The following will be my commentary and excerpts from the book All Abraham's Children by Armand L. Mauss.
From the very start of the book I can tell that the author is very politically progressive or far-Left, which is fine except that it's clear that the person has a bias.
I agree with his initial assessment in the first few pages where he basically argues that as the LDS Church began to grow, through missionary efforts, to become a more globalist Church, the original doctrine of pure-blooded Ephraimites began to be less emphasized.
I did notice that he tries to combine and tie together the concept of European Ephraimites with the former "seed of Cain" doctrine (which was officially repudiated by the LDS Church in 2013). In my opinion, the seed of Cain idea, which came from Protestants, can be rejected without needing to also reject the doctrine of European Ephraimites.
I noticed the first major error in his judgmental attitude toward original Ephraimite Mormonism, when he writes on page 4:
... the Apostle Paul envisioned a world outside Jerusalem, where all mankind could become "the children of Abraham," without regard to original race, lineage, or culture.
To be honest, this is a problematic statement, given the fact that Paul himself is proud of his Benjamite Israelite heritage. Meanwhile, the whole point of the genealogy of Jesus in the gospels is in part to show that he descends from the Israelite genetic lineage through Abraham as the Davidic Messiah as an Israelite King. Furthermore, Paul was not including Gentiles without regard to original race or lineage. In reality, as I explained in my blog post here, according to biblical scholars, Matthew Thiessen is most probably correct in his scholarship: wherein Thiessen explains that Paul was literally teaching that Gentiles needed to have their genes / race literally replaced with the lineage and race of the Israelite Messiah!
Also on page 4, Mauss says that the focus on ethnic lineage and the Tribes of Israel in Mormonism, was influenced by the outside influence of British Israelism rather than LDS scripture itself. But British Israelism did not really develop and become popular until 1840. I do not see early Mormonism being influenced primarily by British Israelism but by Joseph Smith's scriptures canon and Patriarchal Blessings, all which was based on revelation. In other words, when the Book of Mormon declares that Joseph Smith Jr. is a descendant of the Israelite Joseph of the Tribe of Ephraim, you can't then blame the LDS Ephraimites doctrine on British Israelism!
There is just too much evidence of the doctrine that Indo-European converts have an Ephraimite ethnic identity within the early LDS Scriptures themselves and Patriarchal Blessings, for his argument on page 8 to be true: wherein Mauss argues that it was the Mormon expulsions to eventually Utah and refugees from the British isles, Scandinavia, Germany and other European countries, that led to "the creation of a new people, a new ethnos ..." (pg. 8). I see what he is trying to do. He is trying to water drown original Mormonism and make it a more universalist religion.
The problem is Mauss' premises are flawed. His first premise, that the pure doctrine of Paul was a non-ethnic universalist religion is wrong. The second premise, that Mormons only developed this idea of being European Ephraimites when they were in Utah is also mistaken. The problem with the first premise, as I covered above, is that Paul never taught this pure non-ethnic religion but thought that Gentiles needed to be literally transformed into Israelites. The second premise is wrong because the concept of European Ephraimites was already firmly established in LDS Scripture at the very beginning as early as 1830 through the Book of Mormon! For example on page 10 he writes that "Mormons came to understand themselves increasingly as literal Israelites rather than as the Gentiles of the Book of Mormon." I disagree with this. We can read Patriarchal Blessings early on describing many LDS members as pure-blooded Israelites from the Tribe of Ephraim.
