Pearl of Great Price

The Pearl of Great Price is a short, canonized book of scripture for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, containing alternative accounts of the creation of the earth, an alternative translation of the book of Matthew, and a history of the church’s founder.

Unlike other scripture, the church places relatively little emphasis on the Pearl of Great Price. Not only does the church neglect its burden of proof that the book is divinely inspired; it seems to attempt to cover up its troubling history. In this section, I demonstrate key problems with aspects of the Pearl of Great Price, which I believe support the rejection of the church’s claims regarding its truthfulness and legitimacy.

By far, the most problematic part of the Pearl of Great Price is the Book of Abraham, which Joseph Smith claimed to translate from ancient Egyptian papyri that he acquired in the early 1830s. However, when these papyri were later examined by Egyptologists, they were found to be common funerary texts, specifically the Book of the Dead, rather than the ancient writings of Abraham.¹

This discrepancy raises significant questions about the authenticity of Smith’s translation and the divine inspiration he claimed. Critics argue that if the foundational text of the Pearl of Great Price is based on a mistranslation, it undermines the legitimacy of the entire work. Further, it casts doubt on Smith’s ability to translate by divine inspiration.

The academic, peer-reviewed article I reference is paywalled, so I include the conclusion as follows:

In the preceding I have argued that (1) Joseph Smith’s interpretations of the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham are not in agreement with the meanings which these figures had in their original, funerary, context; (2) anachronisms in the text of the book make it impossible that it was translated from a text written by Abraham himself; and (3) what we know about the relationship between Egypt and Asia renders the account of the attempted sacrifice of Abraham extremely implausible. If one accepts that Joseph Smith was using the facsimiles in a fashion which was not consonant with their original purpose, it does not make sense to then insist that “the Prophet’s explanations of each of the facsimiles accord with present understanding of Egyptian religious practices.” I see no evidence that Joseph Smith had a correct conception of “Egyptian religious practices” or that a knowledge of such was essential to the production of the Book of Abraham.¹

Apologetic sources have contested this claim for years, but I believe that apologetic responses tend to be weak enough to serve as additional damning evidence against the legitimacy of the book. FAIR, for example, claims the following:

The official position of the Church is that the Book of Abraham is “an inspired translation of the writings of Abraham. Joseph Smith began the translation in 1835 after obtaining some Egyptian papyri.” Anything beyond this is speculation, and does not constitute official Church doctrine relative to the Book of Abraham’s origins. Nevertheless, it’s clear from the historical evidence that Joseph Smith was not attempting a scholarly translation of the Book of Abraham à la Jean-François Champollion or other Egyptologists, but rather produced a revelatory translation […]. The exact nature of this revelatory translation is uncertain, with various theories having been offered over the years.²

These responses are often guilty of “moving the goalposts”, a particularly egregious logical fallacy that distracts from the original claim. Joseph Smith claimed that God inspired him to translate the text, which he claimed was written by the hand of Abraham. That claim has been rejected by convincing evidence presented by relevant experts and validated by a scholarly community.

Evidence demonstrating the Book of Abraham was not translated from ancient text creates a large set of problems for the validity of the Pearl of Great Price, and it provides damning evidence against other truth claims.

Most importantly, it demonstrates that Joseph Smith was not inspired by God when he dishonestly claimed to translate the book. Whether Smith genuinely believed he was inspired by God is of little importance; an individual should be completely confident in their claims before using them to persuade large groups of people. This undermines his ability as a prophet and revelator, and it lends substantial room for a reasonable doubt about the legitimacy of Smith’s divine inspiration as he founded a church.