LDS Discussions — A Faithful Response

Come Follow Me: The Curse of Dark Skin in 2 Nephi 5

A scholarly examination of the curse, the mark, and what the Book of Mormon actually teaches — against the misreading advanced by ldsdiscussions.com

The Charge

In January 2020, ldsdiscussions.com published a lengthy critique centering on a discrepancy between the printed and online versions of the Come, Follow Me manual. The printed edition quoted Joseph Fielding Smith (1960) to the effect that “the dark skin was the sign of the curse” while the online edition was revised to clarify that the Lamanites’ curse was spiritual — being “cut off from [the Lord’s] presence” (2 Nephi 5:20). LDS Discussions characterizes this revision as “gaslighting” and “whitewashing,” arguing that the text of the Book of Mormon is unambiguous: dark skin is the curse, and the church is retroactively rewriting its own doctrine under social pressure.

The critique rests on four pillars: (1) a flat reading of 2 Nephi 5:21–23; (2) Alma 3:6 and Jacob 3:5 as supposed confirmation that skin color is the curse; (3) a parade of historical leader quotations; and (4) the broader claim that the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century document reflecting the racial assumptions of its time. Each of these pillars collapses under careful textual, linguistic, and archaeological scrutiny.

The Text Distinguishes the Curse from the Mark

The most consequential error in the LDS Discussions argument is the conflation of two grammatically and theologically distinct elements in the text. Read 2 Nephi 5:20–21 without presupposition:

“Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence.” (2 Nephi 5:20)

Verse 20 defines the curse plainly: being “cut off from the presence of the Lord.” Verse 21 then introduces a second action: the Lord additionally caused “a skin of blackness to come upon them” — explicitly so that “they might not be enticing” to the Nephites. The grammar is not ambiguous. The verse introduces a new causal clause (for behold … the Lord God did cause) that is subordinate to, not equivalent with, the curse already defined in verse 20.

This reading is not a modern invention to placate critics. Joseph Fielding Smith himself — the very source ldsdiscussions.com cites — wrote in the same passage: “The dark skin was the sign of the curse. The curse was the withdrawal of the Spirit of the Lord.” The printed manual accurately captures that statement. The critics then accuse the church of gaslighting for distinguishing curse from sign — yet their own primary source makes exactly that distinction.

The distinction is also structurally confirmed throughout the Book of Mormon. In Alma 23:18, converted Lamanites were described as people from whom “the curse of God did no more follow them.” No passage in the text ever says their skin changed when they accepted the gospel in large numbers; the curse — spiritual separation — was lifted regardless of outward appearance. When 3 Nephi 2:14–16 does describe a skin change, it follows covenant entry and again confirms that the mark was secondary and removable, not the essential nature of what had been imposed.

What Is the “Skin of Blackness”? The Scholarly Landscape

Once the curse/mark distinction is established, the crucial question becomes: what was this “skin of blackness”? Multiple lines of serious scholarship converge on a non-racial answer.

1. Ancient Near Eastern Treaty-Curse Language

T. J. Uriona, writing in BYU Studies Quarterly (Vol. 62, No. 3, 2023), demonstrates that the phrase “skin of blackness” belongs to a well-attested genre of ancient Near Eastern treaty-curse language. The Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon (c. 672 BC) — a Neo-Assyrian suzerainty document — contains a strikingly parallel formulation: “May they make your skin … as black as pitch.” This is a divine imprecation upon covenant-breakers, not a description of an ethnic or racial category. Uriona identifies extensive intertextuality between Nephi’s account and Mosaic covenant formulations, placing 2 Nephi 5 within an ancient literary tradition where “blackening” expressed spiritual death and covenant violation — not phenotypic change.

Biblical usage confirms this. In Lamentations and Nahum, “blackened faces” describe divine judgment; the idiom operates in the same register as “white as snow” describing forgiveness in Isaiah 1:18. Origen and Augustine employed precisely this black/white symbolism to describe spiritual states, not race. Brant Gardner, in his Second Witness commentary, shows that in ancient Semitic thought “colors have social meanings quite separate from describing the eye’s perception of light waves” — “black heart” describes a quality of character, not skin pigment.

2. The Levitical Tattoo Interpretation

Clifford P. Jones, in the Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, identifies the “skin of blackness” as a forbidden Levitical tattoo — an incision mark prohibited by Leviticus 19:28 (“Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh … nor print any marks upon you”). The Hebrew term qaaqa in that verse specifically denotes “incision, imprintment, or tattoo.” The mark of the Amlicites in Alma 3:13 confirms this: they “set the mark upon themselves” with red foreheads. Mormon explicitly equates this self-imposition with God “setting a mark,” demonstrating that divine cursing operates through human agency and choice.

The Amlicite episode is the decisive internal control for the entire question. The Amlicites were ethnic Nephites who defected to the Lamanites and “marked themselves in their foreheads.” They were not a racially distinct population; they were dissident members of the Nephite community who adopted the Lamanite mark as a badge of political and spiritual rebellion. Mormon comments: “Now the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God” (Alma 3:18). If the “skin of blackness” were a miraculous, God-imposed change in melanin production, Amlicites could not simply “mark themselves” to fulfill it. The text internally invalidates the racial-transformation reading.

3. Mesoamerican Archaeological Evidence

Researchers drawing on Mesoamerican archaeology — including studies published by Scripture Central and the Interpreter Foundation — have documented that tattooing and ceremonial body paint were pervasive in ancient Mesoamerica from at least 1400 BC among the Olmec and continuing through the Classic Maya. Thompson’s research records Maya tattooing performed by cutting skin with stone lancets and filling the incisions with black pigment, applied to foreheads, chins, cheeks, and torsos. Early Spanish accounts describe indigenous peoples bearing “cursed figure marks in black color by piercing the flesh.”

Furthermore, in the critical scene in Alma 55:4–9, a single Lamanite soldier with Nephite captors successfully passes as one of them — indicating that Nephites and Lamanites were not visually distinguishable by skin complexion in the ordinary sense. If a “skin of blackness” meant a permanently and visibly darkened complexion across an entire population, this infiltration episode would be impossible. The text itself, read carefully, argues against the racialized interpretation.

4. The Insider/Outsider Social Boundary Reading

Brant Gardner and other scholars have argued that the “white and delightsome” / “dark and loathsome” binary in the Book of Mormon functions as an insider/outsider social designation, not a racial description. The primary mechanism of the “mark” was social separation to prevent intermarriage — explicitly stated in the text. This parallels Israel’s prohibitions against marrying Canaanites, which operated on religio-political rather than racial grounds. FAIR’s analysis observes that “when Lamanites cross group boundaries (becoming Nephites), they immediately become ‘white’” — which would be biologically impossible if describing actual skin pigmentation, but entirely coherent if “white” describes covenant membership and “dark” describes outsider status.

Responding to Alma 3:6 and Jacob 3:5

LDS Discussions cites Alma 3:6 (“the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them”) and Jacob 3:5 (“the cursing which hath come upon their skins”) as proof that skin color is indisputably the curse. These verses do describe the mark using language associated with the curse — but this is fully consistent with the curse/sign model. A sign of a curse can itself be described as a “curse” by metonymy; this is standard biblical idiom. In Genesis 4, Cain received a “mark” placed by God; scholars including E. A. Speiser have long noted that Cain’s mark was a forehead marking, not a skin color change, yet it is described in cursing language.

The fatal problem with the LDS Discussions reading of these verses is that Alma 3 also records that the Amlicites received “the same curse” by marking themselves. If the Alma 3 “curse upon the skins” meant a miraculous change in skin color produced by divine fiat, Nephite apostates cannot fulfill it through voluntary self-marking. The only coherent reading of both passages together is that the “curse upon the skins” refers to a visible mark — a tattoo or body marking — that could be adopted by any covenant-breaker regardless of ancestry.

The Historical Quotations: Fallible Men, Not Infallible Revelation

LDS Discussions marshals a series of historical statements by church leaders — Orson Pratt (1840), Spencer W. Kimball (1960), LeGrand Richards (1978), Wilford Woodruff, and others — that do apply the “skin of blackness” concept racially to Native Americans. These statements are real, they were harmful, and the Church of Jesus Christ has explicitly and formally disavowed them. No serious apologist defends these statements as accurate or inspired.

But the argument of LDS Discussions is not merely that these leaders said wrong things — the argument is that these wrong interpretations are required by the text, and therefore the text is itself racist. That argument fails for the reasons already established. Leaders misread the text by importing 19th-century racial assumptions onto ancient covenant-curse and mark language. The misreading was theirs, not the text’s. The Church’s Race and the Priesthood Gospel Topics Essay (2013) acknowledges this directly: “Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”

The LDS claim has never been that every statement by every church leader is inerrant revelation. The ninth Article of Faith states that “God will yet reveal many great and important things.” Progressive understanding is built into the theology. What ldsdiscussions.com presents as devastating contradiction is, within Latter-day Saint epistemology, an expected feature of a living faith that progressively corrects cultural accretions.

The 19th-Century Authorship Argument

The site argues that racial skin-curse theology proves 19th-century authorship, citing the surrounding cultural environment and referencing View of the Hebrews and Dan Vogel’s Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon. This argument is circular: it assumes the racialized reading of the text, then uses that assumed reading as evidence for a cultural origin of the text. If the textual, archaeological, and linguistic evidence supports a non-racial interpretation — as argued above — then the supposed 19th-century parallel evaporates.

Furthermore, the 19th-century cultural environment argument cuts both ways. ANE treaty-curse language, Levitical tattoo prohibitions, Mesoamerican body-paint traditions, and the Amlicite self-marking episode are not things Joseph Smith had access to in 1829 rural New York. View of the Hebrews says nothing about ancient Assyrian suzerainty treaties or Levitical qaaqa incision marks. The elements of the Book of Mormon that point toward a non-racial, ancient Near Eastern interpretation are precisely the elements that are hardest to explain as 19th-century products.

The Come Follow Me Revision: Correction, Not Cover-Up

LDS Discussions characterizes the revision of the Come, Follow Me manual as “gaslighting” — dishonest erasure of what the church has always taught. The argument is that if the correct interpretation had always been “the curse is spiritual separation,” God would have ensured this was stated clearly from the beginning, not added under social pressure in 2020.

This objection misunderstands the nature of scripture interpretation across time. The revised online statement — “In Nephi’s day the curse of the Lamanites was that they were ‘cut off from [the Lord’s] presence’” — is not a fabricated new reading. It is a direct quotation of 2 Nephi 5:20 itself. Joseph Fielding Smith made precisely this distinction in 1960. The error in the printed edition was importing a quote written for a different context and failing to contextualize it within the explicit definition already provided by verse 20.

The Church’s statement that the printed version contained “material that doesn’t reflect the church’s current views” is accurate and honest. The online revision brings the curriculum into alignment with what the text of 2 Nephi 5 actually says — something that required no change to the scripture itself, only the removal of editorial material that had imported racial assumptions onto it.

What the Book of Mormon Actually Teaches About Race

LDS Discussions omits the Book of Mormon’s own consistent counter-testimony to racial hierarchy. Nephi wrote: “[The Lord] inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33). Jacob — the very chapter LDS Discussions cites for the skin curse — actually rebukes the “white and delightsome” Nephites for their pride and tells them the supposedly-cursed Lamanites “are more righteous than you” (Jacob 3:5). The theological center of the narrative repeatedly subverts ethnic pride and insists that righteousness — not lineage, not complexion — determines standing before God.

Joseph Smith’s 1840 change of “white and delightsome” to “pure and delightsome” in 2 Nephi 30:6 — which LDS Discussions implies is suspicious revision — was not social capitulation; it aligned the text with the spiritual register in which “white/black” language consistently operates throughout the Book of Mormon. “Pure” is the theological category the text describes from the beginning.

Summary of the Apologetic Case

Seven Points the Critique Cannot Overcome

  • The text defines the curse in verse 20, not verse 21. Being “cut off from the presence of the Lord” is the curse. The skin mark is introduced as a secondary, functional measure in a new clause.
  • Joseph Fielding Smith — the critics’ own source — distinguishes the sign from the curse. His full 1960 statement, which the printed manual quoted selectively, explicitly says “the dark skin was the sign of the curse” and “the curse was the withdrawal of the Spirit of the Lord.”
  • The Amlicite episode is an internal, textual refutation of the racial-transformation reading. Ethnic Nephites fulfilled “the curse upon the skins” by self-marking (Alma 3:13, 18). A miraculous pigmentation change cannot be voluntarily self-applied.
  • The Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon provides an exact ANE parallel for skin-blackening as covenant-curse language — predating the Book of Mormon by over two centuries and entirely unknown to 1829 rural New York.
  • Alma 55 demonstrates no visible racial distinction between Nephites and Lamanites: a single Lamanite passes undetected among Nephite soldiers, which would be impossible if “skin of blackness” meant a dramatically different complexion.
  • Mesoamerican tattooing practices document black-pigment incision marks from 1400 BC onward, providing real-world New World evidence for non-genetic “skin of blackness” marks tied to group identity and ritual.
  • The Book of Mormon’s own theology is anti-racist. 2 Nephi 26:33, Jacob 3:5, and 4 Nephi all explicitly undermine ethnic hierarchy, condemn Nephite pride, and insist God extends equal covenant access regardless of ancestry.

Conclusion

The ldsdiscussions.com critique of the Come, Follow Me revision rests on a single exegetical mistake: treating a sign of the curse as the curse itself. Once that equation is examined rather than assumed, it fails against the internal evidence of the Book of Mormon, the ancient Near Eastern literary context of covenant-curse language, the Levitical framework for prohibited marks, and the archaeological evidence for Mesoamerican tattooing practices. None of these evidences were available to 19th-century readers — and none of them are consistent with the racial-transformation reading the site defends.

The revised Come, Follow Me statement is more accurate to the Book of Mormon text than the Joseph Fielding Smith quotation printed in error — not because the church is embarrassed by its scriptures, but because the scriptures themselves, read carefully in their ancient context, do not teach what the critics claim they teach. The curse in 2 Nephi 5 is spiritual separation from God. That is exactly what verse 20 says. The answer to that curse — as the entire Book of Mormon attests — is repentance and return to the covenant, available to every person regardless of ancestry or complexion.

President Russell M. Nelson has declared: “The Lord has stressed his essential doctrine of equal opportunity for his children. Differences in culture, language, gender, race, and nationality fade into insignificance as the faithful enter the covenant path and come unto our beloved Redeemer.” That statement is not social accommodation. It is the testimony of 2 Nephi 26:33 — written by the same Nephi who recorded the curse — made modern.

Sources and Further Reading

T. J. Uriona, “Life and Death, Blessing and Cursing: New Context for ‘Skin of Blackness’ in the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly 62, no. 3 (2023). scholarsarchive.byu.edu

Clifford P. Jones, “Understanding the Lamanite Mark,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. interpreterfoundation.org

“Demythicizing the Lamanites’ Skin of Blackness,” Interpreter Foundation. interpreterfoundation.org

Brant Gardner, “What Does the Book of Mormon Mean by ‘Skin of Blackness’?” FAIR Latter-day Saints. fairlatterdaysaints.org

“The Lamanite Curse,” FAIR Latter-day Saints. fairlatterdaysaints.org

C. Wilkins Turner, “The Lamanite Mark,” BYU Religious Studies Center. rsc.byu.edu

“What Is the ‘Skin of Blackness’ in the Book of Mormon?” Scripture Central. scripturecentral.org

Michael Austin, “Separation Is the Curse: An Urgent Re-reading of 2 Nephi 5:21,” By Common Consent (February 2020). bycommonconsent.com

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Race and the Priesthood,” Gospel Topics Essays. churchofjesuschrist.org