In a public facebook post, John Dehlin posted the following meme, wherein he argues that the Book of Mormon teaches that the New World was totally uninhabited before Lehi et al arrived:
John Dehlin is just being disingenuous as such texts have been exegeted by LDS scholars for years, so he should know how LDS apologists deal with this text. For instance, addressing 2 Nephi 1:8 (and Ether 2:5) in his article "Nephi's Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations,” Matthew Roper wrote:
Possible Scriptural Objections to the Presence of Others
In seeking possible scriptural objections to the proposition that there were others in the land, some have suggested that two Book of Mormon passages (Ether 2:5 and 2 Nephi 1:8) require an empty hemisphere previous to the arrival of Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites.55 However, it is evident that the passage from Ether 2:5, stating that the Jaredites were “commanded . . . that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been,” when taken in context, actually refers to the wilderness through which the Jaredites were to travel in the Old World and says nothing about the populations of the New World at that time. The second reference, from Lehi’s prophecy, reads as follows:
And behold, it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations; for behold, many nations would overrun the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance. Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves. And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments they shall be blessed upon the face of this land, and there shall be none to molest them, nor to take away the land of their inheritance; and they shall dwell safely forever. (2 Nephi 1:8–9)
One reading of this statement could be that Lehi’s people inherited an empty promised land when their ship arrived, but the Book of Mormon allows for other interpretations.56 Is there a distinction, for example, between “nations” and other social groups? Lehi would have been familiar with nations such as Babylon and Egypt that had well-organized armies capable of waging sophisticated warfare and extending their power over large distances. Lehi’s prophecy could allow for smaller societies that did not yet merit the description “nations.” For instance, Sorenson’s model of Book of Mormon geography places the land of Nephi in highland Guatemala near the site of Kaminaljuyœ. At the time Nephi and his people separated from Laman’s followers to found their own settlement in the early sixth century BC, archaeological evidence shows that that region had only scattered, sparsely populated villages.57 Also, to “possess this land unto themselves” does not necessarily mean to be the only inhabitants but can also mean—as it often does in Book of Mormon contexts—that a group has the ability to control and exercise authority over the land and its resources (see, for example, Mosiah 19:15; 23:29; 24:2; Alma 27:22, 26).58 Significantly, however, even Lehi’s statement about “other nations” is conditional. Lehi indicates that the promised protection from threatening nations would be removed when his children dwindled in unbelief. Sorenson has observed that the Lamanites, at least, dwindled in unbelief from the beginning.
How then could Lehi’s prophecy about “other nations” being brought in have been kept long in abeyance after that? Furthermore, the early Nephites generally did the same thing within a few centuries. Their wickedness and apostasy culminated in the escape of Mosiah and his group from the land of Nephi to the land of Zarahemla (see Omni 1:13–14). And if the Lord somehow did not at those times bring in “other nations,” then surely he would have done so after Cumorah, 1100 years prior to Columbus. Even if there were no massive armed invasions of strange groups to be reported, we need not be surprised if relatively small groups of strange peoples who were neither so numerous nor so organized as to be rivals for control of the land could have been scattered or infiltrated among both Nephites and Lamanites without their constituting the “other nations” in the threatening sense of Lehi’s prophecy. Thus in the terms of Lehi’s prophecy, “others” could and probably even should have been close at hand and available for the Lord to use as instruments against the straying covenant peoples any time after the arrival of Nephi’s boat.59
Notes for the Above
55. “What about the claim that the Jaredite migration from the Middle East was to ‘that quarter where never had man been’ (Ether 2:5)? Or, Lehi’s claim between 588 and 570 BC that ‘it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations’ (2 Ne 1:8)?” Thomas Murphy, open e-mail to Michael Whiting, 25 January 2003.
56. George Reynolds followed this interpretation, noting, however, that this would not apply to the Jaredites, since “we have no account in the sacred records that God shut them out from the knowledge of the rest of mankind when he planted them in America.” George Reynolds, “History of the Book of Mormon VI: The Contents of the Records,” Contributor 5 (April 1884): 242. See also George M. Ottinger, “Old America: The Phoenicians,” Juvenile Instructor 10 (6 February1875): 33.
57. Sorenson, Ancient American Setting, 85. For an overview of the argument for a limited Book of Mormon geography, see Sorenson and Roper, “Before DNA,” 7–10. For an overview of the evidence of archaeology and other sciences for population diversity in the New World, see ibid., 18–23.
58. See also John L. Sorenson, Nephite Culture and Society: Collected Papers, ed. Matthew R. Sorenson (Salt Lake City: New Sage Books, 1997), 205–7.
59. Sorenson, “When Lehi’s Party Arrived,” 7–8. For an earlier but similar view, see Gareth W. Lowe, “The Book of Mormon and Early Southwest Cultures,” U.A.S. [University Archaeological Society] Newsletter,no. 19 (12 April 1954): 3.
For more, see, for e.g., Jeff Lindsay, The Book of Mormon and DNA, Appendix One: Book of Mormon Teachings, which addresses the evidence that "others" were in the land and were incorporated into the Nephite and Lamanite populations as well as John Sorenson’s 1992 article, When Lehi's Party Arrived in the Land, Did They Find Others There? Indeed, Sorenson in this article provides the following commentary on 2 Nephi 1:8-12:
How much time can we suppose elapsed between the time when Lehi’s descendants “dwindle[d] in unbelief” and when the Lord brought “other nations unto them”? How distant were those “other nations” at the time Lehi spoke? Latter-day Saints generally have supposed that the “other nations” were the Gentile (Christian) nations of Europe who began to reach the New World only 500 years ago. To believe so requires limited imagination.
As for the Lamanites, they dwindled in unbelief within a few years. Alma said that “the Lamanites have been cut off from his presence, from the beginning of their transgressions in the land” (Alma 9:14). How then could Lehi’s prophecy about “other nations” being brought in have been kept long in abeyance after that? Furthermore, the early Nephites generally did the same thing within a few centuries. Their wickedness and apostasy culminated in the escape of Mosiah and his group from the land of Nephi to the land of Zarahemla (see Omni 1:13–14). And if the Lord somehow did not at those times bring in “other nations,” then surely he would have done so after Cumorah, 1100 years prior to Columbus. Even if there were no massive armed invasions of strange groups to be reported, we need not be surprised if relatively small groups of strange peoples who were neither so numerous nor so organized as to be rivals for control of the land could have been scattered or infiltrated among both Nephites and Lamanites without their constituting the “other nations” in the threatening sense of Lehi’s prophecy. Thus in the terms of Lehi’s prophecy, “others” could and probably even should have been close at hand and available for the Lord to use as instruments against the straying covenant peoples any time after the arrival of Nephi’s boat.
Archaeology, linguistics, and related areas of study have established beyond doubt that a variety of peoples inhabited virtually every place in the Western Hemisphere a long time ago (with the possible exception of limited regions which may have been more or less unpopulated for the period of a few generations at certain times). The presence of almost 1500 different languages belonging to dozens of major groupings which were found in the Americas when the Europeans arrived can be explained only by supposing that speakers of the ancestral tongues had been in America for thousands of years. The notion that “the Indians” constituted a single ethnic entity is a totally outdated one which neither scholars nor lay people can justifiably believe nowadays. Abundant facts are completely contrary to the idea. The most that is possible is that in some limited territory in a part of America Lehi’s people and those who came with Mulek had their chance to establish their own niches where they could control their own fate. But they were not given thousands of years of isolation to play with. (The Latter-day Saint pioneers in Deseret were allowed only a single generation, from 1847 until the railroad came in 1869, to do the same. After that, competing economic, social, political, and ideological systems directly challenged them, and nearly swallowed them up.)
It seems unavoidable that other peoples were in the land, somewhere, when Nephi’s boat landed on the shore of the “west sea,” and quite certainly some of them were survivors from the Jaredite people, as indicated in the book of Ether.
This is just another instance of John Dehlin being deceptive and/or ignorant.
