The Parallels Catalogued by the Church’s Own Historian
View of the Hebrews (Ethan Smith, Poultney, Vermont, 1823) argued that the American Indians were the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. Published seven years before the Book of Mormon, it shares that book’s entire framework: Israelites migrating to the New World, dividing into a civilized and a savage people, warring for centuries until the savages destroy the civilized — all told with heavy quotation of Isaiah on the scattering and gathering of Israel.
Unlike the phrase-level echoes of The Late War, these parallels are thematic and structural — the shared skeleton of the story rather than shared sentences. This document lays them out side by side, notes why the comparison carries unusual weight, and gives the strongest objections a fair hearing.
Why this comparison carries unusual weight
The Church’s own historian catalogued it. In 1921–22, at the request of Church leadership, B. H. Roberts — a member of the First Council of the Seventy and the Church’s foremost defender of the Book of Mormon — wrote a 291-page study and an eighteen-point “Parallel” comparing the two books. He concluded the similarities were, cumulatively, “so serious a menace to Joseph Smith’s story of the Book of Mormon’s origin.”
The report was kept confidential for decades. Roberts’s study was written only for the First Presidency and the Twelve and was not published until 1985 (University of Illinois Press).
Joseph Smith knew the book — and endorsed it. In June 1842, the Church newspaper Times and Seasons (edited by Joseph Smith) cited View of the Hebrews by name as supporting evidence that the American Indians were of Israelite origin.
A plausible line of transmission exists. Ethan Smith was pastor of the Congregational church in Poultney, Vermont (1821–1826) where he wrote the book — and Oliver Cowdery, who became Joseph’s principal scribe, grew up in Poultney, his stepmother and half-sisters belonging to that congregation. (In fairness, no document proves Oliver read it; see the response section.)
Roberts stressed that a source relationship does not require word-for-word copying — what mattered was that “many things of similarity and the cumulative force of them” pointed to View of the Hebrews as possible structural material for the Book of Mormon.
What View of the Hebrews argues
Ethan Smith’s thesis (a common one in his day, advanced by dozens of writers): the ten tribes of Israel, exiled by Assyria around 721 BC, migrated to the Americas; the more civilized among them long maintained their culture but were eventually overrun and largely destroyed by their own “savage” brethren, leaving the Indian mounds as the ruins of that lost civilization; and it is the destiny of American Christians to restore these “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He supports this with Isaiah’s prophecies of scattering and gathering, and with reports of Hebrew-like customs, buried records, and relics among the natives.
The parallels
Roberts’s eighteen-point list, expanded with details from his longer study and from later analysts (Fawn Brodie, David Persuitte, George D. Smith). Each row pairs what View of the Hebrews says with the corresponding Book of Mormon feature.
| View of the Hebrews (Ethan Smith, 1823) | The Book of Mormon (1830) |
|---|---|
| 1. Native Americans are of Israelite descent | |
| The book’s central thesis: the American Indians are literal descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel, and their language derives from Hebrew. | Lehi’s and Mulek’s colonies are Israelites (of Manasseh and Judah); their descendants, the Lamanites, are the ancestors of the American Indians. (1 Nephi 5; Alma 10:3) |
| 2. A long, providential migration from the Old World to the New | |
| The tribes journey out of Assyria, religiously motivated, traveling north, entering valleys, crossing water barriers, over a period of years, into an uninhabited land. | Lehi’s family and the Jaredites journey from the Near East — divinely led, through wilderness and valleys, across the ocean — to a promised land “kept … from the knowledge of other nations.” (1 Nephi 17–18; Ether 2; 2 Nephi 1:8) |
| 3. Isaiah quoted heavily on the scattering and gathering of Israel | |
| Ethan Smith quotes Isaiah extensively to argue for the future gathering and restoration of scattered Israel. | The Book of Mormon reproduces roughly eighteen chapters of Isaiah — concentrated on the same theme of Israel’s scattering and latter-day gathering. (1 Nephi 20–21; 2 Nephi 6–24) |
| 4. America’s role in restoring the “lost sheep” | |
| American Christians have a “primary agency in restoring those lost sheep of the house of Israel” — the Gentiles will carry the gospel to the native remnant. | The latter-day Gentiles will bring the gospel (and the record itself) to the Lamanite remnant of Israel; the book is addressed “to the remnant of the house of Israel.” (Book of Mormon title page; 1 Nephi 13–15) |
| 5. One people divides into a civilized and a savage nation | |
| Quoting von Humboldt: Israel “brought … a considerable degree of civilization”; but “others fell into the hunting and consequent savage state.” | The single family divides into the Nephites (settled, literate, civilized) and the Lamanites (wandering hunters), a split that defines the entire narrative. (2 Nephi 5) |
| 6. Centuries of war, ending in the savages destroying the civilized | |
| The “barbarous hordes invaded their more civilized brethren, and eventually annihilated most of them.” | After a thousand years of war, the Lamanites exterminate the Nephites in a final battle — hundreds of thousands dead at Cumorah. (Mormon 6) |
| 7. The savage branch is cursed / judged and made idle hunters | |
| The degenerate branch had been “judged” by God and sank into an idle, hunting, savage condition. | The Lamanites are “cursed” with a mark, become “an idle people, full of mischief,” and live by hunting. (2 Nephi 5:24; Alma 17:14) |
| 8. A sacred record, buried in the earth and later brought to light | |
| An “old Indian” said his ancestors “had a book which they had … preserved,” but “having lost the knowledge of reading it … they buried it with an Indian chief”; a phylactery “dug up” held folded leaves of parchment. | An ancient record on metal plates, kept for centuries, is buried in a hill and brought to light in the latter days — the founding premise of the whole book. (Joseph Smith—History 1; Mormon 8:4) |
| 9. A “Urim and Thummim” / breastplate among the natives | |
| Describes a native “breastplate … in resemblance of the Urim and Thummim” — a white shell with two holes and buttons “in imitation of the precious stones of the Urim.” | Joseph translates by means of the Urim and Thummim — two stones in silver bows fastened to a breastplate, buried with the plates. (Joseph Smith—History 1:35) |
| 10. Writing in Egyptian-style characters | |
| Points to picture-writing / hieroglyphics among the natives and to Egyptian connections in their culture. | The record is written in “reformed Egyptian” characters handed down and altered over the centuries. (Mormon 9:32–34) |
| 11. Ezekiel’s “two sticks” — two records that become one | |
| Applies Ezekiel 37’s “two sticks” (Judah and Joseph/Ephraim) to the Hebrews of America, joined in the last days. | The plates (record of Joseph) join the Bible (record of Judah) to “grow together” — the same Ezekiel 37 proof-text, still taught today. (2 Nephi 3:12; 2 Nephi 29) |
| 12. Isaiah 29 — a sealed/hidden book delivered to the learned | |
| Cites Isaiah 29’s “words of a book that is sealed,” delivered to “one that is learned,” applied to the restoration of Israel’s record. | 2 Nephi 27 rewrites Isaiah 29 as a direct prophecy of the Book of Mormon — the sealed book and the words carried “to the learned” (fulfilled, Latter-day Saints say, in the Anthon episode). (2 Nephi 27; Joseph Smith—History 1:63–65) |
| 13. Government shifts from monarchy to a republic | |
| The ancient Americans changed from monarchical to republican government, with civil and religious authority united in the same leaders. | The Nephites abolish kings for a system of judges, with prophet-judges holding civil and religious authority together (e.g., Alma). (Mosiah 29; Alma 4) |
| 14. True religion / the gospel preached in ancient America | |
| Holds that elements of true (even gospel) religion were known and preached among the ancient inhabitants. | Prophets preach the gospel of Christ — by name — among the Nephites for centuries before his birth. (2 Nephi 25; Jacob 4) |
| 15. A white, bearded messiah-figure visits the Americas | |
| Recounts legends of a “bearded white god” (Quetzalcoatl), a “Mexican messiah” or lawgiver who taught the people and departed. Roberts asked whether this “furnished the suggestion” of Christ in the New World. | The resurrected Christ, in white and glory, descends to teach the Nephites, then departs — the climax of the book. (3 Nephi 11–28) |
| 16. Fortifications, towers, and high places | |
| Notes ancient American military fortifications, mounds, and watch-towers, and worship at sacred “high places” / towers. | The Nephites build fortifications, ramparts, and towers for war and worship (Moroni’s defenses; King Benjamin’s tower; the Rameumptom). (Alma 48–50; Mosiah 2:7; Alma 31:13) |
| 17. Pride, riches, and luxury denounced as a cause of ruin | |
| Warns that pride and luxury corrupt and destroy a people. | The recurring “pride cycle”: prosperity breeds pride, pride breeds destruction. (Helaman 3–4; 3 Nephi 6) |
| 18. “Ethan” / “Ether” (a curiosity, not a strong parallel) | |
| The author’s name is Ethan Smith. | The final Jaredite prophet-historian is named Ether. (Ether 15) — Noted for interest only; a name-echo like this proves nothing on its own. |
Did Joseph Smith have access to the book?
View of the Hebrews (1823; enlarged 2nd ed. 1825) was widely distributed across New England and New York and went through multiple editions.
Oliver Cowdery — Joseph’s principal scribe — was raised in Poultney, Vermont, where Ethan Smith pastored the very church his stepmother and half-sisters attended while the book was being written. Religion writer Richard Ostling judged it “probably safe to assume” Joseph was familiar with it.
Joseph Smith’s own newspaper cited View of the Hebrews approvingly in 1842 — so he certainly knew the book at least by then.
Honest caveat: there is no document proving Joseph (or Oliver) read it during the 1829–30 translation, and LDS researcher Larry Morris argues the Cowdery–Ethan Smith link “is not supported by the documents.” The strength of the case rests on the parallels themselves, not on a paper trail.
B. H. Roberts’s assessment
Roberts was not a critic of the Church; he was its leading apologist, asked by his superiors to test the book against exactly this challenge. After cataloguing the parallels he wrote that Ethan Smith’s book “could well have furnished structural material” for the Book of Mormon, and that the sheer number of similarities — “not a few things merely … but many” — made them “so serious a menace” to Joseph Smith’s origin story. Fawn Brodie later wrote that the parallels “hardly leave a case for mere coincidence.”
Two things should be said plainly for balance: Roberts framed his work as posing hard questions for the Brethren to answer, not as a renunciation — and he continued to affirm his belief in the Book of Mormon publicly for the rest of his life. Whether his private doubts deepened is debated. What is not in dispute is that the Church’s own most capable defender found the parallels troubling enough to write hundreds of pages about them.
The counter-case (for balance)
This comparison is more contested than the Late War one, and a fair reader should weigh the objections:
“The idea was everywhere — it wasn’t unique to Ethan Smith.”
The Hebrew origin of the Indians was a popular theory advanced by dozens of writers (James Adair, Elias Boudinot, Josiah Priest, and others). Response: this is true — but it cuts toward the document’s thesis, not against it. Whether Joseph drew on this specific book or on the broader climate of ideas, the Book of Mormon’s framework was the common intellectual property of his time and place, not a revelation of the unknown.
“The ‘unparallels’ outweigh the parallels.”
LDS scholar John Welch (“View of the Hebrews: An Unparallel”) notes that many of Ethan Smith’s ‘evidences’ never appear in the Book of Mormon — the ark of the covenant, circumcision, Hebrew festivals, Quetzalcoatl by name, and so on. Response: a source supplies structure and ideas; it need not be copied wholesale. A forger cherry-picking a framework would naturally drop the specific ‘proofs’ (many later shown false) while keeping the story shape — which is exactly what the parallels show.
“Many parallels are just generic, or shared with the Bible.”
Some overlaps (quoting Isaiah; a righteous side vs. a wicked side) are common to any work about ancient Israel. Response: granted for the weakest items — which is why the weight falls on the specific, cumulative cluster (a buried record dug from a hill, a Urim-and-Thummim breastplate, Ezekiel’s two sticks, Isaiah 29’s sealed book, monarchy-to-republic, a white messiah), not on any single generic theme.
“No contemporary critic mentioned it, and the theory only appeared in 1902.”
The View-of-the-Hebrews connection wasn’t argued until I. Woodbridge Riley (1902). Response: early critics favored the Spalding theory; the argument’s late arrival speaks to the history of Book-of-Mormon criticism, not to whether the parallels are real — and it was an LDS apostle, not an enemy of the Church, who later assembled the fullest list.
“Roberts assumed a hemispheric geography; a limited geography dissolves some parallels.”
Modern apologists note Roberts pictured Book of Mormon peoples spread across both continents. Response: Roberts himself doubted the Book of Mormon text would ‘admit’ the limited-geography rescue, and the strongest structural parallels (the buried record, the breastplate, the two sticks, the sealed book) don’t depend on geography at all.
Sources & further reading
View of the Hebrews (Ethan Smith, 1823) — full text on the Internet Archive
“View of the Hebrews” — Wikipedia overview of the parallels and the scholarship
Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (1945); David Persuitte, Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon (2000); John W. Welch, “View of the Hebrews: An Unparallel” (1992).