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Book of Mormon/DNA evidence/Ancestry of Lehi
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What is Lehi's ancestry?
What are we looking for?
Genetic attacks on the Book of Mormon focus on the fact that Amerindian DNA seems closest to Asian DNA, and not DNA from "the Middle East" or "Jewish" DNA. However, this attack ignores several key points.
Lehi and his family are clearly not Jews. They belong to the tribe of Manasseh (Alma 10꞉3, 1 Nephi 5꞉14), and married into Ishmael's family, the tribe of Ephraim.[1] These tribes were carried away captive by the Assyrians, and did not contribute greatly to the current genetic mix of the Middle East.
Furthermore, the Middle East is located at the crossroads of three continents, and has seen a great deal of immigration, mixing, and intermarriage. To use modern Middle Eastern DNA as the "standard" against which to measure what Manasseh and Ephraim DNA must have been like 2600 years ago is extraordinarily sloppy science.
Further reading
Articles which consider that "Asian" DNA and Lehite DNA may actually correspond due to an earlier common source:
- David G. Stewart, Jr., "DNA and the Book of Mormon," FARMS Review 18/1 (2006): 109–138. off-site wiki FAIR link