cahn

On another note, there have been a few things in other books that remind me of the Book of Mormon (e.g. the robbers/bandits who take down the society), but Josephus going around the wall and speaking unwanted truths to the wicked ones inside the city and them throwing missiles at him to try to kill him (but not being able to) -- to me this sounded so incredibly similar to the prophet Samuel the Lamanite in the Book of Mormon (Helaman chapters 13-16), who does all these things (well, okay, he actually stands on the wall, which of course is more dramatic), that it pushed me to look around a bit to see how likely it was that Joseph Smith had read Josephus. The first part of this paper makes it sound like it was quite likely. (Interestingly -- I only skimmed the rest of the paper -- it brings up a lot of other stuff, like JS's rewriting of the OT in a way that apparently is often reminiscent of Antiquities of the Jews, but it doesn't bring up Samuel the Lamanite.)