Book of Mormon Questions #8 (Concept)

  To see the context for this and other questions in this series, please see the introduction, parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. 

What Is This “House of Israel” That We Are Supposed to Gather?

A concept that shows up in the Book of Mormon, and that again became quite prominent with President Nelson’s emphasis on it, is the gathering of Israel. Of course, the reason there has to be a gathering is because the house of Israel was scattered. The concept of a scattering and a gathering first appears in the Book of Mormon with Lehi. Nephi records the teachings of his father as follows: “Yea, even my father spake much concerning the Gentiles, and also concerning the house of Israel, that they should be compared like unto an olive tree whose branches should be broken off and should be scattered upon all the face of the earth. Wherefore, he said it must needs be that we should be led with one accord into the land of promise unto the fulfilling of the word of the Lord, that we should be scattered upon all the face of the earth. And after the house of Israel should be scattered they should be gathered together again; or, in fine, after the Gentiles had received the fulness of the Gospel, the natural branches of the olive-tree, or the remnants of the house of Israel, should be grafted in, or come to the knowledge of the true Messiah, their Lord and their Redeemer” (1 Ne. 10:12–14).

The metaphor referred to here, is, of course, expanded at great length in Jacob, chapter 5. And the Savior spends a lot of time instructing the Nephites about the latter-day destiny of the house of Israel during his visit to the Americas after his resurrection. I’ve often found it quite odd that he would spend so much time talking about an occurrence that really had very little to do with the people he was talking to. But that’s a question for another day. Today I’m more concerned with what exactly this house of Israel is that needs to be gathered.

A couple of years ago, Brian H. Shirts, a molecular pathologist who studies DNA sequencing and population genetics, published an article in Dialogue titled “Genetics and Gathering the House of Israel.” In the first portion of his article, he raises a lot of questions that I have wondered about. At the end of the article, he attempts a “spiritual” explanation to try to reconcile the genetic data with Church dogma, and I find it quite unconvincing. But let me quote from the first part of the article:

“It is not just possible but statistically very likely that billions of people alive today are descendants of ancestors from not just one but many of the tribes of Israel. This is particularly likely if the tribes were scattered, intermingled, and had many descendants—a definite historical possibility. So, when it comes to ancestral ties to scattered Israel, I expect that most individuals, if not everyone alive today, qualify as a literal descendant of the tribes of Israel.”¹

This is just scientific fact that has become obvious with our increased knowledge of genetics. Shirts adds, “It is unlikely that any two individuals carry traceable genetic information from any specific common ancestor if they are more than about eleventh-degree relatives (fifth cousins). . . . The human genetic code contains three billion base pairs, which are separated into about a hundred new segments each generation. By the time you get five or six generations back, there will probably be ancestors from whom you have not inherited any DNA. It is likely that you do not have a single DNA base pair attributable to most of your direct ancestors ten or more generations back. . . . Therefore, even with the best genetics possible, we are unlikely to find any genetic confirmation of ‘lost’ Israelite connections in any group living today.”

An article by Scott Hershberger, “Humans Are All More Closely Related Than We Commonly Think,” cites calculations from geneticist Graham Coop of the University of California, Davis, showing that you carry genes from fewer than half of your forebears from 11 generations back. “Because of the random reshuffling of genes in each successive generation,” writes Hershberger, “some of your ancestors contribute disproportionately to your genome, while others contribute nothing at all.”²

The upshot of this is that, as Shirts concluded, “the lost tribes of Israel are not just lost and scattered, but that anything that can be called a ‘tribe’ is completely gone. They are clearly culturally extinct and certainly genetically obsolete as a definable entity. Why should chance ancestral ties be meaningful if the ancestral connections are unidentifiable?”³

In short, population genetics tells us that there is no such entity today as the “house of Israel” to gather. The original Israelites have been scattered and diluted to the point that either nobody or everybody belongs to this supposed “house of Israel.” The gene pool is so mixed that it is impossible to identify a genetic Israelite. Although my patriarchal blessing, received when I was eighteen from my grandfather, tells me I am from the line of Ephraim, it is likely that I have just as much genetic claim to Gad or Reuben or Judah. I’m not sure what to make of patriarchal blessings. I remember my grandpa telling me about a convert couple he gave blessings to. The wife was Japanese, the husband American Caucasian of European extract. Grandpa said he declared in their blessings that the wife was of Ephraim, but the husband was a Gentile, not from any of the tribes of Israel and had to be adopted in. It seems to me that although Ephraimite descendants could easily have migrated to Japan in the misty past, the chances that a European American would have exactly zero genetic connection to any of the tribes of Israel are likely minuscule.

So, what is it exactly that our missionaries are supposed to be gathering? The extended Jacob 5 analogy of olive branches being grafted among wild trees (Gentile populations) throughout the Lord’s large orchard and then returned to the original tame olive tree (Israel) doesn’t make much sense when you consider that those branches ceased to exist millennia ago, as did the original tree. The tame branches intermingled with other branches until their original identity was diluted out of existence, and the tame tree was completely “corrupted” by the wild Gentile branches that were grafted in. All this intermixture of genes has left us with a planet full of people whose Israelite genetic makeup is so small as to be nonexistent.

In the Church, we European Americans often think of ourselves as special, of the literal blood of Israel, when nothing could be further from the truth. Ironically, according to the Book of Mormon, those of us who are of white European descent are actually considered Gentiles. “But if [we] repent and hearken unto [the Lord’s] words, and harden not [our] hearts, [he] will establish [his] church among [us], and [we] shall come in unto the covenant and be numbered among this the remnant of Jacob, unto whom [he has] given this land for their inheritance” (3 Ne. 21:22).

 In 3 Nephi 21, Jesus gives a sign to the ancient Nephites and Lamanites who have survived the mass destruction that they can know when he will “gather in from their long dispersion, my people, O house of Israel, and shall again establish among them my Zion” (v. 1). That sign is the Book of Mormon coming forth to the Gentiles, “that they may know concerning this people who are a remnant of the house of Jacob and concerning this my people who shall be scattered by them” (v. 2). Then these things (the Book of Mormon) will “come forth from them [the Gentiles] unto a remnant of your seed [the Native American tribes], that the covenant of the Father may be fulfilled which he hath covenanted with his people, O house of Israel” (v. 4).

Those Gentiles who do not believe the Book of Mormon will then “be cut off from among my people who are of the covenant. And my people who are a remnant of Jacob [Native Americans] shall be among the Gentiles . . . as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver” (vv. 11–12). This is what happens to the Gentiles who do not repent. But if we repent, we can be numbered among “this the remnant of Jacob, unto whom I have given this land for their inheritance” (v. 22). Then, we can “assist my people, the remnant of Jacob [Native Americans], and also as many of the house of Israel as shall come [the lost tribes?], that they may build a city, which shall be called the New Jerusalem” (v. 23).

Things haven’t quite worked out as the Book of Mormon predicted. The Native Americans, along with converted Gentiles, didn’t go through and tear in pieces the wicked Gentiles. No, the remnant of Jacob ended up on reservations; by and large, they rejected the Book of Mormon; and the building of the city of New Jerusalem, which Joseph Smith claimed would be in Jackson County, Missouri, was not only abandoned but is now rarely spoken of.

The Book of Mormon, however, speaks of the house of Israel as a clearly identifiable entity that will be gathered to New Jerusalem (3 Ne. 21:24). And, of course, latter-day prophets and apostles have also spoken of the house of Israel as a distinct entity—scattered among the nations of the world, yes—but an identifiable covenant people of the Lord who are just waiting to be found. Our tenth Article of Faith talks about a “literal gathering of Israel” and a “restoration of the Ten Tribes.” But in today’s world, a person of Israelite descent is either everybody or nobody, depending on how you view genetic makeup. And dividing people into the original lost Ten Tribes would be an exercise in randomization.

So, what exactly is the house of Israel? I haven’t a clue.

 

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1. Brian H. Shirts, “Genetics and Gathering the House of Israel,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 56, no. 1 (2023): 131, italics in original.

2. Scott Hershberger, “Humans Are All More Closely Related Than We Commonly Think,” October 5, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/.

3. Shirts, “Genetics,” 132.