Appearance
View of the Hebrews
The claim:
"There was a book published in 1823 Vermont entitled View of the Hebrews. . . . [30-item parallel chart] . . . Oliver Cowdery — also a Poultney, Vermont resident — was a member of Ethan's congregation during this time."[1]
The CES Letter devotes five pages to a side-by-side chart of roughly 30 "parallels" between Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews (1823) and the Book of Mormon. The chart comes from B.H. Roberts' Studies of the Book of Mormon. After five pages, the CES Letter concedes in a single sentence that "this does not prove that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized."[2]
By then the chart has done its work.
What happens when you check what the two books actually say?
The chart tests the wrong thing
The CES Letter's chart asks: Does this book mention this topic?
Destruction of Jerusalem? Check. Scattering of Israel? Check. Buried records? Check.
At that level, you can make any two religious texts look related. Two books about the American Civil War will both mention slavery, states' rights, and Abraham Lincoln. That does not make one a plagiarism of the other.
Look at what the CES Letter counts as "parallels":
- "The destruction of Jerusalem" -- a central event in all Judeo-Christian literature
- "Religion a motivating factor" -- true of virtually every migration narrative ever written
- "Pride denounced" -- true of nearly every religious text in existence
- "Discusses the United States" -- both books were written by Americans
- "Quoting Isaiah" -- Isaiah is the most-quoted prophet in all of scripture
These are not parallels. They are shared category tags.
Wrong on every detail
The chart never asks whether the books agree on these topics. They don't.
| Topic | View of the Hebrews | Book of Mormon |
|---|---|---|
| Which destruction of Jerusalem? | Romans, AD 70 | Babylonians, 586 BC |
| How did people reach America? | Bering Strait land bridge | Ocean voyage by ship |
| Migration direction | North to south | South to north |
| Which tribes? | All Ten Lost Tribes | Small families: Manasseh, Ephraim, Judah |
| Who is the "great lawgiver"? | Moses (via Quetzalcoatl) | Jesus Christ |
| Buried record format | Dark parchment leaves | Gold metal plates |
| New revelation? | Explicitly denies it | Emphatically affirms it (Mormon 9:7-20) |
| Genre | Theological essay, ~57,000 words | Thousand-year narrative, ~269,000 words |
Wrong Jerusalem. Wrong route. Wrong direction. Wrong tribes. Wrong lawgiver. Wrong record. Opposite position on revelation.
These are not minor quibbles. They are the core claims of each book.[3]
84 differences the CES Letter skipped
John W. Welch catalogued 84 specific points where the Book of Mormon contradicts or ignores View of the Hebrews.[3:1] The CES Letter's chart lists about 30 items. The list of differences is nearly three times longer.
And the items Ethan Smith considered his strongest evidence are systematically absent from the Book of Mormon:
| Ethan Smith's best evidence | In the Book of Mormon? |
|---|---|
| 34 Hebrew-Indian word pairs (Keah, Lani, Uwoh, etc.) | No. None resemble any of the 175 new Book of Mormon names. |
| "Hallelujah Yohewah" chants | No. "Hallelujah" never appears. |
| Ark of the Covenant imitations | No. Never mentioned. |
| Circumcision (pages of discussion) | Mentioned once -- as "done away" (Moroni 8:8). |
| Fire and sun worship | No. Absent entirely. |
| Passover-like ceremonies, phylacteries, kosher dietary laws | No. None appear. |
| Quetzalcoatl = Moses | No. Quetzalcoatl is never mentioned. |
A plagiarist mining the book would have absorbed these distinctive elements. The Book of Mormon avoids every one.[3:2]
The Isaiah test
"Both books quote Isaiah" is one of the CES Letter's parallels. True. But which Isaiah chapters?
Spencer J. Palmer and William L. Knecht ran the numbers:[4]
| Metric | Count |
|---|---|
| Isaiah verses in Book of Mormon | 459 |
| Isaiah verses in View of the Hebrews | 116 |
| Verses appearing in both | 23 |
| Book of Mormon Isaiah with no VoH parallel | 436 (95%) |
Twenty-three verses overlap. 95% of the Book of Mormon's Isaiah content has no counterpart in View of the Hebrews.
The single most important chapter in View of the Hebrews is Isaiah 18 -- Ethan Smith's proof text that America is the gathering place of the lost tribes. The backbone of his entire argument.
Isaiah 18 never appears in the Book of Mormon.[4:1]
The plagiarist skipped his source's thesis statement.
The Oliver Cowdery connection is unverified
The CES Letter states as fact that Oliver Cowdery "was a member of Ethan's congregation" in Poultney, Vermont. This is the link that supposedly connects View of the Hebrews to Joseph Smith.
Larry E. Morris investigated the claim for BYU Studies and found the evidence "long on speculation and short on fact."[5]
| What the CES Letter implies | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Oliver was a member of Ethan Smith's church | No document links Oliver personally to the congregation or to Ethan Smith |
| Oliver brought VoH ideas to Joseph | Oliver first met Joseph on April 5, 1829 -- more than a year into the translation process |
| Cowdery worked in the printshop where VoH was published | No historical evidence supports this |
Oliver's stepmother and some half-sisters were members of the Poultney Congregational Church, but their documented contacts (1803, 1810, 1818) were all under Reverend Mr. Leonard, who served from 1803 to 1821 -- before Ethan Smith arrived.[5:1]
The last documented Cowdery family contact with the Poultney church was 1818. Ethan Smith became pastor in 1821.
B.H. Roberts was playing devil's advocate
The CES Letter's most authoritative-sounding evidence is a quote from B.H. Roberts:
"Did Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews furnish structural material for Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon? . . . it is this fact of many things of similarity and the cumulative force of them that makes them so serious a menace."[6]
That quote is accurate. What the CES Letter strips away is the context.
Roberts prepared this analysis in 1921-22 as a devil's advocate exercise for the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. His cover letter said explicitly:
"What is herein set forth does not represent any conclusions of mine. . . . I am taking the position that our faith is not only unshaken but unshakeable in the Book of Mormon."[7]
He was stress-testing the case against the Book of Mormon so Church leaders could prepare responses.
His actual record:
| When | What Roberts said or did |
|---|---|
| 1923 (cover letter) | "Our faith is not only unshaken but unshakeable in the Book of Mormon" |
| 1909-1930 | Published New Witnesses for God and Comprehensive History of the Church -- both treating the Book of Mormon as historically authentic |
| September 1933 | Told Jack Christensen: "Ethan Smith played no part in the formation of the Book of Mormon"[8] |
| 1939 (son's account) | Ben E. Roberts: his father "found nothing in his study which reflected upon the integrity of Joseph Smith's account"[9] |
Truman G. Madsen called it "a travesty to take such working papers as a fair statement of B.H. Roberts's own appraisal of the Book of Mormon."[7:1]
Nobody noticed for 72 years
The plagiarism theory was not proposed until 1902, by I. Woodbridge Riley -- 72 years after the Book of Mormon was published.[10]
Joseph Smith had vocal enemies from the start. Alexander Campbell attacked the Book of Mormon in print in 1831.[11] Eber D. Howe published Mormonism Unvailed in 1834, drawing on months of collected affidavits against Joseph Smith.[12] Not one of them mentioned View of the Hebrews.
Ethan Smith himself lived until 1849 -- 19 years after the Book of Mormon was published. He never accused Joseph Smith of plagiarism. He apparently saw no relationship between the two texts.[10:1]
The plagiarist who advertised his source
In 1842, the Times and Seasons -- edited by Joseph Smith -- quoted from Josiah Priest's American Antiquities, which drew on View of the Hebrews, calling it "an able work" and using it as supporting evidence for the Book of Mormon.[13]
Plagiarists hide their sources. They do not cite them approvingly in print.
The lost tribes idea was everywhere
View of the Hebrews was not unique. The idea that Native Americans descended from the lost tribes of Israel was mainstream in early 19th-century America.[14]
| Author | Work | Year |
|---|---|---|
| James Adair | History of the American Indians | 1775 |
| Elias Boudinot | A Star in the West | 1816 |
| Ethan Smith | View of the Hebrews | 1823 |
| Josiah Priest | The Wonders of Nature and Providence | 1825 |
| Mordecai Manuel Noah | The American Indians Being the Descendants of the Lost Tribes | 1837 |
You don't need View of the Hebrews to explain any of the alleged parallels. Every shared theme was already part of the cultural air. The real question is not why the Book of Mormon shares some themes with View of the Hebrews -- it is why it differs so dramatically from it.
The method is broken
The CES Letter doesn't commit to the View of the Hebrews theory. It stacks alternatives: View of the Hebrews, then The Late War, then The First Book of Napoleon.
These are mutually exclusive theories. Joseph Smith could not have plagiarized all three. The CES Letter never settles on one because none of them work individually.
Jeff Lindsay demonstrated the problem by constructing an equally impressive parallel chart between the Book of Mormon and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855) -- a book published 25 years after the Book of Mormon.[15] If the method can "prove" the Book of Mormon borrowed from a book that didn't exist yet, the method is broken.
The scholarly term for this is parallelomania, coined by Samuel Sandmel in 1962: "that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction."[16]
What View of the Hebrews cannot explain
Strip away the superficial parallels. Grant every thematic overlap. The plagiarism case still cannot account for the Book of Mormon itself.
View of the Hebrews is a ~57,000-word essay with no characters, no plot, no dialogue, and no theology of atonement. The Book of Mormon is a ~269,000-word narrative with dozens of named characters, interlocking timelines, political transitions, military campaigns, and doctrinal sermons -- dictated in roughly 60 working days with no outline and no substantive revisions.[17]
The Book of Mormon contains features that have been confirmed by later discoveries:
- Nahom. Three votive altars from the Nihm tribal region in Yemen, dated to at least 700 BC, match the Book of Mormon's Nahom (1 Nephi 16:34) in the exact location the text's travel narrative requires.[18]
- Alma is attested as an ancient Hebrew male name in the Bar Kokhba documents (c. AD 130) -- unknown to scholars until 1961.[19]
- A Jewish woman named Sariah appears in the Elephantine Papyri (5th century BC). The name is absent from the Bible.[20]
- John Welch discovered complex chiastic structures in the Book of Mormon in 1967 -- Hebrew poetic forms unknown in Joseph Smith's day. Alma 36 contains a 17-element chiasm spanning the entire chapter.[21]
- If-and conditional clauses appear seven times in Helaman alone. This Hebrew grammatical form is absent from the KJV, invisible to English readers, and was removed by later editors who didn't recognize it.[22]
None of this comes from View of the Hebrews. None of it could.
Bottom line: The CES Letter's chart tests whether two books about Israelites in America both mention Israelites in America. They do. But View of the Hebrews gets the wrong Jerusalem, wrong route, wrong tribes, wrong lawgiver, and opposite position on revelation -- while the Book of Mormon contains ancient names, Hebraisms, and literary structures no 19th-century source can explain.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 8, pp. 16-21. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 8, p. 21. The actual text reads: "While this does not prove that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from the View of the Hebrews..." ↩︎
John W. Welch, "An Unparallel", FARMS Preliminary Report W-85 (Provo: FARMS, 1985). A condensed version appears in Welch, "View of the Hebrews: 'An Unparallel,'" in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Provo: FARMS, 1992), 83-87. https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/welch/2015-10-28/22_view_of_the_hebrews_83-87.pdf ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Spencer J. Palmer and William L. Knecht, "View of the Hebrews: Substitute for Inspiration?" BYU Studies 5, no. 2 (1964): 105-113. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol5/iss2/5/ ↩︎ ↩︎
Larry E. Morris, "Oliver Cowdery's Vermont Years and the Origins of Mormonism," BYU Studies Quarterly 39, no. 1 (2000): 106-129. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/oliver-cowderys-vermont-years-and-origins-mormonism ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 8, pp. 20-21, quoting B.H. Roberts, Studies of the Book of Mormon, ed. Brigham D. Madsen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 240. ↩︎
Truman G. Madsen, "B.H. Roberts and the Book of Mormon," in Book of Mormon Authorship: New Light on Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1982), 7-32. https://rsc.byu.edu/book-mormon-authorship/b-h-roberts-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎
Jack Christensen, account of September 1933 conversation with B.H. Roberts. Roberts stated: "Ethan Smith played no part in the formation of the Book of Mormon." Cited in Madsen, "B.H. Roberts and the Book of Mormon," 27. ↩︎
Ben E. Roberts, letter to Ariel L. Crowley, July 22, 1939, affirming his father "found nothing in his study which reflected upon the integrity of Joseph Smith's account of the Book of Mormon." ↩︎
I. Woodbridge Riley, The Founder of Mormonism: A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1902). Riley was the first to propose a relationship between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon. Ethan Smith lived until 1849 and never accused Joseph Smith of plagiarism. ↩︎ ↩︎
Alexander Campbell, "Delusions," Millennial Harbinger 2, no. 2 (February 7, 1831): 85-96. Campbell attacked the Book of Mormon as reflecting 19th-century religious debates but never mentioned View of the Hebrews. ↩︎
Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH: E.D. Howe, 1834). Drew on affidavits collected by Philastus Hurlbut and proposed the Spalding theory -- a different source theory entirely. ↩︎
"Traits of the Mosaic History, Found among the Azteca Nations," Times and Seasons 3, no. 15 (June 1, 1842): 813-814. The article quotes Josiah Priest's American Antiquities (1833), which drew on View of the Hebrews. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/times-and-seasons-1-june-1842/ ↩︎
Hugh Nibley, "The Comparative Method," Improvement Era 62 (1959). See also James Adair, History of the American Indians (1775); Elias Boudinot, A Star in the West (1816); Josiah Priest, The Wonders of Nature and Providence (1825). ↩︎
Jeff Lindsay, "Could the Book of Mormon Have Been Derived from Other Books?" https://www.jefflindsay.com/bomsource.shtml. Lindsay constructed a parallel chart between the Book of Mormon and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855) -- published 25 years after the Book of Mormon. ↩︎
Samuel Sandmel, "Parallelomania," Journal of Biblical Literature 81, no. 1 (1962): 1-13. ↩︎
John W. Welch, "Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon: 'Days [and Hours] Never to Be Forgotten,'" BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2018): 11-50. ↩︎
Warren P. Aston, "Newly Found Altars from Nahom," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 10, no. 2 (2001): 56-61. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol10/iss2/9/ ↩︎
Neal Rappleye and Allen Hansen, "More Evidence for Alma as a Semitic Name," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 62 (2024): 415-428. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/more-evidence-for-alma-as-a-semitic-name/ ↩︎
Jeffrey R. Chadwick, "Sariah in the Elephantine Papyri," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2, no. 2 (1993): 196-200. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol2/iss2/13/ ↩︎
John W. Welch, "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon," BYU Studies Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1969): 69-84. ↩︎
"Why Are There Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon?" Scripture Central KnoWhy #498. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-are-there-hebraisms-in-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎