Mormonism Part 5
Prepared and Presented by Brian Jones, Youth Group Leader
Archaeological differences and DNA discovery – Mormon vs Protestant church teachings:
- Mormons teach that their documents are historical and accurate
- Mormons teach that in one of their books called Ether, there were tribes called the Jaredites and Nephites. The book of Ether talks about these tribes being in Central America.
- Mormons teach that the American Indians are from the Lamanite tribe which would make them descendants of Israel. They get this out of one of their books Doctrine and Covenants and it is in chapter 28 verses 8-9.
- There are institutes that use archaeological findings as evidence for their history. These institutes are the Smithsonian, Boston University Archaeology, and National Geographic. All three of these institutions have clearly stated more than once that they do not use the Book of Mormon as historical documents in hopes to find archaeological discoveries because they have never found anything that is historically or scientifically accurate regarding the Book of Mormon.
- One example of this is in the Central America region where the Jaredites and Nephites were supposedly located, there was a major war that involved these tribes. However, there has never been any evidence or horses, swords, bows, arrows, or anything resembling a major war. There has been discoveries of Mayan writings in that area. What is interesting about these writings is they also do not ever mention any tribes there called the Jaredites or Nephites, they do not mention any major wars that occurred, and they never mention the God of the Bible. They mention many other gods such as the moon god and sun god, but that is it.
- When it comes to the Bible, there are many archaeological findings that support what the Bible talks about. We talked about one of them during a spotlight and that was the Wall of Jericho and Rahab.
- There have been so many other findings such as the Ain Dara temple which resembles the temple laid out in the book of Kings perfectly. What is amazing is this is recognized by National Geographic. There is an entire article about the temple.
- The pool of Silom in Jesus’ day has been discovered.
- When it comes to the DNA of American Indians and the Laminate tribe, multiple articles and scientific studies contradict this claim. One such article published in 2019 from the NY Times speaks of DNA results that suggest the closest ancestors to the Native Americans are from Siberia, East Asia, and Africa. Israel, and the Middle East in general was not listed in this article’s findings (26).
- The articles and evidences are countless and consistent in regards to these findings, such as Science Mag.org , National Geographic, and scientists from Harvard and various geneticists.