VIEW OF THE HEBREWS. A book published in 1823 and 1825 by the Reverend Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews has been cited by some anti-Mormon writers as a possible source of the Book of Mormon. Since 1903 some critics who rejected Joseph Smith's statement of the origin of the Book of Mormon have claimed that the Prophet got it from View of the Hebrews, or that at the very least he got the main ideas from reading that book. They claim, for example, that Joseph got the idea that the American Indians were Israelites from View of the Hebrews. But even in this similarity, the Book of Mormon is different in bringing Lehi's family to the Americas by boat, where Reverend Smith argues the Tribes of Israel were driven north and crossed over a land bridge in the Bering Straits. View of the Hebrews was out of print for more than 170 years until 1996, when the Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center reprinted it so today's readers can see that, though it has a few similarities to the Book of Mormon, there are major differences between the two works.