View of the Hebrews and The Book of Mormon

I consider myself to be relatively well read. My major was English teaching, I spent many years as a member of a book group, and I’m a list reader (I keep lists of classic or recommended books and mark them off as I read them). But until about a year ago I had never heard of the book View of the Hebrews. My first introduction to this book was an assertion that Joseph Smith had plagiarized this book to write The Book of Mormon.

Since that introduction, I have read and heard a lot about View of the Hebrews and noticed something that I thought was curious—it seemed that both LDS church critics and apologists were more interested in what B. H. Roberts had to say about this book than the book itself. It almost felt as if both sides were saying, “You don’t really need to read this book because B.H. Roberts already did, and he thoroughly compared View of the Hebrews with The Book of Mormon, and since he is probably smarter than you, and he undoubtedly has better church credentials, his opinion is way more important than yours.”

Unfortunately, there seems to be a real difference of opinion on the conclusions that B.H. Roberts came to. The apologists seem to assert that B.H. Roberts was playing the devil’s advocate by looking for every possible connection between the two books. He then wrote these findings up as a report to the brethren, so they could be more informed on the issues and better prepared to defend The Book of Mormon. They argue that doesn’t appear that he ever meant for this paper to viewed by the general public and that his consistent church service and testimony up until his death are proof that he didn’t find the comparisons to be compelling.

Critics, on the other hand, have used quotes from Roberts, along with his lengthy list of parallels, to show that his research led him to believe that The Book of Mormon wasn’t what Joseph Smith claimed it to be. They say that while Roberts continued to associate with the church, he did so despite having lost his belief in the historicity of The Book of Mormon.

I’m not going to give an opinion on B.H. Roberts’ opinions, mainly because I just received a copy of his book, Studies of The Book of Mormon, and haven’t had time to read it yet. That may be the topic of a future post. Instead, I’m going to give you my own take on View of the Hebrews because I like getting as close to the source as possible. I wanted to read it myself and form my own opinions.

Unfortunately, my determination to read the whole book before I wrote my weekly post undermined my ability to get this post out on schedule. You see, View of the Hebrews was not particularly compelling reading, and I’m rather sleep deprived, so every time I sat down to read it, I promptly fell asleep, which made getting through it a much slower process than it should have been.

Let me start with a little background. View of the Hebrews (VOTH) was written by a minister named Ethan Smith in Vermont about seven years before the Joseph Smith claimed to have translated The Book of Mormon (BOM). Oliver Cowdery lived in the town where Ethan Smith preached and could have been familiar with his book, he could even have had a copy of the book and shared it with Joseph Smith, but there is no proof that either of them had any knowledge of the book until after the BOM was printed. For the sake of simplicity and without intending any disrespect, I will be using just the first names, Ethan and Joseph.

The tone of the two books is radically different. In VOTH, Ethan presents a scholarly argument in which he develops his theories about Native Americans being the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel and calls for Christian missionaries to gather them. He quotes extensively from other authors and also from the Bible, but he doesn’t claim that his book is scripture and it doesn’t have that feeling. There is no narrative thread that runs throughout the book and any “stories” are brief accounts of various people’s encounters with American natives and their cultures. VOTH is made up of four chapters, a conclusion, and an appendix, and in total has 223 pages, less than half as many as the BOM.

The first chapter of VOTH deals entirely with the destruction of Jerusalem and the plight of the Jewish people during the century following Christ’s life. This was the chapter that I personally found to be the most interesting because I knew so little about this period in history, but in it, I found no significant parallels to the BOM. This entire chapter is a background for Ethan’s belief that the Jewish tribes disappeared from the Old World around 70 AD and migrated to the America’s via the Bering Strait. This contrasts with Joseph’s work which has the Jaredites migrating at the time of the Tower of Babel and the Lehites at around 600 B.C.

In the second chapter of VOTH, Ethan makes his case that the Bible foretells the gathering of Israel. He quotes passages from Isaiah, Kings, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Joshua, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Joel, Zephaniah, Hosea, Romans, and Timothy. A big deal has been made about the fact that both books quote extensively from Isaiah, but of the 362 Isaiah verses quoted in the BOM and the 95 verses used in VOTH only of the 30 verses are the same. The purposes for quoting Isaiah also seem significantly different, as the BOM verses are aimed at bringing the people closer to Christ and reminding them of promised blessings.

Chapter 3 is by far the longest and consists mainly of the pieces of evidence that Ethan uses to build his case that the “Indians” or “aborigines” of both North and South America are descendants of Israel. What interested me was how most of the pieces of evidence he gave weren’t incorporated into the BOM. For example, Ethan points out a number of native words that sound similar to Hebrew words such as Yohewah for Jehovah, Canaai for Canaan, or Halleluwah for Hallelujah. He also lists many words such as Ale, Abba, and Ararat which he claims came directly from Hebrew. Very few of the words used in Ethan’s arguments show up in the BOM. Ethan is also convinced that the native people have practices that are imitations of Jewish rites: observing Passover and other feasts, circumcision, imitations of Ark of the Covenant, naming tribes after animals, isolating women during times when they were considered unclean, and phylacteries. It seems that if Joseph had been plagiarizing VOTH, he would have the Nephites doing some of these things.

In Chapter 4, we find a call for Christians to minister to the native people so that they can be gathered to Israel. There are general themes here that correspond to ideas in the BOM, but it is clear from the sources that Ethan quotes that these are biblical views that many people during this historical period held. If anything, I find more of these ideas from VOTH in things said by Joseph and other early saints than I do in the actual text of the BOM.

I can’t say that if Joseph did make up the BOM that he couldn’t have used ideas from this book because there are parallels. Many of the major themes are the same—the destruction of Jerusalem (albeit the books are talking about two different destructions near 700 years apart), people from the tribes of Israel coming to America, a great Gentile Nation being built in this land, a belief that some of the ancient tribes were civilized while others were savage. Again, these aren’t new or original ideas found only in VOTH; these are ideas found in the Bible and held by many Americans during the period when the two books are published.

Other supposed parallels seemed much less convincing after actually reading VOTH and seeing them in context. For example, Ethan writes about Quetzalcoatl and asserts that he is actually Moses, and argues that the natives have rituals that resemble Mosaic sacrifices as “a type of Christ”. This is compared to Christ’s visit to American in the BOM. Ethan sites examples of Hieroglyphics that contain characters that resemble Egyptian symbols, while Joseph claims to have gold plates written in reformed Egyptian.

Some of the parallels that BOM critics claim actually seem almost ridiculous after reading both books. For example, the author of VOTH is named Ethan and one of the writers of the BOM is named Ether, which only differs by a few letters.

Let me be clear. I’m not a scholar, historian, or an expert in Hebrew culture or scriptures. I’m just someone who has actually read both books all the way through, and who now questions whether anyone else besides B. H. Roberts and I have. I’ve searched online and read or listened to many people who argue that Joseph plagiarized VOTH, but couldn’t find anyone who appeared to have actually read the books for themselves. I would love to talk to anyone who has read both books and still believes that the similarities are substantial or compelling. I would like them to explain to me what it is that I’m missing.

VOTH contains none of the characters, stories or poetic language found in the BOM. More importantly, it completely lacks the theology, doctrine, and witnesses of Christ that are at the very heart of the BOM. Reading both books only strengthens my belief that the BOM was translated by the power of God as Joseph claimed. But don’t take my word for it. Both View of the Hebrews and The Book of Mormon are free for anyone to read online—although I should probably warn you that I found VOTH to be outdated, redundant and rather dull. If you read them for yourself, let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you.