I can’t help it – I’m friends with Mike’s brother Lee (a science fiction writer), so when I thnk of “Allred”, I tend to think of Lee rather than Mike.

Oh, well.

for my first comment ever at BCC (I think):

You all miss the point of the BoM comic by Lee Allred.

First – It is not done “in traditional superhero style.” A statement like that only show ignorance of comic book conventions. Lee Allred is a artist who painstakingly developed a style that pays homage to traditional superhero artists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko – yet his style is very untraditional. His style subtley parodies the traditions of superhero comics – rather than traditional, it’s something new. Lee never really draws traditional superhero comics – all of his comics have an “underground” or “alternative” sensibility that often undermines the ideas of heroes.

His BoM comic is a bit more straight and a bit more iconic, but it’s anything but “traditional superhero.”

Second – the comments on this thread indicate a belief comics are for kids. They aren’t – not anymore. The average age of a comic book reader is 25 – and Lee Allred knows this. His adaptation is aimed at the comic book market – a market of twenty somethings.

Hope that clears things up.

I find real clarity, wisdom and insight in such scriptures: you get to see what each man of God felt were some of the most important aspects of the gospel.

There are exceptions (for example, 2 Nephi 4 and Ether 12 are favorite passages), but if you asked me for a genre, “counsel and blessings from a prophet near the end of his life” would be it.

First, the verses we’re talking about are principally 2Ne.5:21 “…the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them”; Jacob 3:5 “…the Lamanites… ye hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins”; Jacob 3:8 “…I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God”; Jacob 3:9 “revile no more against them because of the darkness of their skins”; Alma 3:6 “skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression”; 3Ne.2:15 “…curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites…”

1. In these verses adjectives such as “black,” “dark,” and “white” are best understood as symbolic descriptions of levels of purity–not as literal (and inaccurate) descriptions of skin color.

As I’ve heard Mauss say, if you suggest I have “thick skin,” I’m unlikely to interpret that phrase in a literal dermatological and metrological sense. Similarly, if you say I have black skin, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you mean to provide a literal description of the color of my skin.  As the Goldenberg and Byron books show (sources listed at end of comment), the symbolic usage of color is consistent with both biblical usage and cultural usage in ancient times. And Tvedtnes suggests the symbolic usage of color fits with the language of Joseph Smith’s day: “Use of the term white for the concept of purity was well attested at the time Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, as well as in his cultural context. Out of six meanings for the term given in Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, three concern purity, while only two concern color. The last concerns venerability.”

2. Is it possible that the author of the BoM verses we’re discussing did intend to imply or expressly state there is a relation between literal skin color and righteousness? Yes.
And if they did, I suggest they were unsuccessfully trying to explain the striking phenomena of different skin colors and of skin color changing over generations through intermarriage. But, because these BoM passages were written pre-Mendel, the author(s) simply did not (and could not have) understand genetic principles of inheritance, and so could not accurately explain the phenomena.

Consider that modern genetics began largely with the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900. Prior to that time (and even decades into the 1900s), most people could not share some of our basic assumptions and knowledge about how skin color or other genetic traits are passed to descendants.

3. The passages were typically written from the viewpoint of one tribe that viewed itself as more righteous than its neighboring tribe. In referring to the “other” as cursed, filthy, lazy, etc., could the Nephites have engaged in some un-Christian and inaccurate stereotyping? See as express examples of wrongful Nephite prejudice Alma 26:23-25, Mosiah 9:1-2, Jacob 3:5.
18th through 20th century America also provides many contemporary examples of this. Here’s a 1770 sample from Ben Franklin: “Perhaps you may imagine the Negroes to be a mild tempered, tractable Kind of People. Some of them indeed are so. But the Majority are of a plotting Disposition, dark, sullen, malicious, revengeful and cruel in the highest Degree.” From “A Conversation on Slavery,”in The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Volume III: London, 1757 – 1775.

4. The dominant scriptural message of the BoM is that God is not a respecter of persons, that all are alike before God, independent of ethnicity, skin color, tribe, etc. 2 Ne. 26:33 is the most well-known scripture teaching this principle. But there are many others in the BoM. See, for example, 2 Ne. 9:21; 26:13, 26:33; then 1 Ne 22:28; 2 Ne. 9:5-22; 26:25, 28, 33; Mos. 27:25, 30; 28:3; Alma 5:49; 29:2; Mormon 9:21-22, 25; Moroni 8:12;.17-18, 22.

5. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” Keep in mind that, as England wrote:

“’Lamanite’ was used in the first part of the Book of Mormon to designate the descendants of Laman, Lemuel, and others…who rebelled….and, for whatever reasons, began to appear to the Nephites as more uncivilized and dark-skinned than themselves. But the term quickly lost any legitimate racial significance as, on the one hand, various reprobate Nephite groups (Amlicites, etc.) defected to become “Lamanites” and, on the other, groups like the “Anti-Nephi-Lehies” accepted the gospel, moved to Nephite lands, and “were no more called Lamanites” (Alma 23:17). “By the time of the two-hundred-year reign of peace after Christ’s visit, there had been periods (such as under Samuel) when the “Lamanites” exceeded the “Nephites” in righteousness. Then the complete intermingling and unified righteousness after Christ produced a condition such that “neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites” among them (4 Ne. 1:17). When this Utopia dissolved about 231 a.d., “they who rejected the gospel were called Lamanites” and the “true believers in Christ” were called Nephites (4 Ne. 1:38), but the terms had again become completely devoid of genealogical or racial meaning.”

Sources (listed chronologically):
· Gene England, “‘Lamanites’ and the Spirit of the Lord.” Dialogue 18, no. 4 (1985): 25-32.
· Douglas Campbell, “‘White’ or ‘Pure’: Five Vignettes.” Dialogue 29 (4) Winter 1996: 119-135.
· Gay L. Byron, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (Routledge, 2002)
· John A. Tvedtnes, “The Charge of ‘Racism’ in the Book of Mormon ” The FARMS Review 15, no. 2 (2003): 183–98
· Armand Mauss, All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (University of Illinois Press, 2003), particularly chapter 5, pp 118-128, and on 127-28, a section entitled, “Toward a Nonracist Construction of Lamanite Identity”
· David Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (Princeton Press, 2003) principally parts 1, “Images of Blacks,” and 2, “The Color of Skin”

Alma 3:6 “And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren.”
2 Ne. 5: 21-23 “21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
..23 And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing…