Historically, the most popular anti-Mormon or non-Mormon explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon has been that it was based on a manuscript written by Solomon Spaulding. In spite of its weaknesses, this theory continues to surface from time to time even in our day. Another more recent theory, also open to criticism, suggests that Joseph Smith used Ethan Smith's (no relation) View of the Hebrews, which was published during the 1820s, to help him write the Book of Mormon.

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Therefore, during the past thirty years some non-Mormon scholars, realizing the weakness of the Spaulding manuscript theory, have for the most part abandoned it and postulated that Joseph Smith might have gained some of the ideas for the Book of Mormon from a book by Ethan Smith entitled View of theHebrews, first published in Vermont in 1823, with a revised, enlarged edition published in 1825. In this book Ethan Smith endeavored to show, on the basis of scientific research of the time, that the American Indians were the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel.

But though the Book of Mormon does report several migrations of small groups of Israelites to the western hemisphere, it does not say that the native peoples of America were of the lost ten tribes. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Joseph Smith ever saw a copy of View of the Hebrews. In 1842 the Times and Seasons, which Joseph Smith edited, quoted from an 1833 book that quoted from the View of the Hebrews. The passage apparently was published to show that at least some authorities believed ancient Hebrews had come to America. (Times and Seasons, June 1842, 3:813-14.) If the Prophet had originally used Ethan Smith's book to help him write the Book of Mormon, almost certainly he would not have later published a quotation from it to illustrate a point, since plagiarists normally keep their sources a secret.

Out of the multitude of ideas and events in the Book of Mormon and in the View of the Hebrews there are several broad similarities, but many more significant differences; and a correlation at some point between two things does not prove one caused the other; it may mean, for example, that both things were the result of an independent third factor.

Critics who have recognized that the Book of Mormon could not have been plagiarized from any single source claim that Joseph Smith was a skilled eclectic who borrowed ideas from all over his social and intellectual environment and thereby was able to create the potpourri called the Book of Mormon. This "environmentalisť" approach is usually the most satisfying for scholars who in some measure conscientiously examine the question of the book's origins but cannot admit the possibility of divine intervention. But Dr. Hugh Nibley of Brigham Young University most successfully argued that there are ideas and material in the book different from the prevailing beliefs of Joseph Smith's era and different from any other source extant in the 1820s, including the Bible. It is, he argued, significant that since the publication of the Book of Mormon, there have been such things uncovered as ancient Middle Eastern sources that in no case contradict, but rather parallel, many Book of Mormon ideas and word usages. He concluded that guesswork on the part of the Prophet Joseph could not possibly account for all these parallels, which were unknown at the time of the Book of Mormon translation. (See Lehi in the Desert, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, and Since Cumorah, vols. 5, 6, and 7 in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1988].)

In short, the simplest and most accurate assumption about the origin of the Book of Mormon is that it is exactly what Joseph Smith said it was, an ancient work translated "by the gift and power of God." (Testimony of the Three Witnesses.)