View of the Hebrews

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Rivendale
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View of the Hebrews

Post by Rivendale »

This seems to be concrete proof Joseph Smith had read The View of the Hebrews. https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/c ... 46/id/9871

Excerpt from exmormon reddit user monotonousgangmember.
In Times and Seasons, Nauvoo, Illinois, Vol. 3 (June 1, 1842) on page 814 (link), Joseph Smith writes:
[...] In order to this, we shall here make an extract from an able work: written exclusively on the subject of the Ten Tribes having come from Asia by the way of Bherings Strait, by the Rev. Ethan Smith, Pultney, Vt., who relates as follows: [...long excerpt...] ----Smith's view of the Hebrews. p. 220
Seems pretty cut & dry to me. He definitely knew about View of the Hebrews and clearly has read it. Specifically, he included the excerpt because he was trying to use it as proof of the Book of Mormon!
On the 20truths.information page on plagiarism it's mentioned "No direct evidence exists that would prove or disprove Joseph Smith had read View of the Hebrews." But, they then go on to cite the passage above as proof of him being aware of the book and its stories.
This seems like a strong indication that Smith having plagiarized ideas from View of the Hebrews is likely.
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Fence Sitter »

Everything Smith produced was plagiarized. I challenge anyone to produce a single thing Smith produced that cannot be found contemporary to him.
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Kishkumen
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Kishkumen »

I highly recommend to all watching the Mormonism Live episode on Dartmouth with guest Dr. Randall Bell. Ethan Smith went to Dartmouth. Solomon Spaulding went to Dartmouth. Hyrum Smith attended a school housed in Dartmouth that was designed to produce Native American Christian missionaries.

It's not rocket science, people!
Wikipedia on Ethan Smith wrote:Born in 1762 into a pious home in Belchertown, Massachusetts, Smith abandoned religion following the early deaths of his parents. After a prolonged inner struggle, he joined the Congregational Church in 1781, and shortly thereafter began training for the ministry. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1790, though finding "but little of the spirit of religion there."
Wikipedia on Solomon Spalding wrote:In 1782, he entered Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, graduating with the class of 1785. In October 1787, he became an ordained Congregationalist preacher in Windham, Connecticut.
Wikipedia on Hyrum Smith wrote:Smith attended Dartmouth College in his teens. This may have been one of the factors behind Dr. Nathan Smith treating Smith's brother Joseph's leg.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

Kishkumen wrote:
Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:17 am
I highly recommend to all watching the Mormonism Live episode on Dartmouth with guest Dr. Randall Bell. Ethan Smith went to Dartmouth. Solomon Spaulding went to Dartmouth. Hyrum Smith attended a school housed in Dartmouth that was designed to produce Native American Christian missionaries.

It's not rocket science, people!
Wikipedia on Ethan Smith wrote:Born in 1762 into a pious home in Belchertown, Massachusetts, Smith abandoned religion following the early deaths of his parents. After a prolonged inner struggle, he joined the Congregational Church in 1781, and shortly thereafter began training for the ministry. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1790, though finding "but little of the spirit of religion there."
Wikipedia on Solomon Spalding wrote:In 1782, he entered Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, graduating with the class of 1785. In October 1787, he became an ordained Congregationalist preacher in Windham, Connecticut.
Wikipedia on Hyrum Smith wrote:Smith attended Dartmouth College in his teens. This may have been one of the factors behind Dr. Nathan Smith treating Smith's brother Joseph's leg.
Kish, it sounds like you think there could possibly be some type of tenuous connection with all of this? :lol:
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Moksha »

Fence Sitter wrote:
Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:12 am
I challenge anyone to produce a single thing Smith produced that cannot be found contemporary to him.
That an angel with a drawn sword was compelling him to proposition women. Also, that he was a volleyball star at Baruch College.
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Kishkumen »

Everybody Wang Chung wrote:
Fri Jan 27, 2023 6:37 am
Kish, it sounds like you think there could possibly be some type of tenuous connection with all of this? :lol:
Yes! Somehow three books that dealt particularly with the fantastical origins or past of the “Indians” came out of people with Dartmouth backgrounds or close connections within a relatively short span of time. Something about Dartmouth’s focus on educating and Christianizing Native Americans inspired those who attended or shared those ideas with others to write salient books. It’s not rocket science!
Last edited by Kishkumen on Fri Jan 27, 2023 8:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by BeNotDeceived »

The B of M was written (plagiarized) from 5 books Smith had either read or had access to:

View of the Hebrews
Manuscript Found
The Late War
The First Book of Napoleon
Captain Kidd

Makes you wonder how many of these he read while laid up for over a year after his leg surgery?
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Kishkumen »

BeNotDeceived wrote:
Fri Jan 27, 2023 8:17 pm
The B of M was written (plagiarized) from 5 books Smith had either read or had access to:

View of the Hebrews
Manuscript Found
The Late War
The First Book of Napoleon
Captain Kidd

Makes you wonder how many of these he read while laid up for over a year after his leg surgery?

Well, View of the Hebrews postdates that convalescence, doesn't it? Which of these predates the 1813 operation? View of the Hebrews was published in 1823.

ETA: The Oberlin manuscript is dated to ca. 1812, I guess.

The First Book of Napoleon seems to predate 1810.

The Late War was published in 1816.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

Kishkumen wrote:
Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:17 am
I highly recommend to all watching the Mormonism Live episode on Dartmouth with guest Dr. Randall Bell. Ethan Smith went to Dartmouth. Solomon Spaulding went to Dartmouth. Hyrum Smith attended a school housed in Dartmouth that was designed to produce Native American Christian missionaries.
I followed Kish's advice and listened to the episode. Wow! I need to listen to it again. Basically, it completely shoots the myth that Joseph and the Smith family were uneducated. From the podcast we learn:

- The Smith family spent many years living close to Dartmouth while Hyrum pursued his Ivy League education.

- Hyrum attended Dartmouth for 4 years.

- Hyrum learned Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

- Joseph's leg was operated on by a Dr. John Smith, one of the founder's of Dartmouth and first cousin of Joseph Smith, Sr.

- The Smith family had cousins, aunts, uncles and other family members all associated with Dartmouth.

- Hyrum personally tutored Joseph Smith for several years.

- In addition to Hyrum personally tutoring Joseph Smith in a wide variety of topics Joseph attended many years of school and was a member of the debate team.

- Hyrum was very familiar with Ethan Smith and Solomon Spaulding and would have rubbed shoulders with them.

- The Church has omitted from its history, the many years the Smith family spent living by Dartmouth and the education they received.
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."

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Re: View of the Hebrews

Post by Rick Grunder »

For more than forty years, I’ve been an enthusiastic proponent of Mormon parallel and environmental studies. Throughout this long period, I’ve listened to equally enthusiastic friends expand or exult over the inferred Dartmouth connection. Often, I feel this is exaggerated, or at least too narrow in perspective.

The Smiths probably lived in the West Lebanon, NH area (about 4 miles from Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH) for two or three years (roughly 1812 or ’13 - 1815) and then Norwich, Vermont (pronounced by some locals as “Norridge,” across the river and a somewhat comparable distance, or less, from Dartmouth) for about two years (roughly 1815-early 1817). See Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents 5:384-85.

Lucy Mack Smith says they sent Hyrum to “the accademy in Hanover” until the typhus hit (EMD 1:260). If this was indeed Moor’s Charity School, it was worthy, but hardly the equivalent of a formal collegiate training at Dartmouth itself with the latter’s sophisticated compliment of advanced studies.

Prof. John Joannis Smith (1752-1809), a founding figure at Dartmouth, was a distant cousin, and not even through the Mormon “Smith”-named line, but rather the Palmers. His mother Elizabeth Palmer (married one Joseph Smith, 1724-1760, no relation) was a first cousin to Joseph Smith Jr.’s great grandmother Mary Palmer (married Moses Duty), mother of Mary Duty Smith. Or if you want to make it sound as close as possible, Joseph Smith Jr. was a second cousin, twice removed, to Prof. Smith. Did he ever know that?

The innovative physician who operated successfully on young Joseph Smith was the eminent medical professor Nathan Smith (not John) who routinely rambled the nearby countryside with his assistant students to handle such cases. It had to be excruciating for the poor patients, and pretty invasive, but Dr. Smith wrote in his published memoires that the results were rarely unsuccessful.

Ethan Smith and Solomon Spaulding were indeed students at Dartmouth, but long before the Smiths lived nearby. I agree that many Mormon parallel elements can be associated with luminaries who functioned at one time or another in that particular climate. But the same can be said equally of the broader regions and contexts of Joseph Smith’s early life. So I don’t mean to denigrate the interesting similarities, but only warn against leaving ourselves vulnerable to criticism by overplaying them in relation to the bigger picture.

In order to dry the wet blanket which I have cast above, let me end with some fun collector notes! Sitting on my desk at this moment are . . .

1) Eleazar Wheelock, A Plain and Faithful Narrative of the Original Design, Rise, Progress and present State of the Indian Charity-School At Lebanon, in Connecticut . . . [and later moved to Dartmouth] . . . Boston: Richard and Samuel Draper, 1763. First edition of the first Wheelock report, if memory serves, and quite a little treasure.

2) The First Book of Napoleon, the Tyrant of the Earth . . . by Eliakim the Scribe . . . (London, Edinburgh and Dublin, first edition published jointly by several firms, 1809) in red gilt-decorated morocco, all edges gilt, with two very carefully-written presentation inscriptions from “The Author” to Evan John MacGregor Murray Esq., (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collectio ... 37-0308-17) a once popular hero figure of the Napoleonic wars. I paid plenty for the thing for my Mormon Parallels permanent collection, but I would be very surprised if young Joseph Smith ever saw or heard of this work. I see it not as a source, but a sampling: a symptom rather than a cause.

3) And a book hunting story: Many years ago, I went on a very short buying jaunt, merely to the other side of Syracuse, where a woman sold my friend a few items. She also had a large and very old Bible concordance which interested me as soon as I saw it. Inside was an inscription of an earlier owner stating that it had once belonged to Sampson Occom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Occom). My friend thought I was a little too generous in spending the money, but Dartmouth College Library later expressed their gratitude to me for selling this artifact to them.

Forgive these late-night rambles, and I hope no offense is taken.
“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”
― Cicero, De Oratore - Book III
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