How does Persuitte prove his thesis? Has he uncovered long lost letters between Cowdery and Ethan Smith? or a contract signed by Joseph and Oliver to divide the profits? No! Persuitte admits "the above sketch is purely speculative. If true, it would explain much" (p. 254). His main proof that the Book of Mormon was inspired by View of the Hebrews is that the two books have so many similarities (which Persuitte lays out for us in tedious detail). This reviewer remains unconvinced. So many of the "parallel passages" just don't strike me as even similar. Most of the ones that use identical phrases can be traced to a common inspiration (e.g., the prophecies of the book of Isaiah).

The influence of Ethan Smith's book on the Book of Mormon is not new turf in Mormon history. Comparisons of Ethan and Joseph Smith and been around for thirty years, and some scholars (e.g., Hullinger)not even in Persuitte's bibliography, have argued the point better than Persuitte, (though not with his excruciating detail). The problem of who influenced whom is a classically moot point throughout much of intellectual history, and this may be the case here. Roger Williams, Jonathan Edwards, and William Penn had also accepted the lost tribes theory. The use of the magical Urim and Thummin by the Indians was mentioned in an 1816 book by Elias Boudinot, A Star in the West. Accounts in the local newspapers of the early 1820s mentioned such things as the Egyptians in the New World, the pre-Columbian civilizations of Mexico, writing in hieroglyphics, and even a golden Bible discovered in Canada.

It is possible that Joseph Smith read Ethan's book or heard of its contents. The question which I pose to Persuitte would be: "Even granting the point, is that a satisfactory explanation of the Book of Mormon?" My answer is that it cannot be, for the uniqueness of Joseph Smith's writing style, his personality, his sociohistorical context speaks through every page, and to ignore those factors is to miss the importance of the Book of Mormon.

My greatest objection to Persuitte's book is not that it adds little that is new to an old debate, but that it focuses on an irrelevant debate. The relevant question is not who might have influenced the intellectual growth and source of literary fantasies of the young Smith, but how did his writings reflect his own complex personality and how did they serve so effectively as the foundation for the most successful religion of purely American origin? These answers are not to be found by comparing the Book of Mormon to other contemporary writings, but by setting the early church and its prophet within their sociohistorical context.