According to religion writer Richard N. Ostling, Mormon apologists were faced with one "of the most delicate situations" after publication of the book and "went into high gear" to make responses to it because "Roberts could not be dismissed as an outsider or an anti-Mormon.

"[4] In the early 1920s, Roberts was asked by the First Presidency of the LDS Church to develop an apologetic to explain difficulties in the Book of Mormon, such as the lack of Hebrew or Egyptian vestiges in the languages of the Native American peoples and such historical anachronisms in the Book of Mormon as mentions of horses, oxen, wheat, and steel swords in ancient America.

According to Marvin S. Hill, Roberts "maintained that the Book of Mormon's claims that the Indians were derived solely from three migrations of Hebrews to the new world over a span of three thousand years was entirely untenable.

Roberts concluded that View of the Hebrews had been published first, that the possibility that Joseph Smith had access to it was "a very close certainty," and that there were many similarities between the works.

Roberts notes several parallels between the migration of the Jaredites and that of the Ten Lost Tribes in the Jewish apocalypse 2 Esdras (as interpreted by Ethan Smith).

"[17] View of the Hebrews mentions a Jewish phylactery dug from the ground which "contained four folded leaves" of "dark yellow" parchment.

[18] Roberts compares this story with Joseph Smith's retrieval of the golden plates in a New York hillock, and adds the question, "Could all this have supplied structural work for the Book of Mormon?

[28] View of the Hebrews discusses legends of what he called the "bearded white god" Quetzalcoatl and proposes that this "lawgiver" or "Mexican messiah" might have been Moses.

[29] Ethan Smith also suggests that this belief held by the people of Mexico at the time of Montezuma allowed the Spanish to easily conquer the country because "the Mexicans mistook the white bearded invaders from the east for the descendants of their long cherished culture-hero Quetzalcoatl.

"[30] Roberts asks rhetorically if "this character spoken of in the View of the Hebrews" furnished the suggestion of Jesus Christ in the New World in the Book of Mormon.

Marvin S. Hill has argued, however, "this contention seems strained considering his pleadings at the end of each section that church leaders must offer inspired help.

"[38] According to writer Robert Lindsay, "Church leaders struggled to hold back the tide of research and regain control over the past.