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6/10/2025, 6:36:02 PM
>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 of Israel, a relatively common view during the early nineteenth century
>The Book of Mormon shares some thematic elements with View of the Hebrews. Both books quote extensively from the Old Testament prophecies of the Book of Isaiah; describe the future gathering of Israel and restoration of the Ten Lost Tribes; propose the peopling of the New World from the Old (View of the Hebrews via land bridge, The Book of Mormon via ocean voyage); 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; include a change of government from monarchy to republican; and suggest that the gospel was preached in ancient America
>Oliver Cowdery, 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 where the latter was pastor for five years. Cowdery may have passed on knowledge of the book to Joseph Smith
>The Book of Mormon shares some thematic elements with View of the Hebrews. Both books quote extensively from the Old Testament prophecies of the Book of Isaiah; describe the future gathering of Israel and restoration of the Ten Lost Tribes; propose the peopling of the New World from the Old (View of the Hebrews via land bridge, The Book of Mormon via ocean voyage); 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; include a change of government from monarchy to republican; and suggest that the gospel was preached in ancient America
>Oliver Cowdery, 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 where the latter was pastor for five years. Cowdery may have passed on knowledge of the book to Joseph Smith
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