"Even if. every parallel [in the Book of Mormon] were the purest coincidence,
we would still have to explain how the Prophet contrived to pack such a
dense succession of happy accidents into the scriptures he gave us. Where
the world has a perfect right to expect a great potpourri of the most outrageous
nonsense, and in anticipation has indeed rushed to judgment with all manner
of premature accusations, we discover whenever ancient texts turn up to
offer the necessary checks and controls, that the man was astonishingly
on target in his depiction of general situations, in the almost casual
mention of peculiar oddities, in the strange proper names, and countless
other unaccountable details.... As the evidence accumulates, it is not
the Prophet but his critics who find themselves with a lot of explaining
to do."
—The Prophetic Book of Mormon (1989), 325-26, quoted in Echoes and
Evidences, of the Book of Mormon