In 2002, a collection of essays appeared under the title of “Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon.” John Gee’s essay, “The Wrong Kind of Book,” begins by observing that critics commonly try to explain the Book of Mormon as a product of early 19th-century America, wholly explained by that environment.
“We know exactly what kind of book Joseph Smith’s contemporaries expected the Book of Mormon to be like,” Gee writes, “because we have two other works from that same period that are said to be of the same general sort.”
The first is “The Book of Pukei,” a satirical sendup of the Book of Mormon published by “Obadiah Dogberry” (aka Abner Cole) in 1830. The second is Solomon Spalding’s (or Spaulding’s) unfinished novel “Manuscript Story,” which many 19th-century critics assumed to be Joseph Smith’s plagiarized source. (A few holdouts have survived into the 21st century, but the Spalding theory essentially died when the manuscript was finally published — by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! — and bore little significant resemblance to the Book of Mormon.)
“Cole’s and Spaulding’s works fit comfortably within their early 19th-century milieu and provide a control against wild speculation about 19th-century origins for the Book of Mormon,” Gee says.
At point after point, Gee compares them to the Book of Mormon, which, he maintains, doesn’t fit early America well at all.
As Cole knew, the young Joseph Smith had been hired to dig for supposed buried treasure. Accordingly, “The Book of Pukei” is heavily focused on treasure-digging. But the Book of Mormon scarcely mentions such activities.
Spalding, a much less talented contemporary of Jane Austen, devoted many pages to romance, courtship and marriage, but those themes are strikingly absent from the Book of Mormon.
Ethan Smith’s 1823 “View of the Hebrews,” another source from which critics accused Joseph of borrowing, seeks to prove that “the American Indians are the ten tribes of Israel.”
The Book of Mormon, by contrast, offers no such “proofs,” and, though it features a small party traveling to the New World who’re descended from the biblical patriarch Joseph, it explains that “the other tribes of the house of Israel … are not of this land” (3 Nephi 15:15-16:1, 17:4).
“The setting of both 'The Book of Pukei' and 'Manuscript Story' is a world dominated by the cultural heritage of the Roman Empire,” Gee writes.
Together, the two books refer to “sheets of parchment,” Cicero’s “Orations,” the Latin language and script, Constantine and characters bearing Roman names such as “Fabius.”
“View of the Hebrews” begins with a discussion of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, based partly on classical Greek and Latin sources such as Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius.
“The heavy Roman bias,” Gee remarks, “is typical of 19th-century America, where the Roman Republic was consciously imitated.” By contrast, the Book of Mormon opens in the ancient Near East, referring to the much earlier destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. It shows little trace of the Latinate style and vocabulary in the other works.
"The Book of Pukei" and “Manuscript Story” are studded with allusions to Indian blankets, moccasins, “bark canoes,” feather headdresses and “shoes and long stockings,” none of which appear in the Book of Mormon. Ethan Smith’s “View of the Hebrews” tries to demonstrate the Israelite origins of the American Indians via such features of the Old Testament as circumcision, the ark of the covenant, Levitical priests and “cities of refuge.” None of these things is mentioned in the Book of Mormon except for circumcision, which appears just once — in a letter from the prophet Mormon saying that it has been “done away” (see Moroni 8:8).
“The easiest way,” Gee says, to evaluate “the environmentalist argument is to look at three clear products of the 19th century that were what folks of that period expected the Book of Mormon to be like.” All three of his “control” books betray Latin influence and discuss topics typical of the time, such as romance, money-digging and the lost 10 tribes. All three describe the northeastern Indian cultures with which early Yankees were familiar.
Gee concludes that “19th-century accounts purported to be similar to the Book of Mormon all clearly betray their American cultural background in ways that significantly differ from what we find in the Book of Mormon. Why then, if the Book of Mormon is said to be a 19th-century book, does it not read like one?”
Gee’s essay is available at publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1082&index=10.
Daniel Peterson teaches Arabic studies, founded BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, directs MormonScholarsTestify.org, chairs mormoninterpreter.com, blogs daily at patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson, and speaks only for himself.