Some have supposed that Joseph Smith might have obtained inspiration and evidence from reading some of these books just mentioned. B. H. Roberts shortly before his death drew up a list of all possible Book of Mormon parallels with Ethan Smith's Views of the Hebrews. A reading of his list of parallels discloses it to be lacking in any real content. The impression gained by reading Ethan Smith's book is that it is just the sort of book that any New England minister might write who was interested in the restoration of Judah and Israel. Ethan Smith quotes the same old arguments from Boudinot and Adair.

The Book of Mormon in contrast merely tells its story, it doesn't argue about the origin of its peoples. It is neither a romance, nor an account of the Lost Ten Tribes, but a religious history of Old Testament peoples in ancient America, in a period about which almost nothing was known in 1830, and about which not a great deal is yet known.