''View of the Hebrews'' is an 1823 book written by Ethan Smith, a Congregationalist minister in Vermont, who argued that Native Americans were descended from the

Ten Lost Tribes The ten lost tribes were the ten of the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been exiled from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire BCE. These are the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Ashe ...

of Israel, a relatively common view during the early nineteenth century. Numerous commentators on

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...

history, from

LDS Church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...

general authority

B. H. Roberts Brigham Henry Roberts (March 13, 1857 – September 27, 1933) was a historian, politician, and leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He edited the seven-volume ''History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

to Fawn M. Brodie, biographer of

Joseph Smith Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, he ...

, have noted similarities in the content of ''View of the Hebrews'' and the

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude date ...

, which was first published in 1830, seven years after Ethan Smith's book.

Content

Ethan Smith suggested that Native Americans were descendants of the

Ten Lost Tribes of Israel The ten lost tribes were the ten of the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been exiled from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire BCE. These are the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Ash ...

; according to Mormon historian

Richard Lyman Bushman Richard Lyman Bushman (June 20, 1931) is an American historian and Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, having previously taught at Brigham Young University, Harvard University, Boston University, and the Univ ...

, this theory was held by many theologians and laymen of his day who tried to fit new populations into what they understood of

biblical history The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a v ...

, which they felt to encompass the world. These tribes were believed to have disappeared after being taken captive by the

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

ns in the 8th century BCE. Mormon historian

Terryl Givens Terryl Lynn Givens is a senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University (BYU). Until 2019, he was a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he held the ...

calls the work "an inelegant blend of history, excerpts, exhortation, and theorizing." During Smith's day, speculation about the Ten Lost Tribes was heightened both by a renewed interest in biblical prophecy and by the belief that the aboriginal peoples who had been swept aside by European settlers could not have been the same as the ancient people who created the sophisticated earthwork mounds found throughout the Mississippi Valley and southeastern North America. Smith attempted to rescue Indians from the contemporary myth of

mound builders A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...

being a separate race by making the indigenous people "potential converts worthy of salvation." "If our natives be indeed from the tribes of Israel," Smith wrote, "American Christians may well feel, that one great object of their inheritance here, is, that they may have a primary agency in restoring those 'lost sheep of the house of Israel.'"

Comparison with the Book of Mormon

The

shares some thematic elements with ''View of the Hebrews''. Both books quote extensively from the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

prophecies of the

Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah ( he, ספר ישעיהו, ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC ...

; describe the future gathering of Israel and restoration of the Ten Lost Tribes; propose the peopling of the New World from the Old via a long sea journey; declare a religious motive for the migration; divide the migrants into civilized and uncivilized groups with long wars between them and the eventual destruction of the civilized by the uncivilized; assume that Native Americans were descended from Israelites and their languages from

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

; include a change of government from

monarchy A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic (constitutional monarchy) ...

republic A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...

an; and suggest that the gospel was preached in ancient America. Early Mormons occasionally cited the ''View of the Hebrews'' to support the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. In the 20th century, Mormon scholars noted the parallels between ''View of the Hebrews'' and the Book of Mormon and suggested that

had used ''View of the Hebrews'' as a source in composing the Book of Mormon, or that he was at least influenced by the popular 19th-century ideas expounded in the earlier work. It is unknown whether Joseph Smith had access to ''View of the Hebrews'' when he dictated the Book of Mormon in 1829 and 1830; he did quote from ''View of the Hebrews'' in 1842. Critics of the

Latter Day Saint movement The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Jo ...

have also noted that

Oliver Cowdery Oliver H. P. Cowdery (October 3, 1806 – March 3, 1850) was an American Mormon leader who, with Joseph Smith, was an important participant in the formative period of the Latter Day Saint movement between 1829 and 1836. He was the first baptized ...

, who later served as Joseph Smith's scribe for the Book of Mormon, lived in the same small Vermont town as Ethan Smith and may have attended the

Congregational church Congregational churches (also Congregationalist churches or Congregationalism) are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its ...

where the latter was pastor for five years. These critics suggested that Cowdery may have passed on knowledge of the book to Joseph Smith. Larry Morris, a Mormon researcher, has argued that "the theory of an Ethan Smith–Cowdery association is not supported by the documents and that it is unknown whether Oliver knew of or read ''View of the Hebrews''." When in 1922

Mormon apologist Apologetics (from Greek , "speaking in defense") is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. Early Christian writers (c. 120–220) who defended their beliefs against critics and ...

was asked by church leaders to compare ''View of the Hebrews'' and the Book of Mormon, he produced a confidential report, later published as ''

Studies of the Book of Mormon ''Studies of the Book of Mormon'' is a collection of essays written at the beginning of the 20th century (though not published until 1985) by B. H. Roberts (1857–1933), a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS C ...

'', that noted eighteen points of similarity. Fawn M. Brodie, the first important historian to write a non-hagiographic biography of Joseph Smith, believed that Joseph Smith's theory of the Hebraic origin of the American Indians came "chiefly" from ''View of the Hebrews''. "It may never be proved that Joseph saw ''View of the Hebrews'' before writing the Book of Mormon," wrote Brodie in 1945, "but the striking parallelisms between the two books hardly leave a case for mere coincidence." A number of Mormon apologists have argued that the parallels between the works are weak or over-emphasized.

Modern publication

A photographic reprint of the 1823 edition of ''View of the Hebrews'' was published by Arno Press in 1977. The text was published in 1980 by

Jerald and Sandra Tanner Jerald Dee Tanner (June 1, 1938 – October 1, 2006) and Sandra McGee Tanner (born January 14, 1941) are American writers and researchers who publish archival and evidential materials about the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Sa ...

, with an introduction by the latter. In 1985, a scholarly edition of the work was published by

University of Illinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois system. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, plus 33 scholarly journals, and several electronic project ...

, and a second edition was published by

Signature Books Signature Books is an American press specializing in subjects related to Utah, Mormonism, and Western Americana. The company was founded in 1980 by George D. Smith and Scott Kenney and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is majority owned by the ...

in 1992.

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

published an edition in 1996.Ethan Smith
''View of the Hebrews''
ed. Charles D. Tate Jr., 2nd ed. (Provo, Utah: BYU

Religious Studies Center The Religious Studies Center (RSC) is the research and publishing arm of Religious Education at Brigham Young University (BYU), sponsoring scholarship on the culture, history, scripture, and doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day S ...

, 1996).

Notes

References

*
View of the Hebrews, 1823 first edition

External links