Quality research has not been the hallmark of some Christian apologists who all too frequently shoot from the hip in their anti-LDS assertions. It was a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who claimed to prove the Book of Mormon to be fraudulent in the form of a doctoral dissertation. The study concerned the supposed absence of DNA evidence in support of the Book of Mormon.
Being open minded, the discussion required my personal, focused attention.
For those familiar with the Book of Mormon, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineage of Nephi's children (and of Laman's offspring) would come through Ishmael's wife since the four oldest sons of Lehi as well as Zoram married the five daughters of Ishmael (1 Nephi 16:7). Unfortunately, Ishmael’s wife has an unknown background and heritage. She is only mentioned twice in the Book of Mormon (see 1 Nephi 7:6, 19) and probably died prior to Ishmael’s death because she was not mentioned as being present at Ishmael’s death at Nahom (1 Nephi 16:34-35).
Additionally, there is nothing known about the background and heritage of the wives of Ishmael's two sons (see 1 Nephi 7:6) and Nephi’s sisters (2 Nephi 5:6). They would also contribute additional mtDNA lineages into the Nephite and Lamanite descendants. As a consequence, we are left without enough information from the Book of Mormon record itself to identify definitively an appropriate genetic source population that could be used to declare the Book of Mormon not true.
We know Lehi's sons would possess a copy of his Y chromosome. However, it is unverifiable whether or not these offspring would also have Manasseh, Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham in their patrilineage. This is because Lehi is listed only as "a descendant of Manasseh" in Alma 10:3. Lehi would much more likely meet the definition of a descendant of Manasseh from a large number of genealogical lineages without being in the direct patrilineal line and possessing an Abrahamic Y chromosome.
Mormon seems to indicate that Lehi was not in direct patrilineal lineage with Abraham. He uses the phrase “pure descendant of Lehi” to describe himself in 3 Nephi 5:20, thus implying that Lehi's lineage was a rarer one in Mormon's day.
The critic also failed to consider the Jaredites. The Jaredite nation, with at least 29 generations (Ether 1:6-33), existed for more than 1,500 years before the Lehites arrived on this continent. They had combinations of marriages between people whose background we know virtually nothing about. The Jaredites most likely journeyed from central Asia to northeast Asia and then via barges to the New World (see Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert; The World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites [1988], 181-82). Genetically, their path of travel would be plausibly consistent with land passage across the Bering Strait. It would not be surprising if others along that route joined them with Asian bloodlines.
Further trouble exists after the Jaredites arrived in the New World. They had hundreds of years to grow and spread across parts of the continent, reasonably encountering and intermarrying with other groups of unknown origin.
While it is possible to speculate endlessly, the record itself is simply not descriptive enough to provide authoritative calibration points with which to make confident scientific conclusions.
So we are left where we began. – in the realm of faith. We have always been told within the Book of Mormon and by prophets in the latter days, a spiritual witness is essential to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.
