Brigham Young University professor Daniel C. Peterson answers DNA critics of the Book on Mormon with a new collection of articles by leading scientists who are also Latter-day Saints. Peterson’s book, The Book of Mormon and DNA Research (ISBN: 978-0842527064), is the first to come out of the Maxwell Institute, of which the bookstore is affiliated, in a series of collections Peterson called “the best of the best.”
Critics began using DNA research several years ago to challenge the apparent Book of Mormon claim that Native Americans have Israelite roots. And while critics thought they had brought The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its knees because no such DNA evidence exists in modern Indians, Peterson said their claims are flawed as illustrated in the new book.
One of the articles by Butler sites a study of 131,060 Icelanders whose ancestors were known by their record. But research into their DNA couldn’t prove that their ancestors existed 150 years earlier based on the Y-chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA tests. How then could scientists expect the people in the Book of Mormon to leave a genetic imprint on their descendants, Peterson queried. The markers simply disappear over time, he said.
Not only that, but the Book of Mormon doesn’t contain enough genetic data to work with. For example, the females in the Book of Mormon inherited their DNA from the wife of Ishmael, an important figure early in the Book of Mormon. “We know nothing about her,” Peterson said.
“To assume all questions about Meso-America are answered by DNA is naive,” he said. “This is not a simple subject. There is a lot of naivete in this subject.” The Book of Mormon population was relatively small when those people first landed on the shores of the New World, he said. At the time millions of native peoples already were living on the continent. Through intermarriage the genetic pool could have easily and quickly become “swamped,” Peterson said.
Geographically, the Book of Mormon story takes place in a small area, which also would limit the gene pool. “This is a tempest in a teapot,” Peterson said, dismissing critics’ claims. “There’s not much there. So what (if most of the people) came from Asia.”
The Book of Mormon is in the realm of faith. It has enough evidence for those who want to believe, he said, but not enough to prove it or force others to believe. “That’s by design,” Peterson said.
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