry in the same Index avoids attribution to the Lord).
The lesson manual doesn’t refer to these verses so I’d planned on not talking about it when I teach in two weeks especially since the stake presidency will be in the class for ward conference. Your comments on what the Lord said and what Nephi assumed will be a help if the subject comes up. As an aside fifty years ago I was confronted about this by a college prof in New Brunswick. We’d given him the first discussion and asked him to read the BoM which he did up to 2Nephi5:20-25. When we went back he met us on the door step and told me how he felt about racism. An interesting lesson for a naive, clueless 19 year old.
@Ardis,
You said “this change reflects closer readings, and a recognition that we have made assumptions in our understanding of the Book of Mormon that are neither supported nor required by the text.”
Except that the “skin of blackness” is still currently in the text, as you have already noted. I do think that the editing of the headers, which are just summaries of the chapters and not part of the original text, has come about as we have learned more about the histories of the people on the American continents. However, I also think that some of the editing has come from PC pressure. Remember 2 Nephi 30:6 originally read “white and delightsome” to now read “pure and delightsome.” That was probably a PC edit of the text itself. And I am O.K. with that. As long as there are no doctrinal implications.
We can theorize that Nephi may have been speaking from his own prejudices and biases, but that is speculation that also is not supported from the text, at all.
That is why I think the question is moot. We are working with sheer speculation far removed from the text and with no supporting revelations or commentary from other scriptures or prophets.
Glenn
I’m curious, Glenn; could you define what you mean by “PC pressure”? What kind of pressure is it; how does it work; who exerts this pressure; who responds and why?
Is the church subject to it, and are there eternal truths that are not being preached because of “PC pressure”?
These are serious questions. I’m not trying to be snarky. I am interested in what people view as the mechanism for changes to how we speak about race, and why anyone (and not just comment 6; I’m asking about general reactions) would explain these changes away with a vague reference to “political correctness.”
Quite a few of the headnotes have changed in the current version, with various tweaks. The introduction to the Book of Mormon is also edited (the Bible no longer contains the fulness of the gospel). And the estimated dates have moved from the bottom of the page to the headnote.
I should get a newer set of scriptures, but I hate to give up my markings….
Ardis, given where we are today when it comes to skin color, I believe the concept of good-better-best compels us to be very flexible in how we allow people to interpret these verses. There is no reason to allow them to become a stumbling block for anyone.
However, I would urge extreme caution in any relative judgment we might make regarding those in times past when it comes to race. Too often we seem to assume that our lack of racism is due to our own superior virtue (relative to them) when in fact it is simply due to our luck of being born in a society that understands that racism is wrong.
“There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Brother Perkins further asserts that the phrase “skin of blackness” is a Hebrew idiom that we modern(-ish) readers have applied in a concrete way to a totally human construct, that of race.
Race, or the dividing human groups up based on physical attributes such as skin color (rather than language, religion, or culture, etc.) didn’t occur until the 17th century, long after Nephi wrote his thoughts. When Elder McConckie said that “We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world,” I think he was telling the truth.
He went on to remind us that we learn line upon line, exactly as the ninth article of faith tells us we do. It can be hard to throw out the false traditions we hold, but isn’t that one of the important messages of the Book of Mormon?
Take the time to read through the resources collected by Brother Perkins. They provide a lot to think about.
(Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Brother Perkins. I just happen to think his is a great resource for discussing race in an LDS context.)
Glenn Thigpen: Before you comment further, please do the relevant reading. This post is a follow-up to the Gospel Doctrine lesson post linked in the first line of the post.
Until you have done that reading, which gives a reasonable rationale both for the presence of that phrase in the scripture and for attributing it to Nephi rather than to God, your bald, unsupported assertions otherwise are meaningless.
If the point is moot to you, you can have nothing further to contribute.
CSC: I appreciation your caution, but wish you wouldn’t attribute to me a sense of superiority which I do not feel.
This post should be read in context of the lesson linked at the top of the post. I am not trying to “correct” things that we do or believe that are wrong, and I’m not passing judgment on the past, either Nephi’s past or the past of the Church in this generation.
I am trying to model for my Sunday School class various ways of close reading. The reason for that modeling is spelled out in the linked lesson: Too often, when people discover something in the Book of Mormon that they believe is wrong, they end up losing their confidence in the entire Book of Mormon, then their confidence in Joseph Smith as a prophet, and then in the entire restored Gospel. Too often, what they object to in the Book of Mormon is *not the text itself* but the way we have traditionally understood that text, and the assumptions we read into it.
So regardless of the specific issue (in this case, race), what matters in my lessons is the *process* of close reading. My intent in Sunday School was not to proclaim my own superior sense of racial fairness — which, if it exists at all, is not due to my personal merits but to the humility of having listened to what has already been said by people like Darius Gray and Paul Reeve and Armand Mauss and many, many others — but to demonstrate how close reading *might* support an alternate understanding: that while the Lord cursed the Lamanites, it *might* have been Nephi, rather than God, who introduced the concept of changed skin color as part of the curse.
If that way of reading the scriptures helps anyone who cannot stomach the implied racism of the Book of Mormon — and you’ll see comments here and on that lesson post by people who have seen investigators turn away when they reach 2 Nephi 5:21 — then modeling the process has served its purpose.
This post is merely a follow-up to that one; had I been aware of the changed headnotes, it would have been incorporated into that lesson as support for the idea that the Church itself no longer insists on the reading that the Lord rather than Nephi initiated the racial element in the Lamanite curse.
I hope the difference between what I am trying to do, and what you warn me against doing, is clearer — because in my mind and heart, there is a very great difference.
– (My bolding)
Absolutely not. Joseph Smith made the change in 1840, and because of printing quirks, most editions after that were based on the 1837 version which did NOT have that change. Consequently, for the 1981 edition, by which time the Church had started doing basic text criticism, collecting editions, etc., the change was made.
Any accusations of PC changes to 2Nephi 30:6 are based on bias and ignorance, as this has been written up in both conservative and liberal LDS sources.
G, I agree with you — I wouldn’t bring it up in Sunday School out of the blue, with no particular purpose, either. As I explained in another comment and in the lesson linked in the first line, I brought it up only as one of a series of attempts to show my class that we can read the Book of Mormon for what it says and not for what we have previously assumed it said. Your example makes clear why we need to be able to do that — I’m more concerned about current members of the Church losing than faith than investigators not developing their faith, but those old assumptions can be a stumbling block for both, can’t they?
As demonstrated by my ignorance of others who have previously tackled this verse shows, I hadn’t given much thought to the matter until this week. It i now, however, in my back pocket should it come up in the future. I hope it helps you that same way.
I know, Naismith, I know! Me, too. That’s why I’m developing my digital scriptures — I can expand the notes indefinitely and never have to transfer them as pencil markings again. But that also contributes to my lag in awareness of changes going on with the “helps” surrounding the official edition.
I like the cultural context interpretations and Mormon’s title-page reminder that “if there are faults they are the mistakes of men.”
From my own weak, human perspectives, and picking up on the themes of LauraN, when my children were young we lived in Bountiful, Utah. We could always pick them out of a crowd at a school function because of their dark hair. When we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we could pick them out by their light hair. We were neither cursed in Bountiful nor enlightened in Santa Fe. We humans perceive a lot that is not all that important and miss other things.
Thank you for your #14, Ben. I’m getting weary of correcting Glenn’s false statements, but that one needed explicit correction.
Also, I have withheld posting a couple of even less informative comments from others who make that same assertion.
Grant, thanks for that reminder of the “faults of men.” When we remember that at all, we tend to limit the potential “mistakes” to typographical errors.
I could also point out that I have never seen a Native American who had anything approaching a ‘skin of blackness.’ Their skin seems to be some shade of brown. The only people I have ever seen whose skin was dark enough to come anywhere close to my definition of ‘black’ were people from pure African ancestry, and even then, their skin was nothing like a black ebonized piano. So should I be pitching a fit because none of the Native Americans seem to have inherited actually black skin?
Dark skin is convenient marker, (like black and white hats in old westerns) and when my kids were very small, we had a Book of Mormon story book that kept repeating that bit about the Lamanites’ skin without even mentioning the tents, the eating of unkosher critters, and the scanty clothing–not to mention the tendency to be warlike. When my oldest asked me, privately, if some neighbors with dark skin were bad like the Lamanites, I threw that book in the trash and made my own abridgement of the Book of Mormon (a very interesting exercise–I really felt like I could relate to Mormon) which I used with my children.
A terrific illustration of [intended? unintended?] consequences of this issue, Laura. Thanks.
Thanks, Ardis. I read your prior post, where you explained your goal to have people differentiate between what is actually in the Book of Mormon versus what they assume is in there, and I agree that is an important point. I’m glad you made it, and I hope it was taken well by your class.
The reason I added my caution was to combat assumptions of a different type. The words you’ve used in your discussion about this are all technically accurate – “bias”, “prejudice”, and “racism”, yet at the same time they aren’t accurate because this was a different world and we shouldn’t assume it wasn’t. Consider this sentence from your prior post:
That is the assumption I’m talking about. In our time, words related to racial prejudice invoke images of a majority mistreating a powerless minority, but that is certainly not how someone in Nephi’s time would have viewed it. The Lamanites were a powerful people, a people who were not only powerful but were also intent on destroying the Nephites. If, as it seems, the Lamanites began to look physically different from the Nephites, then it is understandable why a Nephite, threatened for their actual survival, might consider skin color to be significant; whereas we, who, lacking an existential threat, have the luxury of recognizing that skin color doesn’t matter, have no excuse.
So I think it goes beyond what you said in your prior post when you said prophets are not perfect men because that’s the kind of thing we say when prophets exhibit a moral deficiency relative to their time, and this is really a deficiency that is only apparent in the comparison between two times. Put simply, if I had lived in Nephi’s place, I would have thought and done worse than him. If Nephi had lived in my place, he would have thought and done better than me.
And that’s why I think caution is warranted (and should be mentioned) anytime this topic comes up, but please interpret that caution as being attached to the topic rather than directed to you. I think you and I are pretty much on the same page here and have similar goals.
Okay, I take your point.
However … isn’t there always a however? … much of the racism in the modern sense defended by certain Mormons today and directed toward racial minorities today is specifically supported by appeals to scripture, like this one. When modern investigators or members become disillusioned by the Book of Mormon’s evident teachings about race, they’re responding to the issue with their modern sensibilities.
When ancient scripture impinges on modern life in those two senses, as this scripture does, we’re only doing half the job if we read ancient scripture wholly in an ancient context. We also have to acknowledge what role that ancient scripture plays in this “different world” and with regard to modern understandings and labels of racism.
You’re right that we ought to be aware of that distinction, as well as the one I taught.
I’ve been fascinated by the passage in Jacob 3 referring to the Lamanites’ skin. Verse 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…” Jacob doesn’t say there that the Lord hated the Lamanites for their skin, he brings up the Nephites’ hatred. Then he uses it as a sticking point because the people seemed to spend more energy coming down on the Lamanites when they themselves were committing a more grievous to the Lord.
I’ve long found it fascinating that people take the “skin of blackness” phrase in the Book of Mormon quite so literally, and yet have no problem interpreting color references in Bible verses like Joel 2:6 (which reads, in the KJV, “Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness”) as a metaphor.
I don’t know why we treat those various texts quite so differently—but i suggest that whether we should or not, that we need to be careful in the way we read things, and make sure (as other comments on this post point out) we aren’t imposing modern concepts where they don’t really belong.
They read the phrase here so literally, David B., because we have taught it so literally since 1830: The Lamanites are Indians; Indians have darker skin than Anglo-Europeans; therefore the verse is literal — so literal that we’ve taught that skin will be lightened when Indians become righteous. How could readers NOT take the verse literally when it has been taught literally for so long?
Again, and again, the purpose of a close reading like the one illustrated here and in the related lesson is not to impose a modern concept onto the ancient text. The point is to assist a modern reader, who has that modern concept so firmly in his worldview that he rejects the Book of Mormon as a violation of his ethics or his conception of what God must be, with one possible way to get past that stumbling block.
If the point is to say readers are wrong to be anachronistically offended by apparent discrimination — in the fully modern sense — well, then, we can sit on Rameumptum and sneer at them. If the point is to minister and to help salvage faith, then one small way to do that is to show that the text can support a reading beyond “God is a bigot.”
Ardis: Right—that’s essentially what I was trying (inartfully, on later, more-rested re-reading) to say.
A bonus (maybe even the best bonus) isn’t just that it lets us reach out to those who would reject the Book of Mormon on the grounds that it somehow claims God is a bigot—it’s that it could help keep those who believe in the divine provenance of the Book of Mormon from falling into the trap of somehow believing that God is a bigot.
I apologize for being so prickly, David. I’m mixing up what is being said here on Keepa with what I’m hearing in real life from people with even less experience than I have in dealing with even the most gentle of new ideas.
I’m honestly puzzled. Or perhaps I should be grateful?
I lived in Memphis for a short time, decades ago, and, yes, I met a few Church members who were out-and-out bigots. More recently, I heard remarks quoted from a BYU professor who made remarks that could be interpreted as bigoted — my recollection is that he got landed on hard by just about everyone whose opinion I care about. And I’ve met a member who is a Holocaust denier (I don’t know how he feels about blacks.)
I’m just not seeing a lot of racial bigotry in the Church.
Maybe I’ve just been fortunate in the wards I’ve landed in.
It’s there, Vader. A lot? I don’t know. But it’s there.
I don’t suppose that’s entirely relevant here. When people who genuinely are not racists, or who are trying not to be racists, or who have been the objects of past racism, encounter what seems to them to be racism in Mormon scripture, then it has to be discussed.
I appreciate the perspective Ardis, and it’s given me something to think about for my lesson this week as we directly talk about those scriptures in Lesson 7.
I think I fall on the side who take the skin thing as metaphorical, a slur against an enemy (as was common among ancient peoples and has been shown in many ancient texts).
Especially since so many later scriptures make zero sense if there’s a group of dark people and a group of light people. Like Alma 55. Or Limhi immediately arresting Ammon. (Wouldn’t he have been like, hello fellow white person! You must be a Nephite! Are you here to save me?)
Or because I’ve read some very interesting work by Jewish rabbis/scholars concerning Adam in the Old Testament where “garments of skin” (bigdei ‘or) should read “garments of glory” or “garments of light” (bigdei or). The idea that the Lord dressed Adam in a lesser light after the fall (as he moved from immortal to mortal) always made sense to me, I guess. And I can see where the word “skin” by a Hebrew-speaker might also be interpreted as “light,” putting yet another spin on those Nephi statements. 🙂