The Book of Mormon and DNA Research compiles all of the articles published by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship on the subject of DNA. Some scientists have claimed that recent DNA findings "prove" the Book of Mormon false. The Maxwell Institute has gathered articles from top geneticists and DNA researchers that show the DNA evidence does not prove anything about the Book of Mormon.

How does the Book of Mormon, keystone of the LDS faith, stand up to data about DNA sequencing that puts the ancestors of modern Native Americans in northeast Asia instead of Palestine? In Who Are the Children of Lehi? Meldrum and Stephens examine the merits and the fallacies of DNA-based interpretations that challenge the Book of Mormon’s historicity. They provide clear guides to the science, summarize the studies, illuminate technical points with easy-to-grasp examples, and spell out the data’s implications. The results? There is no straight-line conclusion between DNA evidence and “Lamanites.” The Book of Mormon’s validity lies beyond the purview of scientific empiricism—as it always has. And finally, inspiringly, they affirm Lehi’s kinship as one of covenant, not genes.

In the preceding pages, I have tried to show how a historical-critical view of the Book of Mormon illuminates some of its more interesting problems. Many questions remain, and many problems have yet to be discovered and analyzed. I myself have questions about the Book of Mormon's origins that I cannot yet answer. However, that fact does not diminish the certainty of my conclusion that the Book of Mormon is a modern text.

Former Mormon Anderson explores the Book of Mormon and offers a Christian response to its teaching.

Late one night in 1823, Joseph Smith, Jr., was reportedly visited in his family's farmhouse in upstate New York by an angel named Moroni. According to Smith, Moroni told him of a buried stack of gold plates that were inscribed with a history of the Americas' ancient peoples, and which would restore the pure Gospel message as Jesus had delivered it to them. Thus began the unlikely career of the Book of Mormon, the founding text of the Mormon religion, and perhaps the most important sacred text ever to originate in the United States. Here Paul Gutjahr traces the life of this book as it has formed and fractured different strains of Mormonism and transformed religious expression around the world. Gutjahr looks at how the Book of Mormon emerged from the burned-over district of upstate New York, where revivalist preachers, missionaries, and spiritual entrepreneurs of every stripe vied for the loyalty of settlers desperate to scratch a living from the land. He examines how a book that has long been the subject of ridicule--Mark Twain called it "chloroform in print"--Has more than 150 million copies in print in more than a hundred languages worldwide. Gutjahr shows how Smith's influential book launched one of the fastest growing new religions on the planet, and has been featured in everything from comic books and action figures to feature-length films and an award-winning Broadway musical.--Publisher.

Stop looking for the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica and start looking for Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon! Second Witness, a new six-volume series from Greg Kofford Books, takes a detailed, verse-by-verse look at the Book of Mormon. It marshals the best of modern scholarship and new insights into a consistent picture of the Book of Mormon as a historical document. Taking a faithful but scholarly approach to the text and reading it through the insights of linguistics, anthropology, and ethnohistory, the commentary approaches the text from a variety of perspectives: how it was created, how it relates to history and culture, and what religious insights it provides. The commentary accepts the best modern scholarship, which focuses on a particular region of Mesoamerica as the most plausible location for the Book of Mormon’s setting. For the first time, that location—its peoples, cultures, and historical trends—are used as the backdrop for reading the text. The historical background is not presented as proof, but rather as an explanatory context. The commentary does not forget Mormon’s purpose in writing. It discusses the doctrinal and theological aspects of the text and highlights the way in which Mormon created it to meet his goal of “convincing . . . the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God.”