40 years ago today - Aug 25, 1984

BYU anthropology professor Ray T. Matheny, speaking at a Sunstone Symposium states, "All these [Book of Mormon cultural traits] paint a scene that seem[s] to be quite foreign to what I am familiar with in the archaeological record of the New World. . . And the terminologies and the language used and the methods of explaining and putting things down are nineteenth century literary concepts and cultural experiences one would expect Joseph Smith and his colleagues would experience. . . If I were doing this cold like John Carlson is here. I would say in evaluating the Book of Mormon that it had no place in the New World whatsoever. . . It seems like these are anachronisms. It seems like the items are out of time and place, in trying to put them into the New World. And I think there's a great difficulty here for we Mormons in understanding what this book [of Mormon] is all about."