Is it Mormon doctrine that descendants of Cain cannot hold the Priesthood? Does the Book of Abraham provide the reason why blacks couldn hold the priesthood?
There is no official LDS doctrine that explains why the Church had the policy – not doctrine – of temporarily limiting the priesthood by race. In their attempts to explain the policy, many LDS people, even leaders, sought to craft explanations to rationalize the practice. Some hypothesized that blacks might have been less valiant in some way in the premortal existence – an idea that is now repudiated, being utterly unjustified and non-doctrinal. More frequently, LDS people saw Abraham 1 as providing an explanation for the exclusion. But this is based on what appears to be an erroneous interpretation of Abraham 1 and the LDS scriptures. Abraham 1 states that Pharaoh, a descendant of Ham, was of the lineage that did not have the “right to priesthood.” It was assumed that Ham married a descendant of Cain – though the text does NOT say this – and that this (so the argument goes) is why Pharaoh could not have the priesthood. But wait a second: it doesn’t say that he could not have the pries
