The first non-Mormon scholar to accept the influence of View of the Hebrews upon Joseph Smith was Fawn Brodie.

Thomas F. O'Dea followed suit, as did Larry W. Jonas and Wesley M. Jones. A line of demarcation exists between George Arbaugh's 1932 study and Brodie's 1945 work. Arbaugh knew of View of the Hebrews as one of the many books that advanced the theory of the Hebrew origin of the Indians, but was so convinced of the Spaulding Manuscript Theory that he never again referred to it.

Mormon consideration of the influence of Ethan Smith predates Brodie. In the 1920s Brigham H. Roberts saw the implication involved if books propounding the Indian-Israelite theory were available to Joseph Smith. He listed four works that might have been available to Smith, but felt that Smith might have had access only to the works of James Adair and Ethan Smith. Nevertheless, he pointed out that no evidence existed to connect the book of Ethan Smith with Joseph Smith. The prophet had not used the theory, Roberts concluded, because he was too young, he was not a student, and it would have been too difficult to have assimilated the knowledge of American antiquities necessary to dictate the Book of Mormon.

In the following years Roberts studied the possible connection still further and drew up a list of parallels between the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews. He circulated it among some people in Utah, but did not publish it. After Roberts's death, his son mimeographed the list and distributed it at a meeting of the Timpanogos Club in Salt Lake City in October, 1946. The list was published and later reprinted by Jerald and Sandra Tanner.

According to Roberts, some features of View of the Hebrews are paralleled in the Book of Mormon. (1) Indians buried a book they could no longer read. (2) A Mr. Merrick found some dark yellow parchment leaves in "Indian Hill." (3) Indians had inspired prophets and charismatic gifts. (4) Indians had their own kind of Urim and Thummim and breastplate. (5) Ethan Smith produced evidence to show that the Mexican Indians of antiquity were no strangers to Egyptian hieroglyphics. (6) An overthrown civilization in America is to be seen from its ruined monuments and forts and mounds. The barbarous tribes-barbarous because they had lost the civilized arts— greeting the Europeans were the descendants of the lost civilization.

(7) Chapter One of View of the Hebrews is a 32 page account of the historical destruction of Jerusalem. (8) There are many references to Israel's scattering and being "gathered" in the last days. (9) Isaiah is quoted for 20 chapters to show the certain restoration of Israel. Isaiah 18 is made a request to save Israel in America. (10) The United States is asked to evangelize the Indians. (lI) Ethan Smith cited Humboldt's New Spain to show the characteristics of Central American civilization; the same are in the Book of Mormon. (12) The legends of Quetzacoatl, the Mexican Messiah, are paralleled in the Book of Mormon by Christ's appearing in the western hemisphere.

Consciously or not, Mormon reaction to Ethan Smith's influence seems to correspond to Roberts's list of parallels. Reactions appear after his list was given to a select group and then later made public to a wider group. There are three aspects to the question: did Joseph Smith know enough about Indian antiquities to dictate the Book of Mormon; did he know about the theory of the Indian-Israelite identification; and did he actually use View of the Hebrews?

One line of defense has been to assert that information about Indian antiquities was unavailable to Smith. As noted, Roberts saw only four works accessible and only two possibly so. Evan Fry of the Reorganized Church contended as recently as 1962 that books describing Mexican and American Indian archeology, such as Humboldt's New Spain, were not available to a boy in western New York before 1839. Roberts, however, began to recognize that, at least with Ethan Smith's book, such works were widely available.

Roy Weldon and Edward Butterworth list seven features of View of the Hebrews that are not found in the Book of Mormon, and charge that they should be if Joseph was influenced by Ethan. Six resemblances are cited and dismissed because Joseph treated them differently than Ethan. For example, Ethan applied "the stick of Ephraim" of Ezekiel 37 to the ten lost tribes of Israel, but Joseph applied it only to the tribe of Manasseh. They reason that one usage should duplicate the other if there were borrowing. They also cite some differences (contradictions) with the inference that these would rule out borrowing. Dependence, however, cannot be dismissed because of what Joseph Smith did not use from View of the Hebrews, nor because he altered the features of resemblance between the two books, nor because he contradicted some of the features of the earlier work.

The next step was to recognize that information about early Indian life was indeed at hand, but to assert that since Joseph Smith was young and was not a student, he could not have assimilated enough information to produce the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon, however, is quite vague about details of American geography and antiquities, enough so that few areas of the map can be pinpointed as those under discussion. Dr. M. Wells Jakeman and Dr. Ross Christensen, anthropologists at Brigham Young University in 1959-60, denied that real certainty was possible about the Book of Mormon's statements about America. Not enough was known about the period of time covered, about Indian origins, or about ancient America to say that the Book of Mormon had been proved either scientifically or archeologically. Even Hill Cumorah as the death site of the last Nephite is uncertain.

Lucy Smith's picture of her son as a thoughtful young man filled with Indian lore indicates that he absorbed the constant flow of information about Indians. It need only be shown, as it has been, that the ideas of the Book of Mormon were in reach of Joseph Smith.

Another approach has been to acknowledge that View of the Hebrews was avail. able, but to contend that Joseph Smith did not need to consult it: the ideas were in the air. Hugh Nibley advanced this position to free Joseph Smith from the charge that he used Ethan Smith's book, but Nibley undermined the earlier Mormon approach to do it. If one wishes to deny the force of Roberts's parallels as Nibley did, but admits that View of the Hebrews was available to Joseph Smith, then the possibility of Joseph's dependence upon Ethan is not destroyed.

Nibley is right that the ideas were in the air. The Indian-Israelite identification, with its many parallels between Hebrew and Indian culture and religion, was offered by Mordecai M. Noah as the reason for his establishing a City of Refuge for world Jewry. The article about Professor Seyffarth discovering the old and new testaments in Egyptian and a Mexican manuscript in hieroglyphics, and suggesting that these were interrelated cultures, offered a great theme that appeared in the Book of Mormon.

The newspapers speculated about the times and places of Indian origins and their routes of emigration. All this information was available apart from View of the He-brews. Neither Ethan Smith's book nor information about the Indian-Israelite identification theory should have been at Joseph Smith's elbow if one is to deny them as possible sources.

Spencer Palmer and William Knecht tackled the reliance of both Ethan Smith and Joseph Smith on Isaiah. They concluded that "the book of Isaiah is a primary source for anyone dealing with the subject of the dispersion and gathering of Israel." If Joseph Smith had not used Isaiah in common with Ethan Smith, they say, it would appear that he was trying "to avoid suspicion."' This argument acknowledges that Joseph Smith knew the work of Ethan Smith, but its main point is fallacious reasoning. Palmer and Knecht are saying the same thing as Weldon and Butterworth: one usage should duplicate the other if there were borrowing, an argument that simply discounts the way human creativity works. One can show hundreds of musical influences working upon Beethoven, but the great composer brought forth a new kind of music.

The point is that Joseph Smith did know the Bible well enough to have used it as a source, as well as Ethan Smith's ideas and Masonic lore. These Mormon attempts to downplay the Mormon prophet's sources reverse older Mormon apologetics. Orson Pratt defended the authenticity of the Book of Mormon on the basis that Joseph Smith did not know Isaiah 29 before the Harris-Anthon consultation. If he did know it, as it is now conceded, then the question of his intention comes to the fore.

View of the Hebrews circulated widely in New York. It also had had a condensed presentation in Josiah Priest's The Wonders of Nature and Providence, one of the more widely circulated books of the Manchester Rental Library in 1827. The Rev. Anson Sha, pastor of the Manchester Baptist Church, was one of the members of the rental library. During his pastorate, one member related, Joseph Smith occasionally attended his church service. The name of Ethan Smith, or at least his views, could easily have been presented in a sermon meant to kick the corpse of deism.

Francis Kirkham published the table of contents of the books by Adair, Boudinot and Ethan Smith to show how they differ in purpose and content from the Book of Mormon. That seemed to disprove any connection, but this positon is vulnerable on two counts. First, the raw materials can be made to serve many purposes. Second, the books are not dissimilar in purpose, since both Boudinot and Ethan Smith wrote to demonstrate that the Indians have a Hebrew origin and thereby bolster the proof for biblical revelation.

There are other parallels between the two works by Ethan and Joseph Smith besides those listed by Roberts. The Pittsfield Parchment story (which may already have circulated in the Palmyra area as early as 1817 or 1818) with its two sets of witnesses, the visit to consult scholars about the translation to get it verified, and the belief that it proved the presence of Hebrew religion among the Indians, are all important parallels. Many others can be found; for example, the common use of Ezekiel 37 (especially verse 16) and the millennial orientation of both books. Joseph Smith knew the theory of the Hebrew origin of the Indians and knew the Bible well enough to have used them as sources. The question is, did he use View of the Hebrews in producing the Book of Mormon? The possibility is there and the probability is strong that he did. Nevertheless, the case is circumstantial until evidence is found that ties View of the Hebrews to Joseph Smith before he produced the Book of Mormon. The evidence now at hand makes a strong case for an operating theory as strong as one based on faith, but, like the latter, circumstanfial. If no absolute connection between Ethan and Joseph Smith is found, the data still indicate that the Israelite theory of Indian origins was there as a source for Joseph Smith to use in defending God against the forces of deism and rationalism.