Linguistic Evidence

    The fact that there is no trace of Hebrew in the languages spoken by indigenous groups in North, Central, and South America is extremely problematic. Some apologists have argued that this fact is no call for alarm, as it is not uncommon for languages to be obliterated when new cultures move in and dominate. That all traces of a language spoken for a thousand years can utterly vanish is questionable, but true or not, this theory depends on the notion that the Nephites and Lamanites were not alone in the promised land. As Mormon scholars Matt Roper and John Sorenson recognized:

“Indications are strong that there was considerable linguistic differentiation in Mesoamerica as early as 1500 B.C… this means that the old supposition by some Latter-day Saints that the Hebrew tongue used by Lehi's and Mulek's immigrant parties became foundational for all ancient American languages is impossible.”¹

    They admit, then, that there were civilizations in the Americas at least 900 years before Lehi arrived. But to preserve the historicity of the Book of Mormon, they must reduce the Nephites and Lamanites to a speck among a vast hemisphere of diversity. The problem here is that there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of outsiders in the Book of Mormon, itself. On the contrary, it explicitly states that the Lord had kept the promised land from the knowledge of other nations.

   After combing through the Book of Mormon, Brent Metcalfe noted:

“When ancestry is identified, all post-Jaredite peoples—Nephites and non- Nephites, good and bad, groups and individuals—consistently trace their pedigree back to the founding Israelite immigrants. Ammon, for instance, says that he is "a descendant of Zarahemla" (Mosiah 7:13; see also v.3) who "was a descendant of Mulek, and those who came with him into the wilderness" (Mosiah 25:2), and Mulek was "the son of Zedekiah" the Jewish King (Hel. 6:10; cf. Omni 1:15). Nephite dissident Coriantumr "was [also] a descendant of Zarahemla" (Hel. 1:15)…”²

Couple this fact with the innumerable declarations from church authorities concerning the Lamanites being scattered across both continents and over the Pacific, and it’s difficult to maintain the notion that the Lamanites and their language were swallowed up and lost.

    Assuming that there were no “others” and that the Lamanites are alive and well, the focus returns to the problems of a disappearing language. It is simply not scientifically viable that New World languages, springing from a common Hebrew source, could become so numerous and diverse in such a short period of time. Noting the existence of not only various dialects, but also entirely different language stocks in the Americas, B.H. Roberts grappled with this fact:

“if… the difference between the Cakchiquel and Maya dialects could not have arisen in less than 2,000 years, how many thousand years would it require to produce language stocks—which are so much more widely divergent than dialects? And from the Book of Mormon standpoint, it should be remembered, all these stocks came into existence since the Nephite debacle at Cumorah 400 A.D.”³

¹ “Before DNA,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, p. 17, quoted in Salt Lake City Messenger

² "Reinventing Lamanite Identity," by Brent Lee Metcalfe, Sunstone, March 2004, pp. 21-23.

³ B. H. Roberts, Studies of the Book of Mormon, ed. Brigham D. Madsen (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992) p. 81.