Circle Squared
A Textual Analysis of the Book of Mormon
Chapter 30: "White-Washing”
Chapter Summary:
Converted Gentiles will be numbered with the covenant people--Many Lamanites and Jews will believe the word and become delightsome--Israel will be restored and the wicked destroyed. About 559–545 B.C.
Nothing says good authorship like repeating the same thing over and over. At least, this seems to be Nephi's impression as he uses the bulk of this chapter to restate the purpose of the Book of Mormon: to convince the Native Americans of Joseph Smith's day that they are Jews and they should totally become Mormons because good things will finally happen to them if they do.
The most interesting thing to me in this chapter is one of the "good" things which will happen to Natives who become Mormons:
"6 And then shall they rejoice; for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of God; and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a pure and a delightsome people."
It may be difficult to catch the subtle racist implications of this verse (that Natives who become Mormons will become white Jews again). This is because the Mormon Church actually changed a key word in this verse a few years ago. Before the 1981 printing of the Book of Mormon, the original language read:
"...they shall be a white and a delightsome people."
To make the distasteful matter clearer, consider a verse from a previous chapter where I addressed this issue:
"2 Nephi 5:21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."
Such whitewashing of history is commonplace in Mormonism. Just ask Mormons raised in the church when they learned about Joseph Smith's polygamous relationships with 14 year old girls and married women or the magic rock in a hat he used to translate the Book of Mormon. There is one very important difference, though, between things like Joseph's indiscretions or his whacky magic tricks and the church changing problematic phrases in their holy book.
You see, Mormons believe that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon from ancient gold plates through a word by word dictation from god. God told Joseph every single word he should write. If he got a word wrong, then god would not let him move on to the next word until he got it right. With a process such as this, how could there be any mistakes or confusion in the Book of Mormon?
Mormons minimize the impact of their "corrections" on god's handiwork by pointing out that of the thousands of changes made to the Book of Mormon, most are grammatical changes made for clarity. They forget to mention the changes which are not grammatical, but actually have great implications on Mormon doctrine. Such as changing the word "white" to "pure" in order to lessen the racist idea that Natives are dark skinned because of wickedness and can be made white again through conversion to the "correct" religion.
Most damning of all for Mormons, however, is that this claim is actually testable. So tell me, how many Native Americans have you seen join the Mormon Church and then become white Jews? I know how many I have seen: zero. Therefore, either there are no Native Americans sufficiently righteous to become Jews again, or the Book of Mormon is bunk.