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While he presumably never intended for these manuscripts to be made public, he did present some of his concerns in person to the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve at a special gathering organized for that purpose. Although little came from these meetings, Roberts continued his studies while serving as a mission president in the Northeast United States, where he was conveniently close to sites of historical importance.
Consider a few of his statements as printed in Studies of the Book of Mormon
Perhaps the most revealing of all of Robert’s discoveries was how Book of Mormon themes and ideas parallel those of the book, View of the Hebrews, written several years before and widely distributed in the region where Joseph lived. Robert N. Hullinger summarized some of the elements of View of the Hebrews. The similarities to the Book of Mormon are unmistakable: 1. Indians buried a book they could no longer read. 2. A Mr. Merrick found some dark yellow parchment leaves in “Indian Hill.” 3. Native Americans had inspired prophets and charismatic gifts, as well as… 4. …their own kind of Urim and Thummim and breastplate. 5. Ethan Smith produced evidence to show that ancient Mexican Indians were no strangers to Egyptian hieroglyphics. 6. An overthrown civilization in America is to be seen from its ruined monuments and forts and mounds. The barbarous tribes—barbarous because they had lost the civilized arts—greeting the Europeans were descendants of the lost civilization. 7. Chapter one of View of the Hebrews is a thirty-two-page account of the historical destruction of Jerusalem. 8. There are many references to Israel's scattering and being "gathered" in the last days. 9. Isaiah is quoted for twenty chapters to demonstrate the restoration of Israel. In Isaiah chapter 18 a request is made to save Israel in America. 10. The United States is asked to evangelize the Native Americans. 11. Ethan Smith cited Humboldt's New Spain to show the characteristics of Central American civilization; the same are in the Book of Mormon. 12. The legends of Quetzacoatl, the Mexican messiah, are paralleled in the Book of Mormon by Christ's appearing in the western hemisphere.3
1 B.H. Roberts, Studies of the Book of Mormon, ed. Brigham D. Madsen (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992). 2 Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews (1825 [photo reprint available from Utah Lighthouse Ministry]). 3 Robert N. Hullinger, Joseph Smith's Response to Skepticism, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), pp. 183-184, quoted in Salt Lake City Messenger, Issue 107, October 2006. |
A must-read for all those investigating the origins of the Book of Mormon is a
book published in 1985 entitled, Studies
of the Book of Mormon.1
It is
essentially a collection
of three manuscripts written by Elder by B.H. Roberts, “Book of Mormon Difficulties:
A Study,” “A Book of Mormon Study,” and “A Parallel.” Roberts
initially began his
investigation in 1921 after being asked by Elder James E. Talmage and President
Heber J. Grant to be part of a committee that was tasked with looking into the
Book of Mormon’s archeological
problems. He went on from there to research the similarities
between Ethan Smith’s 1823 publication, View of the Hebrews2,
and the Book of
Mormon. 
There is no clear evidence that Roberts ever denied his testimony of the
Book of Mormon, or that he
ever declared it to be a fabrication. By all accounts, he remained fiercely
loyal to Joseph, his church, and its scriptures. Still, he was unafraid to ask
the tough questions, and
was the type of man that would rather face his opponent armed to the
hilt with logic and reason, rather than refuse to participate in an exchange
that could threaten his
position. His courage and intellectual rigor propelled him to anticipate and
evaluate substantive arguments
against the Book of Mormon’s historicity. But his writings leave
many readers to conclude that Roberts at least thought it possible that Joseph’s
keen intellect and
imagination could have produced the Book of Mormon. While this certainly doesn’t
amount to a denial of the Book of Mormon’s divinity, his arguments provide the
reader with some real food for
thought.