Principal Ancestors

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Michael R. Ash, you don’t know what you’re missing. Mike Ash is a member of FAIR (the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research) and the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome, a great book for those that have some basic unanswered questions about the Church. Mike also has a column on Mormon Times entitled Challenging Issues, Keeping the Faith, and it is this last one that brings us to this blog entry.

In Mr. Ash’s latest column, Book of Mormon DNA issue one of science, not theology, Ash points out that “it’s ironic that critics—who do not believe in LDS prophets—claim Mormons must accept every word spoken by every LDS general authority as the inerrant word of God.” While I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment (as did President George Albert Smith, who expressly refuted the idea that “when our leaders speak, the thinking has been done”), I couldn’t help but disagree with one of his examples. I therefore post an open letter to Mr. Ash, regarding his treatment of the “principal ancestors” doctrine. I am emailing Mr. Ash a link to this page, so we’ll see what he has to say about it. :-)

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Mr. Ash,

I have been reading your articles for a while now, and I actually own a copy of your book Shaken Faith Syndrome (which is wonderful, by the way; thank you!). By and large, I love your work and am greatly appreciative of all you do. However, I found something in the course of your latest Mormon Times column that I think warrants more study: the concept of the “principal ancestors.”

Of course, we all know that the introduction to the Book of Mormon is not scripture; it’s an introduction, full stop. Similarly, we all know that in the last few years, the pertinent phrase in the introduction was changed from “the principal ancestors” to “among the ancestors.” (As an aside, it’s actually not “among the principal ancestors,” as you stated in your column; the word “principal” has been removed entirely.) What I think people are generally ignoring is that, even if we accept that the Lehites were not the only people in the “Promised Land” (which, IMHO, the Book of Mormon itself makes abundantly clear), the previous introduction is still correct!

Let’s consider the term in question: “principal.” What does this word mean? I turn to my Oxford American Dictionary and find the following:

prin•ci•pal | 'prinsǝpǝl |
adjective [ attrib. ]
1 first in order of importance; main: the country’s principal cities.
2 (of money) denoting an original sum invested or lent: the principal amount of your investment

The definition then continues on to the nounal sense of the word, which is irrelevant to our discussion as we are obviously dealing with an adjective. Furthermore, we can ignore sense 2 of the adjectival definition, as even the most hardened “anti-Mormon” must concede that, if the Lamanites existed, their relationship to modern American Indians has nothing to do with financial matters. ;-)

So this brings us back to sense one. It has been my experience that when people read the old passage, they understood it to mean that while later ancestors did indeed intermarry with other peoples, the Lamanites still constituted the majority ancestry of the American Indians. This, however, is not what the word “principal” means: it has nothing to do with quantity and everything to do with importance.

So let’s return to the introduction, which explains that “The Book of Mormon is … a record of God’s dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas.” This is the context of the “principal ancestors” statement. As far as the Book of Mormon (and the Church) is concerned, the principal ancestors of the American Indians would be those ancestors that are most important—most relevant—to achieving the purposes set forth in the preceding title page (which, incidentally, is scripture).

In my humble opinion, the original introduction was very much accurate and did not really need to be changed, per se. Much like the changes in the Book of Mormon itself, they came about not because the original was wrong, but to enhance the understanding of a people that just weren’t getting it.

My 2¢; hope you’ll enjoy them. :-)