Scholar vs. scripture

last updated 8 January 2015

Salt Lake City

Mormon church leaders are threatening to excommunicate an anthropologist who claims the sacred Book of Mormon is “a piece of 19th-century fiction.” Mormon scripture, which church founder Joseph Smith said was given to him by an angel, holds that many American Indians are descended from ancient Israelites. Thomas W. Murphy, a Mormon doctoral student, checked the church’s own vast DNA database and concluded the first Native Americans came from across the Bering Strait—as other anthropologists believe—and not from the Middle East. Church leaders say Murphy’s findings don’t prove anything, and amount to an abandonment of the faith. Nonsense, said Murphy. “It’s time to openly discuss the possibility of viewing the Book of Mormon as fiction, but inspired fiction.”