What is Elder Roberts’ “Study of the Book of Mormon”? The Study is twenty typewritten chapters (each about fifteen pages long). The first fourteen chapters discuss similarities between the Book of Mormon and a book by Ethan Smith published in Vermont in 1823 (second edition in 1825) entitled View of the Hebrews or the Tribes of Israel in America. The last six chapters consider the proposition that the Book of Mormon is of human rather than divine origin.

The Study is sometimes confused with a shorter, 145-page paper entitled “Book of Mormon Difficulties” which is what B. H. Roberts initially wrote by way of committee assignment from Elder James E. Talmage in 1921. In that paper, B. H. Roberts pointed out the difficulties he ran into as he was responding to five questions asked about the Book of Mormon by a Mr. Couch from Washington, D.C. Brother Roberts found in his research that the prevailing scientific theories about Indian origins and pre-Columbian fauna, flora, and technology differed from what he believed about such things.

Do we know exactly when B. H. Roberts wrote the second work, “Study of the Book of Mormon”? Yes. The first page of the original typescript says that the Study was written thirteen years “to be exact” after the publication of New Witnesses for God (which appeared in 1909). Due to this and several other telltale changes Roberts made on the typescript, we can date the typing of the Study to before he left to serve as mission president in New York on 29 May 1922. Most of his proofreading changes were made before that time as well. This means—contrary to assertions some people have made—that Elder Roberts did not write the Study during his mission presidency.