Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon (2nd Edition) [Kindle Edition]

I am the author of this book. I am writing this in response to the two reviewers who suggested that the reader visit a web-site review of my book by L. Ara Norwood. The review--which was published by FARMS, a Mormon apologetics group--in fact, ignores or misrepresents much of what I presented in my book, so I feel the need to respond.

Note that the current edition of my book was published in 2000, but the FARMS review is 16 years old and is of the 1985 edition. This is important because the current edition is much expanded over the 1985 edition and presents considerably more documentation, including numerous additional parallels between the Book of Mormon (BM) and Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews (VH). It also answers and refutes many of the criticisms found in the FARMS review and other Mormon sources

In referring to the chapters dealing with the early life of Joseph Smith, Norwood states: "All of these chapters are written to paint the particular portrait of Joseph Smith as conceived by Persuitte--that of a deceiver. Consequently, he borrows heavily from anti-Mormon sources for his information." In fact, most of my source documents were contemporaneous with Joseph Smith, and many consist of writings by friends and family of Joseph Smith. Much of this material deals with Joseph's "money-digging" confidence scheme. If Joseph did, in fact, engage in such a scheme, he was a deceiver. And, in fact, it is well established--and even accepted by knowledgeable Mormons--that Joseph did engage in a money-digging confidence scheme and was brought before a justice of the peace for engaging in that activity. Methinks Norwood doth protest too much when I was simply laying out the facts.

Concerning Part Three of my book, Norwood begins: "Here we have eight chapters loaded with comparisons between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon. Much of this work seems to be original with Persuitte.... The comparisons, mostly parallels, deal with the common topics of the voyage to the land of promise, things of a prophetic nature, the division into two camps of people, wars, the cycles between righteousness and wickedness, the visitation of Christ, and the final battles". Norwood fails to mention that Ethan Smith's synopsis of his theory about the history of the ancient Americans is also a brief but accurate summary of the basic story line of the BM. Indeed, Norwood's run-down of the parallels shows that those parallels also follow the BM story line.

Norwood continues: "It is not my desire to present an exhaustive analysis of Persuitte's work. To do so would run several hundred pages.... I will, however, present a few of my findings on his comparison of View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon." So Norwood admits that it would take several hundred pages to properly analyze my "eight chapters loaded with comparisons between" the two books. If my comparisons were as insignificant as he makes them out to be, why would it take several hundred pages to analyze them? Can only "a few" of his selective "findings" demonstrate that the remaining parallels are insignificant?

Norwood begins his analysis with the following: "A careful examination of the passages in the Book of Mormon treated by Persuitte reveals that most of them deal with one or two broad themes: the land of promise (i.e., America) or the gathering of Israel. This is interesting because much of the Book of Mormon deals with additional Christian doctrine, yet few of these doctrinal passages were accused of being the result of pilfering from View of the Hebrews." Here Norwood grossly misrepresents the content of the comparisons. There is much more than "one or two broad themes." For example, in passage after passage I present a considerable number of similarities that Ethan Smith's "savage" and "civilized" tribes have with the BM's Lamanites and Nephites, as well as descriptions of the wars that were fought between the respective factions. As for the additional Christian doctrines found in the BM but not in VH, how does that prove that Joseph Smith did not get his ideas for the BM from VH? After having been "inspired" by what he found in Ethan Smith's book, Joseph was perfectly free to expand on that material and bring in ideas from other sources--including, quite understandably, the Bible.

The following exemplifies Norwood's misrepresentations of the parallels: "Both [books] mention the idea of Lamanites/Indians being kind and loving to their wives and children. None can dispute that a parallel does exist. But what of it? Is anything so unusual about that? Would Joseph Smith need to rely on Ethan Smith to dream up such a concept?" Norwood fails to mention that this parallel is but one in a series of related, closely connected parallels about the character of the Lamanites/Indians, so that parallel was hardly as isolated as he makes it out to be.

Norwood continues by presenting his analysis of the percentage of verses in the individual books in the BM that would appear to have their source in VH. The percentages presented are small. But even if they are accurate, so what? The point is that Ethan Smith's book provided Joseph Smith with the inspiration for producing the BM. Again, once having got that inspiration, he was not obligated to use VH as his sole source of material. He was free to expand on that material by incorporating material from other sources (many of which I show in my book), including his own imagination.

Norwood states there is "mountains of evidence" to connect the BM with the ancient world. If that is so, why do professional non-Mormon archaeologists not accept the validity of the BM? In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that the BM has no basis whatsoever in the history of ancient America.

I could provide more refutations of Norwood's criticisms of my book, but I have reached Amazon's word limit. Read the book and make your own judgment.

In the Introduction to this 1985 book, the author writes, "I have chosen to make full use of the documentation and to let the evidence speak for itself... All this material will show that The Book of Mormon was a product of the early nineteenth century rather than a history of Ancient America."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"I found, in short, that The Book of Mormon appeared to have had its conceptual origins in 'View of the Hebrews.'" (Pg. 2)
"...these records indicate that the Cowdery family had an association with the same church that Ethan Smith was to become pastor of in 1821... It is reasonable to expect, then, that Oliver Cowdery eventually became acquainted firsthand with Ethan Smith." (Pg. 8)
"The important point about William's statement is that it confirms Lucy's narrative that the revival and the enrollment of the family members in the Presbyterian Church did not take place until after Alvin's death. So despite Joseph's later statement that the family members joined the church as a result of a revival supposedly occurring in 1820, it seems that they actually joined that church because of an 1824 revival." (Pg. 30)
"Oliver Cowdery could have supplied Joseph with a copy (of 'View of the Hebrews'). Oliver had left Poultney for New York State 'about' the year 1825, the same year in which the second edition of Ethan Smith's book was published." (Pg. 57)
"Regardless of what motivated Joseph to try to join the Harmony Methodist Episcopal Church (in 1828), his attempt to do so ... conflicts with his later claims about his first vision." (Pg. 81)
"When Joseph apparently shifted the conceptual setting of his story to Central and South America, he left the remains of the Jaredites in Ohio, which extended the distance that Limhi's expedition had to go to find them---though the text was not changed to reflect the greater distance. The hill Cumorah was also left where it was in New York State, thus causing the Nephites to make their long flight to the place of their final battle with the Lamanites." (Pg. 167)
"In the first place, The Book of Mormon does not appear to have been written by someone trying to make the most of limited writing space, but instead of someone trying to produce a book of impressive proportions." (Pg. 195)
"What exacerbated the situation was that most of the Mormons were Northern immigrants to a slave state. The native Missourians did not want outsiders barging in and putting strange ideas about freedom into the heads of their slaves." (Pg. 212)
"Although according to Joseph the Lord had promised that he would destroy Emma if she did not accept Joseph's other wives, she lived to the age of seventy-five, while Joseph would die in less than a year." (Pg. 226)

I read the first edition and really liked it. It goes into detail about how much of The Book of Mormon was directly lifted from the book "View of the Hebrew." There are some pretty slanderous things said about Joseph Smith, and the overall tone reminds me of Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason," but I doubt that someone who's already a firm believer in the Mormon faith will be swayed by it. The overall theme of "how can anyone believe this?" can be grating, but the evidence itself is hard to deny.