One *what *?
Anyway, the claim that Mitochondrial DNA doesn’t mutate is nonsense. It mutates at a known rate. By examining the mitochondria of two individuals, or two populations, scientists can estimate how long ago they had a common ancestor.
All currently alive humans are descended from a single femaleabout 150,000 years ago. If the DNA didn’t change then we would all have the same mitochondria . Which we don’t.
One synonymous substitution. They go on to say that there isn’t a single rate parameter over all sites, though, more like 3 different subclasses of sites with 3 different synonymous substitution rates.
Joseph Smith started with a frontier developed theology and then took it off in his own direction.
The theology for the Mormon position never really made clear. Smith would typically adapt existing local beliefs and then claim a Biblical basis, going so far as to rewrite the Bible (the Joseph Smith Translation, which is not a new translation but simply rewritten to fit his ideas) as well wrote new scriptures, the most famous of which is the Book of Mormon. Two of those books are the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham.
Joseph Smith tied the idea of dark skin to a curse from God as a punishment in the Book of Mormon.
That was in the summer of 1829, before the church was started. Later, we wrote the other books.
and
As Mormons believed that these new scriptures were more trustworthy than the Bible, they really didn’t get too much into the debate between the mark of Cain and the Curse of Ham. With the new scriptures and more importantly modern revelation which trumped scripture then the Biblical basis was no really important.
When I was growing up in in the 60s and 70s, it was the common belief that the Blacks were denied the priesthood (for the men, and the saving ordinances of the temple for both genders) because the blacks had not been valiant in the Great War in the Pre-existence (were we all were prior to coming to this Earth) and as such were given this curse.
Different Mormon prophets have interpreted the “priesthood ban” differently. Joseph Smith allowed at least one black man to have the priesthood, but his successor, Brigham Young was much more racist.
Pre-literate doesn’t mean there were no standard marks. You may find this video about cave symbols interesting.
I’ve heard the theory that the story was supposed to be a fable about the conflict between farmers and herders; it’s just that in the Bronze Age Middle East, both those groups were the same color.
The pastoralist/agriculturalist theory is interesting: according to it, the original Israelites were desert pastoralists who invaded, conquered and eventually absorbed the agriculturalist Canaanites. That’s why they had stories about how herders were preferred by God and that the farmers had done them wrong; it’s also why so many biblical heroes were shepherds, including King David himself.
It really needs to be pointed out that there is discrimination in the phrasing of the ban. Not only was it a ban on the priesthood for males (Mormonism believes in a universal priesthood for all males age 12 and above, rather than just the clergy) but as I wrote above, blacks of both genders were not permitted in the temple, where the full ordinances are performed.
Mormonism is unique among Christian faiths in believing that ordinary people have the ability to become gods and goddesses. However blacks of both genders were not permitted to receive these ordinances.
Isn’t that because most Christian faiths are (nominally) monotheistic?
I believe so.
Joseph Smith started teaching the doctrine that people could have "exaltation” e.g. become like God, shortly before he was killed.
His successor, Brigham Young went of to further develop the theory into what is now referred to that the Adam-God doctrine or theory, in which Young taught that Adam was actually God. That is, God took one of his many wives, and because Adam and Eve. Later prophets rejected that and it was actually considered heretical to teach it.
[/hijack]
Back to the blacks and the question in the OP. A black woman was “sealed” to Smith as a servant for him for all eternity.
As I understand it, archaeologists currently favor that the idea that Israelites lived on the fringes of Canaanite society, like the Travelers in the British Isles, or the Gypsies in continental Europe. Archaeologists have not found any evidence of a sudden conquest. As you move from more ancient sites to more modern sites, the number of Canaanite artifacts gradually decreases, and the number of Israelite artifacts gradually increases.
Must have been the letter “hey” for “hey, don’t kill me.”
From the Wiki:
Barring the discovery of a more definitive source, I don’t think a factual answer is to be found.
Dorjan:
Well, in the Genesis story, that would be G-d. Pre-literate? Adam had a language in which he named all of the Earth’s creatures. Of course, that’s not how science and history would view the first human beings, but the whole idea of a symbol from G-d is kind of outside that realm already.
Derleth:
It’s not a plot hole. They married their sisters. It says explicitly in the Bible that Adam and Eve had daughters (Genesis 5:4).
How could it have anything to do with race? The Mark of Cain is a story from Genesis, and according to Genesis, all of Cain’s descendants were wiped out in the Flood.
Genesis says that all Cain’s descendants were wiped out in the flood?
Well, it says that only Noah and family survived…
which - if GOD’s curse is to be believed -
Did God suffer vengence seven times over? How dd Cain survive the flood?
Cain and his brothers would have long since been dead. According to Genesis, Seth lived about 900 years, and Noah was the 10th in a line of patriarchs from Adam. Noah didn’t have children until he was 500, so Adam’s children were just dust by then.
According to the rabbi who taught the “History of Judaism” course I took as an undergrad, that’s why the Israelites kept slipping into the idolatry their prophets so often denounced: being pastoralists, they had to learn agriculture from the resident Canaanites.
“First you build a terrace to keep water in. Then you break up the ground with a hoe. Then you sow your seed. Then you sacrifice a goat to Ba’al Hadad. Then you wait for Dagon to send rains…”
I don’t know if this was an actual historical theory, or he was just pulling it out of his ass, but it sounded plausible. Less so now that we have better evidence that the Israelites developed from native Canaanite tribes, rather than being invaders from elsewhere; but if they learned agriculture from other Canaanite tribes, then it could have happened that way.
While that is almost certainly true, the Bible doesn’t say how long Cain lived, so it’s barely possible he died in the Flood. Methuselah died in the year of the Flood*, so maybe he drowned, too – the cause of his death is not given. The Bible does say* that Shem didn’t die until Jacob, eleven generations later, was 50 years old, which means that Shem outlived Abraham by 35 years. Even Noah was still around until Abraham was 58 years old. Strangely, there is no mention of any interaction between Shem and his descendants over the 500 years of his life following the Flood.
The point is that if you take Genesis to be true (and I don’t) then it makes no sense to claim that people living today with a particular skin color are descendants of Cain, with their skin color being “the mark.”
Because regardless of whether Cain was alive at the time of the flood or not, he and all of his issue (Noah being a descendant of Seth) would surely have been dead in the flood. So none of his descendants would be alive to populate the earth as this race or that today.
If you accept that Genesis is true (which, again, I don’t).
Interesting!