The Spaulding plagiarism theory gained so much visibility that missionaries such as Parley P. Pratt worked tirelessly to preach and publish rebuttals. When the actual Spaulding manuscript was discovered in the 1880s, readers saw little resemblance to the Book of Mormon. Still, critics insisted that Joseph Smith must have plagiarized the major ideas of the book. In 1902, I. Woodbridge Riley argued Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery worked from Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews, a book tracing American Indian descent to the lost tribes of Israel. Still, after decades of debate, critics have failed to demonstrate a substantial correlation between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon. Though Cowdery lived for a time near Ethan Smith and the book preceded the Book of Mormon by seven years, no evidence confirms that Cowdery or Joseph Smith had any knowledge of the work.

In the 1920s, Latter-day Saint General Authority and author B. H. Roberts, spurred by Riley’s theory, began a concerted study of Book of Mormon criticisms. Roberts encouraged Latter-day Saints to answer the questions of critics carefully and seriously. His work heralded a more intensive effort by believers to defend the book and find substantive responses to criticism. This led to new research on the ancient American setting and complex literary structure of the Book of Mormon. The debate between critics and defenders of the Book of Mormon continues today.