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Full Text - View of the Hebrews (1823)

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By Mason

Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews was published in Vermont in the 1823 and again in 1825. It gathered together the common theories of the period about the origins of Native Americans. The book argued that Indigenous peoples were descended from the lost tribes of Israel, and this claim was supported by lists of cultural traits, migration stories, and scattered historical reports. A long narrative of ancient division, warfare, scattering, and promised restoration was laid out as a way of explaining both American history and biblical prophecy. The book was written as a serious attempt to place the American continent inside a biblical frame.


Its relationship to the Book of Mormon is often noted because many of the same ideas appear there as well. An Israelite migration to the Americas is described. Cycles of conflict and destruction are emphasized. A surviving remnant is portrayed as carrying a future promise. Both texts worked with the same assumptions that were circulating in New England at the time, so the overlap has been treated as evidence that the Book of Mormon was shaped by the intellectual and religious environment in which Joseph Smith lived. 


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