Really not even a poor translation since the Bible never says anything about the color of Ham's or Canaan's skin. Somehow because of the similarities of the words in Hebrew, some ancient rabbis connected Ham with "dark." Then Muslims associated the curse with black slavery (Muslims started the African slave trade in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 700s). In more modern times Southern slave owners used the same faulty reasoning to justify slavery and twisting Scripture to back it up.
As for Mormonism and the belief that blacks were demons or devils, I didn't see any of that either. Like Ivy said, that had to do with the so-called Mark of Cain. In the Bible the Mark of Cain has nothing to do with race or color, and his descendants would have been wiped out in the Great Flood.
It's important to remember the distinction between the "mark" put on Cain and the "curse" put on Cain. The
curse was that Cain was cut off from God, the earth would not yield to him when he tilled it, and he would be a fugitive and a vagabond. The
mark was indeed a skin of blackness. It was put on him and his descendants by the Lord so that the descendants of Adam and Eve's righteous children would not marry the descendants of Cain. It wasn't a separation based on skin color, per se, but on those who were living righteously and those who were not. Skin color was simply to enforce the distinction. For those who take the time to read and understand all this, it's not offensive at all. But in our politically correct-driven times, where people have such a knee-jerk reaction to anything about race, few seem to be able to do this.
Historically, the same Muslims who justified their black slavery on the Curse of Canaan merged it with the Mark of Cain, so that the two curses merged into one. I don't know if there's been changes in teaching, but from Bruce McConkie's book "Mormon Doctrine," it says that Ham married Egyptus, a descendant of Cain, whose line somehow avoided the flood.
That's correct. The mark and curse of Cain was perpetuated through Ham's wife. Ham, of course, was one of Noah's sons. Both of them were among the 8 people who survived the flood by going into the ark.
While the concept of blacks being less valiant in pre-mortality being a possible reason for them not having the Priesthood was mentioned now and again by a few individual leaders of the Church prior to 1978, it was never an officially accepted doctrine by the Church as a whole. It's important to make that distinction. And more recently, if one reads the Church's most recent press release on the subject, that belief is not accepted by the Church.
The doctrine of pre-existence is interesting in itself. Joseph Smith taught that "God is an exalted man" and that human spirits are eternal -- not created by God, but have always existed, just like God (except for him being a man). There was (is?) a Council of Gods with a Head God, that met before creating human beings. This can be found here at the LDS website:
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1971/04/the-king-follett-sermon?lang=engThat's mostly true. One of the most amazing things Joseph Smith brought to the world was a correct idea of the character of God which he received through direct revelation and not man-made philosophy and conjecture. Joseph once said, "Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject." Through a sermon at the funeral of a member who had recently died was one of the times Joseph revealed that God was not some formless, invisible entity "without body, parts, or passions" but actually an exalted, glorified man with a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man's. Joseph revealed that God the Father and the Son (Jesus Christ) were two separate, distinct beings and the Son also had a glorified body of flesh and bone like the Father; and, in fact, exactly resembled the Father in every feature. The third member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, was also distinct from the other two but was a personage of spirit and had not yet taken on a physical body through mortality. Joseph taught that, as we are now, God once was. Namely that he lived life on an earth like we do now (and like His Son did), and went through mortality before entering into His exaltation. Therefore, God Himself has a God and so on. This, of course, meant that as God now is, we can become. In other words, God and man are all of the same race. The difference is of
degree, not of
kind.
We have always existed in eternity. First as intelligences. From there God created our spirits, so He is literally the Father of our spirits. Jesus (known as Jehovah in pre-mortality) was the firstborn of these spirits. So, yes, there are "Gods many, and Lords many" as it says in the New Testament. But, as Joseph pointed out, we are only beholden to
our God. The "council" you mentioned was when God the Father gathered His children and presented to them a plan or way that they could become like Him. This involved them entering mortality, living on an earth, dying, and being resurrected just like He had been. Involved in this plan was also a Savior being chosen to redeem mankind from sin. This is where the war in heaven resulted, as Lucifer (Satan) had a very different idea from the Father and the Son about what the plan would entail. After Lucifer and his followers were cast out, Jehovah, Michael (Adam), and others created this earth under the direction of the Father. I know this is deep doctrine for many.
Some of this can be found in the online version of Bruce McConkie's "Mormon Doctrine" here:
https://archive.org/details/MormonDoctrine (this says it's the 1966 edition, but it's really newer than that since it talks about changes that occurred in 1978, so some of the harsher language was removed from this updated version). Type in the word "negro" or "negroes" in the search box. The 1851 edition of "Pearl of Great Price" is here:
https://archive.org/details/PearlOfGreatPrice1851. You can search the word "black" and find out Joseph Smith's views. I'm sure other original documents are available on Google Books or archive.org. So historical Mormon teachings didn't teach that blacks were demons, but they had plenty of other racist teachings nonetheless.
I'm familiar with all of these and, like I said above, if one understands the doctrine (and much of it is deep doctrine), there is nothing "racist" about it. But we're dealing with "meat" here, and many can barely take in "milk" when it comes to spiritual things.
It seems those who are so quick to try and paint Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Brunce McConkie, or other LDS leaders as racists - by cherrypicking and misprepresenting certain scriptures or statements - choose to overlook other LDS scripture that talks about how God is "no respecter" of persons. That all, "male and female, black and white, bond and free" can be partakers of eternal life. It is only the righteous that are "favored" of God.
There is a chapter in the Book of Mormon (Jacob 3) where the prophet Jacob chastises his people for thinking they are better than their brethren because they (the Nephites) have white skin and their brethren (the Lamanites) have dark skin. Jacob points out that the Lamanites at that time were more acceptable to God because they were living more righteously than the Nephites.
