Book of Mormon “Surrounding Influences”: A Scholarly Response

Examining the critical claims at ldsdiscussions.com and the evidence that undermines them

Introduction

The ldsdiscussions.com “Surrounding Influences” essay argues that the Book of Mormon is best understood as a product of its 19th-century environment rather than an ancient record. It points to a constellation of claimed sources and cultural currents—the Moundbuilder myth, Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews, anti-Masonic fervor, treasure-digging culture, personal Smith family events, and the King James Bible—as collectively explaining the Book of Mormon’s origin.

This response examines each major claim in turn, evaluates the quality of the evidence offered, and presents the substantial body of counter-evidence that the essay either minimizes or ignores. The goal is not to dismiss every concern raised, but to demonstrate that the naturalistic hypothesis faces serious evidentiary and methodological problems that its proponents rarely acknowledge.

I. The Moundbuilder Myth: Correlation Is Not Causation

The essay’s foundational claim is that the Book of Mormon’s narrative of a civilized people destroyed by a more barbaric people directly mirrors the Moundbuilder myth—the 19th-century belief that an advanced “lost white race” built North American earthworks before being exterminated by Native Americans. William Cullen Bryant’s poem “The Prairies,” DeWitt Clinton’s 1812 writings, and Andrew Jackson’s rhetoric are cited to establish the myth’s cultural pervasiveness.

The argument suffers from a fundamental methodological flaw: demonstrating that a cultural idea existed in Joseph Smith’s environment does not demonstrate that it caused the Book of Mormon’s content. Correlation is not causation. Every author writes within a cultural context, and it is always possible to find thematic overlaps between a new work and the intellectual currents of its day. The question is whether the overlap is specific, precise, and improbable enough to indicate dependence—or whether it is general and easily explained by common cultural inheritance.

When examined closely, the Book of Mormon diverges from the Moundbuilder myth in crucial ways. The Moundbuilder myth posited a white, racially superior civilization. The Book of Mormon, by contrast, presents its civilizational rise and fall as a function of covenant faithfulness, not racial superiority. The Lamanites are not racially inferior—they are spiritually estranged, and the text repeatedly holds them up as a potential covenant people who may yet surpass the Nephites (see Helaman 6; 3 Nephi 6). The Book of Mormon explicitly condemns racial pride (2 Nephi 26:33) and predicts the Lamanites’ eventual spiritual triumph. These features directly contradict the racist underpinning of the Moundbuilder myth and would have made the Book of Mormon less appealing as a vehicle for Moundbuilder ideology, not more.

Furthermore, the Moundbuilder myth was definitively debunked by archaeology around 1890, yet the Book of Mormon’s geographic and cultural details have continued to attract serious scholarly attention in the decades since. A text truly engineered to fit the Moundbuilder paradigm would have aged very poorly. Instead, ongoing work in Mesoamerican archaeology has continued to produce correspondences with Book of Mormon descriptions of fortifications, record-keeping, metallurgy, and social complexity—correspondences that the 19th-century Moundbuilder myth did not anticipate and could not have generated.

II. View of the Hebrews: The Strongest Case Examined

The essay rightly identifies the connection between Oliver Cowdery and Ethan Smith’s congregation in Poultney, Vermont as the most specific piece of circumstantial evidence linking Joseph Smith to View of the Hebrews (1823/1825). B.H. Roberts’ 1927 study “A Parallel” is cited as documenting 18 pages of similarities. The ldsdiscussions.com authors are careful to frame this not as direct plagiarism but as both works drawing from a shared cultural worldview.

However, the essay significantly understates the problems with this theory. Five lines of evidence converge against it.

First, the theory was never raised during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. The Spalding manuscript theory dominated early anti-Mormon criticism. The View of the Hebrews theory was not proposed until 1902 by I. Woodbridge Riley—58 years after Joseph Smith’s death. If the parallels were so obvious, why did not a single contemporary critic, many of whom were actively hostile and well-read, advance this argument? The answer suggested by this silence is that the parallels are not as striking as retrospective analysis implies.

Second, Joseph Smith publicly cited the work as evidence for the Book of Mormon. In the Times and Seasons (June 1, 1842), Joseph Smith quoted from View of the Hebrews to support the historicity of Israelite migration to the Americas. It strains credulity to suppose that an author would deliberately draw public attention to the very text from which he had plagiarized his foundational scripture.

Third, B.H. Roberts was playing devil’s advocate. The essay relies heavily on Roberts’ private studies to suggest he lost confidence in the Book of Mormon. However, Roberts composed these analyses explicitly to prepare Church leaders for anticipated critical attacks—he said as much in the documents themselves. He continued to bear public testimony of the Book of Mormon’s divine origin until his death. Using his adversarial analysis as evidence against his own stated conclusions is a serious misreading of the historical record.

Fourth, the parallels depend on a superseded geography model. Roberts applied a hemispheric geography model in his comparison. Under geographically limited interpretations of the Book of Mormon—now widely favored among LDS scholars—many of Roberts’ specific parallels cease to apply.

Fifth, and most decisively, the “unparallels” are more significant than the parallels. View of the Hebrews contains extensive material that a plagiarizing author would have been strongly tempted to incorporate, yet which is entirely absent from the Book of Mormon:

Elements present in View of the Hebrews but wholly absent from the Book of Mormon include: the Ark of the Covenant, circumcision, fire and sun worship, Hebrew word lists proving Indian-Hebrew linguistic connections, tribal totems corresponding to Jacob’s prophecy, cities of refuge, Passover and Feast of Tabernacles observances, priestly garment descriptions, kosher dietary laws, architectural descriptions of pyramids, phylacteries, and extensive discussion of Quetzalcoatl as a messianic figure.

These are not minor omissions. Ethan Smith offered these features as his strongest “proofs” of Hebrew-American connections. If Joseph Smith was borrowing from this source, why would he discard the most persuasive elements while constructing an elaborate narrative of his own? The most natural explanation is that he was not using View of the Hebrews as a source at all.

The Cowdery–Ethan Smith connection, meanwhile, rests entirely on circumstantial evidence. LDS scholar Larry Morris has demonstrated that the theory of an Ethan Smith–Cowdery association “is not supported by the documents.” The primary witness used to establish Cowdery’s presence on the Smith farm prior to 1829 is Lorenzo Saunders, whose testimony was collected 55 or more years after the events in question by a known anti-Mormon journalist—a source that historians across the ideological spectrum would treat with extreme caution.

III. Anti-Masonry and “Secret Combinations”

The essay argues that the Book of Mormon’s “secret combinations” reflect the anti-Masonic fervor of western New York following the William Morgan affair (1826). Martin Harris’s reported comment that the Book of Mormon was “the anti-masonick Bible” and an 1831 newspaper notice from the Ohio Star are offered as contemporary evidence.

This argument overlooks a significant body of counter-evidence. The term “secret combinations” and the conceptual structure it represents have strong parallels in ancient Near Eastern covenant and apostasy literature. Hugh Nibley and subsequent scholars have identified close parallels to the Gadianton robber bands in ancient fraternal oath-bound societies documented in pre-Christian texts. The combination of blood oaths, secret signs, and conspiracies to seize political power is not a uniquely 19th-century American phenomenon—it appears in ancient sources unavailable to Joseph Smith and consistent with the Book of Mormon’s claimed ancient origin.

The reliance on Martin Harris’s reported remark is methodologically weak. Harris made many off-the-cuff statements recorded by hostile observers that do not constitute systematic evidence of authorial intent. The Ohio Star reference reflects how readers interpreted the Book of Mormon within their own cultural context—not what Joseph Smith intended to write.

Moreover, the Book of Mormon’s treatment of secret combinations differs structurally from anti-Masonic rhetoric. Anti-Masonic literature targeted a specific contemporary institution and its influence on American politics. The Book of Mormon, by contrast, presents secret combinations as a perennial spiritual threat appearing across multiple civilizations separated by centuries—a theological framework incompatible with topical political commentary about 1820s Freemasonry.

IV. Personal and Family Events: The Evidence Reexamined

The essay draws parallels between specific events in the Smith family’s life and Book of Mormon content: Joseph Smith Sr.’s “Tree of Life” dream and Lehi’s vision in 1 Nephi, the loss of the 116 pages and Mosiah 4:28, the Charles Anthon incident and 2 Nephi 27–29, and the “Joseph, son of Joseph” prophecy in 2 Nephi 3. Several points require careful scrutiny.

The Tree of Life dream: Lucy Mack Smith’s account of her husband’s dream was recorded in 1844–45, fifteen years after the Book of Mormon was published. The most parsimonious explanation for the similarities between the dream and Lehi’s vision is that Lucy’s later recollection was shaped by familiarity with the published text—a well-documented phenomenon in memory research. The essay inverts the chronological uncertainty by treating Lucy’s late account as a fixed point and the Book of Mormon text as the dependent variable.

The Anthon transcript and 2 Nephi 27: The essay argues that Joseph Smith incorporated the historical Anthon incident into the Book of Mormon to fulfill Isaiah 29. This reasoning is circular: it assumes the Book of Mormon is a fabrication and then treats its prophetic content as evidence of fabrication. For a believer, the Isaiah passage and the Anthon incident represent genuine prophecy and fulfillment. The critic must first independently establish that the text is fabricated before this argument can have any force—it cannot itself serve as that independent evidence.

The “Joseph, son of Joseph” prophecy: The argument that 2 Nephi 3 is a self-fulfilling prophecy assumes Joseph Smith composed the passage with self-referential intent. However, 2 Nephi 3 draws on a long tradition of messianic and prophetic “Joseph” typology in Jewish and Christian thought. The presence of this typology is fully consistent with a genuinely ancient document, particularly one originating from a Josephite lineage as the text claims.

V. The Authorship Problem: Could Joseph Smith Have Written This Book?

The entire “surrounding influences” argument rests on an implicit assumption: that Joseph Smith possessed the intellectual resources to synthesize these influences into the Book of Mormon. The essay does not directly address the authorship problem in detail, but its argument requires it to be solvable. The evidence, however, is far more challenging than the essay implies.

Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon—approximately 270,000 words—in roughly 65 working days in 1828–1829. Multiple witnesses consistently reported that he dictated without notes, without reviewing previously dictated material, and without pausing to revise. Scribes including Oliver Cowdery, Emma Smith, and Martin Harris all attested to the fluency and continuity of the dictation process. When dictation resumed after interruptions sometimes lasting days, it picked up precisely where it had left off.

The textual features of the Book of Mormon compound this challenge considerably:

Scholars have identified in the text: extensive and intricate chiastic structures, including the elaborate chiasm in Alma 36 whose complexity was not recognized until 1967; consistent narrative complexity with dozens of characters whose speeches and actions remain internally consistent across the entire text; Early Modern English grammatical forms (documented by Stanford Carmack and Royal Skousen) characteristic of 16th-century English rather than 19th-century American usage; and statistical evidence of multiple distinct authorship voices identifiable through wordprint analysis.

The Early Modern English finding is particularly significant. Royal Skousen’s critical text project and Stanford Carmack’s linguistic analyses have demonstrated that the Book of Mormon’s language is not consistent with Joseph Smith’s own writing style, nor with standard 19th-century American English. It contains grammatical structures that were archaic even by 1830 standards—structures that a self-educated New Englander drawing on contemporary cultural influences would not naturally produce.

The “surrounding influences” hypothesis must account for all of this. It is not sufficient to show that thematic parallels exist in 19th-century literature. One must also explain how a young man with limited formal education, dictating fluently without notes or revision across 65 working days, produced a text of this linguistic and structural sophistication while simultaneously weaving in numerous specific ancient Near Eastern elements that 20th and 21st-century scholarship has continued to identify.

VI. The Parallel-Hunting Methodology

The ldsdiscussions.com essay exemplifies what scholars call “parallelomania”—the tendency to accumulate apparent similarities between texts without rigorously evaluating their significance. Four methodological failures are common to this approach.

First, similarities are highlighted while differences are minimized or ignored. The essay notes that both View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon describe a migration from Jerusalem—but does not dwell on the fact that Ethan Smith’s migration crosses the Bering Strait by land while the Book of Mormon’s crosses the ocean by ship; that Ethan Smith’s destruction of the civilized group occurs at A.D. 70 while the Book of Mormon’s departure is at 600 B.C. and its final battle at A.D. 421; or that Ethan Smith’s great lawgiver is Moses while the Book of Mormon’s is Jesus Christ.

Second, phrases and passages are extracted from their narrative contexts to force apparent similarity. When restored to context, many claimed parallels dissolve upon examination.

Third, the essay does not calculate the expected base rate of overlap. Any two books drawing on biblical themes, discussing ancient American peoples, and written in an early 19th-century Protestant American context will share general ideas. The question is whether the specific overlaps exceed what chance and common cultural inheritance would predict. That calculation is never performed.

Fourth, the essay applies a double standard: thematic overlap is used to argue dependence when it supports the thesis, but the same standard is not applied to the hundreds of specific ancient Near Eastern, Semitic, and pre-Columbian cultural features in the Book of Mormon that could not have been derived from 19th-century American sources. The methodology is asymmetrical in a way that systematically favors the naturalistic conclusion.

VII. Ancient Evidence the Essay Does Not Address

A fair evaluation of the Book of Mormon’s origins must also account for the evidence that points away from 19th-century fabrication. The “surrounding influences” essay makes no attempt to explain the following three well-documented correspondences.

Nahom: The Book of Mormon names a burial site in the Arabian Peninsula as “Nahom” (1 Nephi 16:34). Archaeological work has confirmed that a tribal territory known as “NHM” existed in the precise region of Yemen indicated by the text’s travel narrative. The consonantal root NHM appears on altar inscriptions dated to the 7th century B.C.—consistent with the Book of Mormon’s claimed period of composition. This is not a thematic parallel; it is a specific geographical and archaeological correspondence that no 19th-century source could have provided.

Chiasmus: The intricate chiastic structure of Alma 36 and other passages was identified by John Welch in 1967. Chiasmus is a Hebrew literary form virtually unknown in 19th-century American literary culture. Its presence in the Book of Mormon in forms too complex for accidental generation represents significant evidence of authentic Semitic composition.

Bountiful: The Book of Mormon describes a fertile coastal location on the southern Arabian Peninsula—“Bountiful”—where Lehi’s party built a ship. This location was widely regarded as implausible by 19th-century geographers, since the Arabian Peninsula was presumed to be uniformly arid. 20th-century exploration identified Wadi Sayq / Khor Kharfot in Oman as a location matching every specific detail given in the text, including its fertility, available timber for shipbuilding, and access to the sea. The 19th-century cultural environment Joseph Smith inhabited had no knowledge of this location.

VIII. Conclusion: A More Demanding Standard of Evidence

The ldsdiscussions.com “Surrounding Influences” essay presents a plausible-sounding narrative, but on careful examination its evidentiary foundations are weaker than they appear. The Moundbuilder parallel fails because the Book of Mormon’s theology contradicts the myth’s racial premises. The View of the Hebrews connection is circumstantial, historically late, and cannot account for the extensive list of elements Ethan Smith included that Joseph Smith conspicuously omitted. The anti-Masonic argument conflates readers’ interpretations with authorial intent and ignores the ancient Near Eastern parallels for secret-combination narratives. The family events parallels depend on late sources and circular reasoning. And the entire framework ignores the formidable authorship problem posed by the text’s linguistic and structural complexity.

A genuine historical explanation of the Book of Mormon must account for all the evidence: not just the thematic overlaps with 19th-century American culture, but the specific ancient Near Eastern, Semitic, and geographical details that 19th-century sources could not have supplied, the linguistic archaisms that a self-educated frontier author would not naturally produce, and the testimony of multiple witnesses to an unprecedented dictation process.

Thoughtful believers need not deny that Joseph Smith lived in a particular time and place with particular cultural influences. Every prophet speaks within a historical context. The question is whether that context exhausts the explanation for the Book of Mormon—and the evidence, considered in its full breadth, strongly suggests that it does not.