But the most publicized list of parallels of the Book of Mormon and another work is B. H. Roberts' comparison of that book with Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews. Commenting on this, Mrs. Brodie wrote: "The scholarly Mormon historian, B. H. Roberts once made a careful and impressive list of parallels between the Views of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon, but for obvious reasons it was never published." The most obvious reason for not publishing it would be to any textual critic as it was to Elder Roberts, that the "careful and impressive list of parallels" is quite worthless either to prove or disprove the Book of Mormon.

In the first place, only eighteen parallels are listed, and neither Mrs. Brodie nor Mr. Hogan adds anything to the list. This, then is the best we can do for Ethan Smith's parallels. If there were only eighteen ideas in all the Book of Mormon and about the same number in Ethan Smith's book, then the eighteen parallels would be indeed suspicious. But there are not only eighteen ideas in the Book of Mormon— there are hundreds! So if we are going to use such a tiny handful as evidence they had better be good. But when we consider the Roberts' parallels, we find that they are not only very few, but without exception all perfectly ordinary. In fact, Mr. Hogan in his recent treatment of the subject has unwittingly robbed the eighteen parallels of any significance by going to considerable pains to point out in his introduction that the ideas shared by Ethan and Joseph Smith were not original to either of them, but were as common in the world they lived in as the name Smith itself. He would agree with Mr. Cross that "neither Solomon Spaulding, for whom some have claimed authorship of a manuscript which became the Book of Mormon, nor Joseph Smith required any originality to speculate in this direction. . . ," No originality was required in these matters because these things were public property. This being the case why would Joseph Smith need to steal them from Ethan Smith?

Take Parallels Number 2 and 4 in Roberts' list for example: Both claim a Hebraic origin for the Indian. But so did everybody else. In 1833 Josiah Priest wrote, ". . . the opinion that the American Indians are descendants of the lost Ten Tribes, is now a popular one, and generally believed. . . ," In that case Joseph Smith must have known as much about it as Ethan Smith— no need for pilfering. No. 5 The idea of a lost or buried book is found in both documents. Again what could be commoner? This is Mr. Hogan's prize exhibit and parting shot: Ethan Smith had suggested that the best evidence for a connection between the Indians and the ancient Hebrews would be the finding of an actual inscription "on some durable substance in evident Hebrew language and character." Of course it would; inscriptions in ancient languages on durable material (they could hardly be in modern languages on perishable materials) have been throughout history the best known link between ancient and living civilizations. Yet Ethan Smith's idea that a Hebrew inscription would be the best tie-up between the Jews and the Indians is presented here as a brilliant and novel idea, the provocation that set Joseph Smith on the high road to forgery, according to Mr. Hogan, who concludes his study with the weighty words: "If an enterprising and imaginative writer needed any final provocation, this would seem to be it." As if "an energetic and imaginative writer," of all people, needed to be told that it is ancient writings that tell about ancient people.

No. 14. In Ethan Smith's book is reported that an Indian chief once said that "he knew it to be wrong, if a poor man came to his door hungry and naked, to turn him away empty. For he believed God loved the poorest of men better than he did proud rich men." Again, would Joseph Smith or any Christian have to go to Ethan Smith's book to learn this? If the Indian's words were quoted in the Book of Mormon it would be a different thing: but what compassionate human being, Christian or not, has not held this philosophy? Here is another version of the same thing:

No. 16. An early traveler quoted by Ethan Smith tells of some Indians who were "loving, and affectionate to their wives and children. . . ." The Book of Mormon reports indirectly that the Nephites also loved their children. And this, believe it or not, is taken as strong proof that the Book of Mormon was stolen from the View of the Hebrews.

No. 15. It is the same with polygamy: in Ethan Smith's book a Delaware chief deplores the recently adopted practice in his tribe of picking up a number of wives and casting them off as soon as one grew tired of them. The fact that the Indian recognizes such a practice as immoral can only indicate according to Ethan Smith the influence of "Israelitish tradition ... as taught by the Old Testament as if mankind had no other source of morality. Yet here his naive reasoning is sounder than the proposition that the prohibition of more than one wife to the Nephites must have come from this particular source. Actually, this is no parallel at all since there is no resemblance between the practices described.

A number of parallels in the list are attributed to Joseph Smith's stealing from the View of the Hebrews, when he could more easily have found the same material in the Bible. This reaches the point of absurdity in parallel No. 12 where Joseph Smith gets the idea of quoting Isaiah from Ethan since the latter "quoted copiously and chiefly from Isaiah in relation to the scattering and gathering of Israel." This is the equivalent of accusing one scholar of stealing from another because they both quote "copiously and chiefly" from Homer in their studies of Troy. Since ancient times Isaiah has been the source for information on the scattering and gathering of Israel. Any student writing a term paper on that subject would deserve to be flunked if he failed to quote from that prophet without ever having heard of Ethan Smith!

Parallel No. 11 is a related case: "The view of the Hebrews has many references to both the scattering and the gathering of Israel in the last days. The second chapter is entitled 'The Certain Restoration of Judah and Israel' and in this section are quoted nearly all the references to Isaiah that are referred to and quoted more fully in the Book of Mormon." Which would Joseph Smith be more likely to go to in treating this subject, Mr. Ethan Smith or the Bible? Obviously the Bible is the source used since it is here quoted more fully than it is in Ethan's book. But did Joseph need Ethan to tell him to consult the Bible in the first place?

Again, No. 10, the first chapter of the Views of the Hebrews is devoted to the destruction of Jerusalem. Since the book claims to be searching out the lost ten tribes, it is hard to conceive how it could begin otherwise. There have been many dispersions from Jerusalem, as the Book of Mormon tells us, and many destructions: the one told of in the Book of Mormon is a totally different one from that described by Ethan Smith, which took place hundreds of years before it. It is hardly likely that the Bible-reading Smiths first discovered that Jerusalem was destroyed by perusing the pages of Ethan's book. Neither did Joseph need Ethan Smith to tell him (No. 6) that God's people anciently had inspired prophets and heavenly gifts. This has always been a conspicuous part of Indian tradition, but given the popular belief that the ancient Americans were of Israel, Joseph Smith would have no choice but to attribute to them the divine gift possessed by God's people. Among these divine gifts was the Urim and Thummim (No. 7) described in the Bible, and only dimly and indirectly hinted at by Ethan Smith in describing an article of clothing worn by medicine men— quite a different article from the Urim and Thummim of either the Book of Mormon or the Bible.

The trouble with this last parallel is that it is not a parallel at all, but only something that is made into one by egregiously taking the part for the whole. The same faulty reasoning characterizes the first of the parallels in the list, No. 1: the place of origin of the two works. Ethan Smith's book was written in Vermont, and Joseph Smith was born in Vermont. That would be a very suspicious coincidence were it not that Joseph Smith left Vermont as a child at least eight years before the View of the Hebrews was published. The time scale which invalidates the argument of place of origin is actually given as another parallel between the two books. Parallel No. 3: the time of production— it is held to be most significant that the publication of Ethan Smith's first edition and the appearance of the Angel Moroni occurred in the same year. We must confess our failure to detect anything in Ethan Smith's book that might have suggested the Angel Moroni. All that is proved by the dates is that the View of the Hebrews came out first, so that Joseph Smith could have used it. Of course, if View of the Hebrews had appeared after the Book of Mormon there would be no case—though Mrs. Brodie tries very hard to hint that Joseph Smith stole from Josiah Priest, whose book did not appear until 1833! Even Mrs. Brodie concedes that "it may never be proven that Joseph ever saw the View of the Hebrews" but even if he had seen it, that would prove nothing unless we could discover something in the Book of Mormon that could not possibly come from any other source.

What the critics seem to consider the most devastating of all the parallels in the list, the one most often mentioned and on which B. H. Roberts concentrates most of his attention, is No. 9, which deals with the general relations of the ancient Americans to each other. The most obvious and immediate objection to the popular theory that the Indians were the ten tribes was that the ten tribes were civilized and the Indians were not. Since colonial times there were two things that everybody knew about aboriginal America: (1) that it was full of savages, and ( 2 ) that it was full of ruins left by people who were not savages. If the Indians were from the ten tribes, then they must have fallen from a higher estate, and that estate was mutely witnessed by the ruins. Using these general speculations as his starting point, Ethan Smith, like any intelligent man, goes on with his own surmises : When the civilized ten tribes arrived in the New World, they found themselves in a wilderness teeming with game,

( 1 ) "inviting them to the chase, most of them ( 2 ) fell into a wandering and idle hunting life," while "the more sensible parts of this people" continued in their civilized ways and left behind them the ruins that fill the land. "It is highly probable," Ethan Smith continues to speculate, "that the more civilized part of the Ten Tribes of Israel after they settled in America, became (3) wholly separated from the hunting and savage tribes of their brethren; that the latter (4) lost the knowledge of their having descended from the same family with themselves; that the civilized part continued many centuries; that (5) tremendous wars were frequent between them and their savage brethren." Then gradually (6) "in process of time their savage jealousies and rage annihilated their more civilized brethren." No other explanation is possible, he thinks: "What account can be given of this, but that the savages exterminated them, after (7) long and dismal wars." As to the state of the savages, "We cannot so well account for their evident degeneracy in any way" except the Bible way: "as that it took place under the vindictive Providence, as has been noted, to accomplish (8) divine judgments denounced against the idolatrous Ten Tribes of Israel." (Italics ours.)

Now consider the eight points from the viewpoint of the Book of Mormon. ( 1 ) It was not the joy of the chase that led the Lamanites into the wilderness— the greatest hunters in the Book of Mormon are Nephites; (2) the less civilized group did not upon arriving in America "fall into a wandering . . . life," they were wanderers when they got here, and so were their brethren. (3) In the Book of Mormon "the more civilized part" of the people never becomes "wholly separated . . . from their brethren," the two remaining always in contact. (4) The more savage element never "lost the knowledge" of their descent: The Lamanites always claimed in fact that the Nephites had stolen their birthright. (5) The wars were neither tremendous nor frequent— they are almost all in the nature of sudden raids; they involved small numbers of people, and, except for the last great war, they are brief. (6) It was not the savage jealousy and rage of an inferior civilization that destroyed the higher civilization— that higher civilization had broken up completely before the last war by its own corruption, and at the time of their destruction the Nephites were as debased as their rivals. (7) It was not a process of gradual extermination but of a quick and violent end. (8) Finally the downgrading of the Lamanites is not the fulfilment of prophecies about the ten tribes after the pattern of the destruction of God's people (that would be the Nephites), their degeneracy is given a unique explanation that cannot be found either in Ethan Smith or the Bible.