In more recent years, another "explanation" has been advanced: Joseph Smith supposedly took his main ideas, say these critics, from the writings of one Ethan Smith, who wrote a book called View of the Hebrews, though there is no evidence that the Prophet ever knew anything about this book. But what is much more important, with regard to the purposes, style, and substance of the two books, comparing Ethan Smith's book View of the Hebrews with the Book of Mormon is not fair to either Ethan or Joseph Smith. The following sample from Ethan's writings demonstrates this:

One more argument I shall adduce from facts furnished in the Archaeology to show that the American natives are from the tribes of Israel. The argument is a tradition of a trinity in the Great Spirit . . . , An Indian article, called by this writer a "triune vessel," . . . . an emblem of three of their principal gods, and seems to think of deriving an argument from it in favour of the natives being of East Indian extraction. He says of this triune vessel; "Does it not represent the three chief gods of India, Brahma, Vishnoo, and Siva." This certainly seems very far fetched! Why should they be supposed to be a representative of those three East Indian gods, any more than three other heathen gods on earth? Brahma, Vishnoo, and Siva are three distinct ideal gods. This triune vessel is one entire thing. It must rather then have been designed to represent one God with something like three faces, or characters.

One would no more read Ethan Smith's book for doctrine than he would read the telephone directory in search of a plot. Trying to compare View of the Hebrews or Spaulding's Manuscript Story with the Book of Mormon is like trying to make something of the similarities in the musical notes used in both "Chopsticks" and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony!