The Mormon historian B. H. Roberts is considered by many to be one of the greatest scholars the Church has ever known. . . . Besides writing the Comprehensive History of the Church, B.H. Roberts edited Joseph Smith's History of the Church (a seven-volume work). He was also noted for his many works defending the Book of Mormon. Because he was a General Authority and worked in the Church Historical Department, Roberts had access to some of the most secret material in the archives. If anyone was ever in a position to find out the truth about Mormonism it was B. H. Roberts.

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For many years anti-Mormon writers have claimed that B. H. Roberts became disturbed because of parallels he discovered between View of the Hebrews (a book published in the 1820's) and the Book of Mormon. It was discovered that he had prepared a manuseript in which these parallels are listed. Copies of Roberts' list of parallels were "privately distributed among a restricted group of Mormon scholars," and in January 1956 Mervin B. Hogan had them published in The Rocky Mountain Mason. A careful reading of B. H. Roberts' work leads one to believe that he had serious doubts about the Book of Mormon.

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While there is no evidence that B. H. Roberts publicly repudiated the Book of Mormon, a careful reading of his manuscript, "A Book of Mormon Study," leads one to believe that he was in the process of losing faith in its divine origin. Although he may have started out merely playing the part of the "Devil's Advocate," we feel that he played the role so well that he developed grave doubts about the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. In any case, Roberts has done an excellent job of compiling the evidence to show that Joseph Smith could have written the Book of Mormon from the material available to him.