why the lamanites' skin was dark

[MikeWaters]

I think one could strongly infer that the reference to skin turning dark among the Lamanites is due to their intermarriage with surrounding peoples. That would also explain now the populations increased so rapidly during Nephi's lifetime.

Really the only two possibilities I have heard before was 1) a sort of literal curse that changed the skin color and 2) a metaphor for idolatry.

This is a 3rd explanation which subsumes the first two.

[MikeWaters]

grape, if you preferred me not to call, just let me know. You're leaving me kinda in limbo which tells me you have mixed feelings about hearing from me. that's okay too.

[All-American]

In Since Cumorah, Hugh Nibley discusses the issue:

The dark skin is mentioned as the mark of a general way of life; it is a Gypsy or Bedouin type of darkness, "black" and "white" being used in their Oriental sense (as in Egyptian), black and loathsome being contrasted to white and delightsome (2 Nephi 5:21-22). We are told that when "their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes" they shall become "a white and delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:6; "a pure and delightsome people,"edition), and at the same time the Jews "shall also become a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7). Darkness and filthiness go together as part of a way of life (Jacob 3:5, 9); we never hear of the Lamanites becoming whiter, no matter how righteous they were, except when they adopted the Nephite way of life (3 Nephi 2:14-15), while the Lamanites could, by becoming more savage in their ways than their brother Lamanites, actually become darker, "a dark, filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that which ever hath been . . . among the Lamanites" (Mormon 5:15). The dark skin is but one of the marks that God places upon the Lamanites, and these marks go together; people who joined the Lamanites were marked like them (Alma 3:10); they were naked and their skins were dark (Alma 3:5-6); when "they set the mark upon themselves; . . . the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God," when he said, "I will set a mark on them. . . . I will set a mark upon him that mingleth his seed with thy brethren. . . . I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee [Nephi] and thy seed" (Alma 3:13-18). "Even so," says Alma "doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation" (Alma 3:19). By their own deliberate act they both marked their foreheads and turned their bodies dark. Though ever alert to miraculous manifestations, the authors of the Book of Mormon never refer to the transformation of Lamanites into "white and delightsome" Nephites or Nephites into "dark and loathsome" Lamanites as in any way miraculous or marvelous. When they became savage "because of their cursing" (2 Nephi 5:24), their skins became dark and they also became "loathsome" to the Nephites (2 Nephi 5:21-22). But there is nothing loathsome about dark skin, which most people consider very attractive: the darkness, like the loathsomeness, was part of the general picture (Jacob 3:9); Mormon prays "that they may once again be a delightsome people" (Words of Mormon 1:8; Mormon 5:17), but then the Jews are also to become "a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7)—are they black?

At the time of the Lord's visit, there were "neither . . . Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites," (4 Nephi 1:17;see also 3 Nephi 2:14) so that when the old titles of Lamanite and Nephite were later revived by parties deliberately seeking to stir up old hatreds, they designated religious affiliation rather than race (4 Nephi 1:38-39). From this it would seem that at that time it was impossible to distinguish a person of Nephite blood from one of Lamanite blood by appearance. Moreover, there were no pure-blooded Lamanites or Nephites after the early period, for Nephi, Jacob Joseph, and Sam were all promised that their seed would survive mingled with that of their elder brethren (2 Nephi 3:2, 23; 9:53; 10:10, 19-20; 29:13; 3 Nephi 26:8; Mormon 7:1). Since the Nephites were always aware of that mingling, which they could nearly always perceive in the steady flow of Nephite dissenters to one side and Lamanite converts to the other, it is understandable why they do not think of the terms Nephite and Lamanite as indicating race. The Mulekites, who outnumbered the Nephites better than two to one (Mosiah 25:2-4), were a mixed Near Eastern rabble who had brought no written records with them and had never observed the Law of Moses and did not speak Nephite (Omni 1:18); yet after Mosiah became their king, they "were numbered with the Nephites, and this because the kingdom had been conferred upon none but those who were descendants of Nephi" (Mosiah 25:13). From time to time large numbers of people disappear beyond the Book of Mormon frontiers to vanish in the wilderness or on the sea, taking their traditions and even written records with them (Helaman 3:3-13). What shall we call these people—Nephites or Lamanites?

And just as the Book of Mormon offers no objections whatever to the free movement of whatever tribes and families choose to depart into regions beyond its ken, so it presents no obstacles to the arrival of whatever other bands may have occupied the hemisphere without its knowledge; for hundreds of years the Nephites shared the continent with the far more numerous Jaredites, of whose existence they were totally unaware. 11 Strictly speaking, the Book of Mormon is the history of a group of sectaries preoccupied with their own religious affairs, who only notice the presence of other groups when such have reason to mingle with them or collide with them. Just as the desert tribes through whose territories Lehi's people moved in the Old World are mentioned only casually and indirectly, though quite unmistakably (1 Nephi 17:33), so the idea of other migrations to the New World is taken so completely for granted that the story of the Mulekites is dismissed in a few verses (Omni 1:14-17). Indeed, the Lord reminds the Nephites that there are all sorts of migrations of which they know nothing, and that their history is only a small segment of the big picture (2 Nephi 10:21). There is nothing whatever in the Book of Mormon to indicate that everything that is found in the New World before Columbus must be either Nephite or Lamanite. On the contrary, when Mormon boasts, "I am Mormon and a pure descendant of Lehi" (3 Nephi 5:20), we are given to understand that being a direct descendant of Lehi, as all true Nephites and Lamanites were, was really something special. We think of Zarahemla as a great Nephite capital and its civilization as the Nephite civilization at its peak; yet Zarahemla was not a Nephite city at all: its inhabitants called themselves Nephites, as we have seen, because their ruling family were Nephites who had immigrated from the south.

There were times when the Nephites, like the Jaredites, broke up into small bands, including robber bands and secret combinations, each fending for itself (3 Nephi 7:2-3). And when all semblance of centralized control disappeared, "and it was one complete revolution throughout all the face of the land" (Mormon 2:8), who is to say how far how many of these scattered groups went in their wanderings, with whom they fought, and with whom they joined? After the battle of Cumorah, the Lamanites, who had been joined by large numbers of Nephite defectors during the war, were well launched on a career of fierce tribal wars "among themselves" (Moroni 1:2). It would be as impossible to distinguish any one race among them as it would be to distinguish two; there may have been marked "racial" types, as there are now among the Indians (for example, the striking contrast of Navaho and Hopi), but the Book of Mormon makes it clear that those Nephites who went over to live with Lamanites soon came to look like Lamanites. An anthropologist would have been driven wild trying to detect a clear racial pattern among the survivors of Cumorah. So let us not oversimplify and take the Book of Mormon to task for naive conclusions and images that are really our own.

--Hugh W. Nibley, Since Cumorah (Salt Lake: Deseret Book Company, 1988), 216-219

[MikeWaters]

I agree that after a time the designation of 'nephite" and "lamanite" is arbitrary as it pertains to genes.

[Dan]

... 3 Nephi 2, a sort of matter of fact statement is made that the curse was taken from the Lamanites who joined with the Nephites.

13 And it came to pass that before this thirteenth year had passed away the Nephites were threatened with utter destruction because of this war, which had become exceedingly sore.
14 And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites;
15 And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites;
16 And their young men and their daughters became exceedingly fair, and they were numbered among the Nephites, and were called Nephites. And thus ended the thirteenth year.

I have a hard time believing the skin curse was too literal. Literal skin tone may have been a part of it, but I would guess the skin tone of the two groups were not too different. More likely that it is a figure of speech and metaphore.

[MikeWaters]

it may also indicate that the lamanites who returned to live among the nephites and married among the nephites were then considered "non-others."

Again, possibly indicating an ethnic/tribal separation.

i.e. "their posterity became as ours."

[All-American]

I'm less inclined to believe that intermarriage was a reason the Lamanites' skin was darker, based on the immediacy the change is recorded. Nephi observes that the skins were darkened in the same chapter that he recorded their own departure, so he may have seen a generation or two of the lamanites; but as Dan pointed out, upon return to the Nephites, their skins were white almost immediately.

The general assumption is that genetically, there was not much that distinguished a Lamanite from a Nephite, seeing as how the people intermingled with such frequency. Groups leave one people and join others with relative ease, making seamless transitions into the lifestyle of others. The "dark skin" does seem to have everything to do with the lifestyle of the people with whom they live. Nibley points out that the "dark skin/white skin" labeling is an oriental custom, and in applying it in the new world, Nephi was faithful to Arab practices. Those who lived out of the cities, living in tents, eating raw meat, and being exposed to the hot desert sun, naturally had darker complexions than their city-dwelling counterparts living in more sheltered circumstances and subsisting on a more delicate diet.

To me, it seems that the skin issue, as with tribal affiliation, has little to do with ancestry and everything to do with the banner you identify as your own.

Which goes a long way in explaining why literal descendents of Israel are considered gentiles before baptism, and why non-literal descendants are seamlessly grafted into the family.

[MikeWaters]

I would like to see a reference for the idea that dark/light skin is some sort of common oriential cultural reference.

[Alkili]

I've never believed that God actually cursed anyone with dark skin. Instead I believe that Man is punished for their own sins, and not anyone elses transgressions.

Blackness, and darkness is almost always used as a symbolic reference, and I have no reason to think that in this case it is anything different.

[MikeWaters]

I have no reason to believe it was anything different than symbolic except for the fact that the BoM does not really make sense if Laman et al did not marry into surrounding people. Thereby breaking the covenant, and introducing "darkness" to their posterity. These people probably looked a bit different also.

I always get the impression when I read Nephi that I am getting a highly biased account.