Posted by:
ipseego
(
)
Date: November 15, 2010 02:23PM
Joseph Smith built the story of the Book of Mormon on prevalent theories about American prehistory - prevalent in his days, that is. The idea that the old Indian mounds in and about the Ohio valler were remains of an ancient civilization that had been eradicated by "wild" Indians, was a commonplace in Smith's days. That was what almost everybody thought. Joseph didn't have to pick it up from Ethan Smith, Joseph would have heard of the supposed, vanished "Mound Builders" long before Ethan's book was published.
But that Ethan Smith confirms the BoM? Actually, according to Ethan the Hebrew ancestors of the Indians came to America over land across the Bering Strait.
But even if Joseph did not get the idea that Indians were Hebrews from Ethan, Joseph probably got the idea of the restoration of Israel from Ethan's "View of the Hebrews".
If you want to read "View of the Hebrews":
http://www.mormonismi.net/pdf/voh.pdf . Warning, it's boring!
Here are some links to information on the "Mound Builders", what archaeologists know about them now and what people believed about them in Joseph Smith's days:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:Ancient_Civilizations/Mound_Builders ,
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-53420384.html ,
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0834239.html ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_builder_%28people%29 ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon