Flaws In the Pearl of Great Price
By Jerald & Sandra Tanner
(This article originally appeared in The Salt Lake City Messenger, Issue No. 78, June, 1991)
In our new
book, Flaws in the Pearl of Great Price, we have compiled some very
important information concerning the Pearl of Great Price, a book accepted
by members of the Mormon Church as inspired scripture. It is, in fact, one of
the four standard works of the church. Since most of the material contained
in the Pearl of Great Price was supposed to have been given to the
Mormon prophet Joseph Smith by divine revelation, it is considered more accurate
than the Bible. The "Book of Moses," contained in the first part of
the Pearl of Great Price, purports to give an account of the Creation
which God originally gave to Moses and later revealed to Joseph Smith. In the
1965 printing of Commentary on the Pearl of Great Price, by George
Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, page xi, we read: "we need go no further
in our research than to compare the story of the Creation of the earth and Man,
and the history thereof down to the time of the Flood as it appears in the Book
of Genesis (Old Testament) with these same writings, unimpaired
or unmarred by the incidents of time, contained in the Pearl of
Great Price, the Writings of Moses. At first they both were the same;
the one (Genesis) effaced by the wisdom and carelessness of men,
the other as it was revealed by God through the Prophet Joseph Smith."
The second
part of the Pearl of Great Price contains the "Book of Abraham."
It was supposed to have been written on papyrus by Abraham himself about 4,000
years ago! According to Mormon officials, this same papyrus fell into Joseph
Smith's hands and he began translating it in 1835.
The Pearl of Great Price also contains
Joseph Smith's "inspired translation of a portion of the book of Matthew,
his own story concerning how God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ appeared
to him, and how an angel from God revealed that it some gold plates were buried
near his home. Smith "translated" these plates and published the contents
under the title, the Book of Mormon. The Pearl of Great Price concludes
with Joseph Smith's "Articles of Faith."
The Pearl of Great Price was first
published in book form in 1851 by Apostle Franklin D. Richards. Prior to Richard's
compilation, portions of the text he used had been published in early Mormon
publications. In 1880, the Pearl of Great Price was canonized and at
that time became one of the four standard works of the church.
"DRASTICALLY CHANGED"
One of the
problems relating to the Pearl of Great Price is the serious changes
that have appeared in the text since it was published in 1851. Like Paul Dunn's
stories, new elements have been added to the text which were not in the original
handwritten manuscript when it was first dictated. The portion of the Pearl
of Great Price which has had the most drastic alterations made in it is
the "Book of Moses." The Book of Moses is actually only a part of
a far larger work known as the "Inspired Version" of the Bible. Mormon
Apostle Bruce R. McConkie stressed that the Inspired Version was given to Joseph
Smith by revelation:
"In
consequence, at the command of the Lord and while acting under the
spirit of revelation, the Prophet corrected, revised,
altered, added to, and deleted from the King James Version of the Bible
to form what is now commonly referred to as the Inspired Version of the
Bible.... The first 151 verses of the Old Testament, down to Genesis 6:13,
are published as the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price. But as restored
by the Prophet the true rendition contains about 400 verses and a wealth of
new doctrinal knowledge and historical data.... the marvelous flood of light
and knowledge revealed through the Inspired Version of the Bible is one of the
great evidences of the divine mission of Joseph Smith."
(Mormon Doctrine, 1979, pp. 383-84)
Actually,
the Inspired Version of the Bible has been the source of much embarrassment
for the Mormon Church leaders. It was never published during Joseph Smith's
lifetime. In fact, his wife, Emma, retained the manuscript and would not give
it to Willard Richards, who had been sent by Brigham Young to obtain it (see
History of the Church, vol. 7, p. 260). Mormon Church leaders were
never able to obtain the original manuscripts of the Inspired Version from Joseph
Smith's widow. She, in fact, turned them over to the Reorganized Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints--an offshoot of the Mormon Church. This was a great
blow to the Mormon leaders because they considered the Reorganized Church to
be an "apostate" organization.
To the chagrin
of the Mormon leaders, in 1867 the Reorganized Church published Joseph Smith's
Inspired Version of the Bible. Brigham Young was very opposed to the idea of
members of his church receiving the Revelation from an "apostate"
organization. Apostle Orson Pratt, on the other hand, wanted to accept it, and
this caused some conflict with President Young.
After the Inspired
Version was published by the Reorganized Church, it became obvious that there
were serious discrepancies between it and the chapters the Mormon Church had
published in 1851 in the Pearl of Great Price. According to James R.
Harris, of the Mormon Church's Brigham Young University, Brigham Young felt
that the Reorganized Church's publication was fraudulent: "The minutes
of the School of the Prophets indicate that President Brigham Young regarded
the Revision 'spurious' and that he brought Elder
Pratt to some level of agreement with his position." (Brigham
Young University Studies, Summer 1968, p. 374, n. 23) President Young,
on the other hand, had "high regard" for the first edition of the
Pearl of Great Price (see The Story of the Pearl of Great Price,
by James R. Clark, p. 205). After President Young passed away, the church
leaders completely repudiated his ideas concerning the accuracy of these books,
for they changed the text of the Pearl of Great Price to agree with
the Reorganized Church's printing of the Inspired Version. In his M. A. thesis
written at Brigham Young University in 1958, James R. Harris acknowledged that
"every major change in the American edition [i.e.,
the 1878 edition of the Pearl of Great Price] appears in identical
form in the Inspired Revision." ("A Study of the Changes
in the Contents of the Book of Moses From the Earliest Available Sources to
the Current Edition" typed copy, page 225)
The fact that
the Mormon Church leaders changed the text of the Pearl of Great Price to
agree with the Inspired Version indicates that they felt the "apostate"
Reorganized Church had a more accurate version of the scriptures than they did!
They, therefore, put more trust in the publication by the Reorganized Church
than they did in the word of President Brigham Young, the 2nd Prophet, Seer
and Revelator of the church. It is rather interesting to note that Brigham Young
died in 1877, and before a year had passed the new altered edition of the Pearl
of Great Price was published. It is also significant that Orson Pratt,
the apostle who disagreed with President Young over the accuracy of the Inspired
Revision, was the editor of the 1878 edition.
In any case,
in his M. A. thesis, James R. Harris freely admitted that the text of the Pearl
of Great Price was "drastically" altered in 1878:
"Orson
Pratt was the Editor of the first American edition of the Pearl of Great
Price... The American edition was more drastically changed
than any previous publication by a member of the Church." ("A Study
of the Changes in the Contents of the Book of Moses typed copy, p. 226)
"From
the standpoint of omissions and additions of words, the American Edition is
the most spectacular rendition.... Some of tire words added to the American
edition had impressive doctrinal implications."
(Ibid., pp. 224-25)
Although
James R. Harris admits that serious changes were made in the Pearl of Great
Price, he feels that Joseph Smith himself made the changes in manuscripts
he worked on before his death. In other words, he believes that when the Mormon
leaders changed the text of the Pearl of Great Price in 1878, they
were bringing it into conformity with changes Joseph Smith made in the manuscripts
during his lifetime. Richard P. Howard, Church Historian for the Reorganized
Church, has released information which gives support to Dr. Harris' idea. Howard,
who has had access to the original manuscripts, shows that there were a number
of different manuscripts involved in the production of the Inspired Version
of the Bible and that Joseph Smith often revised his own revisions
and left the manuscripts in a very confused state:
"Many
texts reveal that the process was not some kind of automatic verbal or visual
revelatory experience on the part of Joseph Smith. He often caused a text to
be written in one form and later reworded his initial revision.
The manuscripts in some cases show a considerable time lapse between
such reconsiderations...
"A considerable
number of places in NT #2 [as Mr. Howard now numbers the manuscripts] show that
initially Joseph Smith considered certain texts in the King James Version to
be either correct or in need of slight revision, but that on later consideration
he decided to amend them further. Since the manuscript pages were
already written and filled to the extent that the later corrections could not
be included, the problem was solved by writing the text out on a
scrap of paper and pinning or sewing it to the appropriate manuscript page."
(Restoration Scriptures: A Study of Their Textual Development, 1969,
pp. 93, 96)
"Therefore
OT #13 represents a third draft manuscript of... Genesis 1-7, a second draft
manuscript of Genesis 8-24:42a, and a first draft manuscript of the remainder
of the Old Testament, although revised considerably by interpolations
written in later years between the lines and on separate scraps of paper pinned
to the manuscript pages." (Ibid., p. 106) "...the manuscripts indicate
rather clearly that Joseph Smith, Jr., by his continued practice of
revising his earlier texts (occasionally as many as three times),
demonstrated that he did not believe that at any of those points of rerevision
he had dictated a perfectly inerrant text by the power or voice of God.... It
is thus unnecessary and could be misleading to appear to claim 'direct' revelation
in the determination of the entire text of the Inspired Version as the preface
written for the 1867 edition apparently implied." (page 151)
Richard
P. Howard's admission that Joseph Smith rerevised his earlier text "occasionally
as many as three times" is certainly a serious indictment against Joseph
Smith's work and plainly shows that his "Inspired Version" is anything
but inspired. The fact that he could not make up his mind shows that he was
tampering with the Scriptures according to his own imagination rather than receiving
revelation from God. Mormon writer Truman G. Madsen also admitted that Joseph
Smith "often revised a passage, later
added to or amended it, and then, in a third attempt,
clarified it further." (Improvement Era, March 1970,
p. 70)
The many changes
that had to be made in the "inspired" renderings found in the Pearl
of Great Price tend to undermine confidence in Joseph Smith's work. As
we indicated earlier, the most drastic revision of the Pearl of Great Price
was made in 1878. In our new book, Flaws in the Pearl of Great Price,
we have photographically reproduced the original 1851 edition of the Pearl
of Great Price and carefully compared it with the church's official 1989
printing. All of the changes that have been made have been noted in handwriting.
The reader, therefore, can plainly see all of the words that were added, deleted
or changed.
MOSES OR JOSEPH?
As one reads
the first section of the Pearl of Great Price (the
"Book of Moses") the question arises as to whether the words were
actually spoken to Moses by God over 3,000 years ago or if they came from the
fertile imagination of someone who lived in the 19th century. To those familiar
with the Bible, the phraseology of the document has the ring of ancient scripture.
Unfortunately, however, it sounds just too much like the King James Version,
which was first published in 1611. Many of the verses, in fact, have been plagiarized
from the book of Genesis. We have used the Mormon Church's own computer program,
The Computerized Scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, to help us locate the verses which have been borrowed from the
Bible. In Flaws in The Pearl of Great Price, Appendix 2, we show a
large number of verses that have obviously been taken from Genesis. The most
serious problem, however, is that material has also been taken from the New
Testament. In our book, Covering Up the Black Hole in the Book Of Mormon,
we have dealt with the presence of New Testament quotations in Joseph Smith's
Book of Mormon, and since the situation is analogous to that found in the Book
of Moses, we quote the following from our book:
"It
is very clear from the contents of the Book of Mormon that while the author
was not a trained Bible scholar, he was rather familiar with the contents of
the King James Version of the Bible. Although Mormon apologists are reluctant
to face the facts, the evidence shows that Joseph Smith had the ability and
the Biblical knowledge required to write the Book of Mormon. According to Smith's
earliest account of his life, written in 1832, he claimed he began studying
the Bible when he was only about 12 years old....
"From
letters and comments we have received, it is obvious that many believers in
the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon do not have a correct understanding
of the plagiarism issue with regard to that book. They often point out that
some portions of the Bible are similar or even identical to other portions and
feel that this demonstrates there is no problem with the Book of Mormon using
parts of the Bible. It is true, of course, that such similarities do occur.
For instance, many of the words of Jesus are taken from the Old Testament. In
Deuteronomy 8:3 the following words of Moses are given: '...man doth not live
by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord
doth he live.' In Matthew 4:4 these words are attributed to Jesus: 'But he answered
and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' Since we have evidence that the book
of Deuteronomy was in existence before the time of Christ from the Dead Sea
Scrolls and the Septuagint translation of the Bible made in [the] third century
B. C., it is obvious that Jesus could have quoted from it. There are, in fact,
many quotations from it in the New Testament, and this is the very thing we
should expect to find.... in the examples we have cited from the Bible, all
of the cases of copying can be explained by simply stating the obvious fact
that the authors used some known and available work.
The problem with regard to the Book of Mormon, however, is that it has the ancient
Nephites making extensive quotations from works that were not even
in existence at that time. In fact, in the 1st and 2nd books of
Nephi, the writings of the New Testament are cited 600 years before
they were written!...
"To those
who really consider the matter, it should be obvious that the presence of many
portions of the New Testament in the Book of Mormon is more out of place than
to find the following words in a speech attributed to George Washington: 'Four
score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.' These words alone would be enough to prove the speech a
forgery. While less than a century separated George Washington and Abraham Lincoln,
in the Book of Mormon we have Lehi quoting from the New Testament book of Revelation
almost seven centuries before it was written! (The
first quotation appears on the second page of the Book of Mormon and is dated
'About 600 B. C.' The book of Revelation is believed to have been written about
A.D. 90.)
"It is
clear that the author of the Book of Mormon was holding a King James Version
of the Bible in his hand when he produced it. He, therefore, could not have
lived in 600 B.C.. When all the evidence is examined, it is evident that he
actually lived in 1830--some 2,430 years after Lehi was supposed to have fled
from Jerusalem." (Covering Up the Black Hole in the Book of Mormon,
pages 75, 79-81)
As we have
already pointed out, Joseph Smith's Book of Moses is also filled with material
that has been plagiarized from the New Testament. Moses 6:52, for example, has
quotations from a number of New Testament passages. Below we have set this verse
in regular type and added similar material found in New Testament verses in
bold type inside brackets:
"52
And he also said unto him [Adam]: If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto
my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized
[and be baptized--Acts 2:38], even in water, in the
name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth [only
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth-John 1:14], which
is Jesus Christ [which is Jesus Christ--I Corinthians 3:11],
the only name which shall be given under heaven, whereby salvation shall come
[there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby
we must be saved--Acts 4:12] unto the children of men, ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost [ye shall receive the gift of
the Holy Ghost--Acts 2:38], asking all things in his name, and
whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you [Whatsoever ye shall
ask... he will give it you--John 16:23]." (Pearl of Great
Price, Book of Moses 6:52)
In Flaws
in the Pearl of Great Price, Appendix 1, the reader will find over 150
parallels between the New Testament and the Book of Moses. There are undoubtedly
other parallels that could be pointed out, but this should be sufficient to
convince the reader of the modern origin of "Book of Moses." All of
the evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that the Mormon prophet was
not working with an ancient text dating back to the time of Moses; instead he
was borrowing from the King James Version of the Bible. Joseph Smith's "Book
of Moses" clearly bears all the earmarks of a spurious document and reminds
us of the works of Paul Dunn. Like Dunn, Smith combined elements from more than
one source to create his story of the early history of the world. He appropriated
a large number of verses from the Old Testament, modified them to serve his
own purposes and then added elements from a number of books in the New Testament.
In Mormonism--Shadow
or Reality? we have a chart showing that there is a great deal of manuscript
evidence for the Bible. Some of it, in fact, dates back even before the time
of Christ! Joseph Smith's Book of Moses, on the other hand, is without documentary
support. The only handwritten manuscripts for the Book of Moses are those dictated
by Joseph Smith in the early 1830's.
As we have
noted earlier, the Reorganized LDS Church has the original manuscripts of the
Inspired Revision. Richard Howard, RLDS Church Historian, spent a great deal
of time examining these manuscripts and seems to have concluded that the "Christian"
material and the idea of putting the narrative into the first person came from
the mind of Joseph Smith:
"Viewing
these subjects as he did from the vantage point of his own Christian background,
Joseph Smith quite naturally would have tended to read into the
symbolic pre-Christian language of the Old Testament certain uniquely Christian
meanings. Therefore the content of all three of the documents comprising OT
#1... reflects the nineteenth century theological terminology of
the prophet Joseph Smith. For example, references to the Holy
Ghost and to the Only Begotten--terms
arising from the early Christian community--help one to see that even at this
early stage of development the text in a sense represents Joseph
Smith's studied theological commentary on the King James Version of
the early Genesis chapters of the Bible.
"This
has been most difficult for students to perceive because of his practice, throughout
the first... and the second... documents of OT #1, of phrasing the language
in the first person singular, portraying God
himself speaking to Moses the very words which, in turn, were
apparently being apprehended verbally by Joseph Smith and dictated to his scribe
in 1830, nearly three thousand years later. However, Joseph's heavy reliance
on the early seventeenth century Elizabethan English language and style of the
King James Version throughout this second document makes this verbal
inspiration approach to the language of the early Genesis chapters
of his New Translation untenable. This becomes even
more apparent when one considers the very complex, centuries-long process culminating
in the King James text of 1611." (Restoration Scriptures, page
77)
BOOK OF ABRAHAM
As we have
indicated earlier, the second part of the Pearl of Great Price contains
the "Book of Abraham." It was supposed to have been written on Egyptian
papyrus by Abraham himself about 4,000 years ago! According to Mormon officials,
this same papyrus fell into Joseph Smith's hands and he began translating it
in 1835. If the papyrus were really written by Abraham, its discovery was probably
one of the most important finds in the history of the world. To say that the
papyrus would be worth a million dollars would be greatly underestimating its
value, for it would be older than any portion of the Bible.
For many years Joseph Smith's collection
of papyri was lost and there was not way to check the accuracy of his translation.
On Nov. 27, 1967, however, the Mormon-owned Deseret New made a startling
announcement that the collection had been rediscovered in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. The article went on to say: "Included in the papyri is a manuscript
identified as the original document from which Joseph Smith had copied the drawing
which he called 'Facsimile No. 1' and published with the Book of Abraham."
The importance of this find cannot be overemphasized; it, in fact, made it possible
to put to Joseph Smith's ability as a translator of ancient Egyptian writing
to an absolute test.
Although the Mormon Church tried to slow down the dissemination
of material with regard to the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, within six months
from the time the Metropolitan Museum gave the papyri to the church, the Book
of Abraham had been proven untrue! The fall of the Book of Abraham was brought
about by the identification of the actual piece of papyrus from which Joseph
Smith claimed to "translate" the book.
The identification
of this fragment as the original from which Joseph Smith claimed to translate
the Book of Abraham has been made possible by a comparison with Joseph Smith's
Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar--handwritten documents by Joseph Smith's
scribes which we photographically reproduced in 1966. Noted Egyptologists Richard
A. Parker and Klaus Baer have translated this papyrus fragment and found that
it is in reality the Egyptian Book of Breathings. Other Egyptologists have confirmed
that it is nothing but the Book of Breathings. Even Mormon apologist Hugh Nibley
has admitted this identification. In fact, he has even made his own translation
of the text (see The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment,
p. 18-45).
It is obvious,
therefore, that the papyrus Joseph Smith claimed was the "Book of Abraham"
is in reality an Egyptain funerary text known as the "Book of Breathings."
It is a pagan document which is filled with magical practices and the names
of Egyptian gods and goddesses. It has absolutely nothing to do with either
Abraham or his religion.
As int he case
of the "Book of Moses," Joseph Smith plagiarized extensively from
the Old Testament in creating his "Book of Abraham." He modified many
of the verses which he lifted from the King James Version of the Bible. Strange
as it may seem, he used quite a number of the same verses he had previously
incorporated into his "Book of Moses." In many cases, however, he
altered them in a different way than he had in his
earlier work. Some of these changes were made because of his study of the Hebrew
language, but a significant number were made because he had changed his views
of the Godhead.
Toward the
end of his life (June 16, 1844), Joseph Smith gave a speech in which he publicly
taught that "the [Hebrew] word Eloheim ought to be in the plural
all the was through--Gods." (History of the
Church, Vol. 6, p. 476). The word Elohim is used many times in
Genesis. It is found, for example in Genesis 1:3. It is interesting to compare
this verse from the King James Version of the Bible with Joseph Smith's Translation
of the Bible with Joseph Smith's "translation" in the books of Moses
and Abraham. In the Bible we read: "And God said, Let there be light..."
Joseph Smith changed this to read as follows in Moses 2:3: "And I,
God, said: Let there be light..." Notice that Joseph has
added the word "I," thus making it even more apparent that the verse
is referring to only one God. In the Book of Abraham, however, Joseph Smith
completely reversed his position with regard to this matter, for in Abraham
4:3 we read: "And they (the Gods) said: Let there
be light..." In our book, Flaws in the Pearl of Great Price, we
photographically demonstrate how Joseph Smith continued to cast doubt on his
earlier work (the Book of Moses) throughout the 31 verses of Abraham, Chapter
4. In this chapter Joseph Smith consistently translated the word Elohim
as "the Gods." In the same book we also
show that Smith added elements from other sources into his Book of Abraham.
A good example is the fact that he put the "anti-black"
doctrine, which was commonly held in his day, into
the mouth of Abraham! Until 1978 the Mormon leaders banned blacks
from the priesthood and would not let them be married in their temples. The
Book of Abraham 1:21-27 was often used to support this discriminatory doctrine.
The Book of Moses was also cited because it states that blacks were put under
a curse.
While the Pearl
of Great Price is filled with problems, the other two books of scripture which
Joseph Smith produced are also laced with serious errors. Mormon apologists,
of course, would like us to believe otherwise. Milton R. Hunter, for example,
made this fantastic claim concerning Joseph Smith's works: "The Prophet
Joseph Smith produced for the world three new volumes of holy scriptures...
and, in addition, he revised the Bible. No prophet who has ever lived has accomplished
such a tremendous feat. There are only 177 pages in
the old Testament attributed to Moses, while Joseph Smith either translated
through the gift and power of God or received as direct revelation from Jehovah
835 [pages]." (Deseret News, Church Section, July 18, 1970, p.
14)
While we must
agree that Joseph Smith produced a great deal of material that purports to be
scripture, it does not appear that this material bears any evidence of divine
inspiration. For those who would like to learn more about problems in Joseph
Smith's "scriptures," the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine
and Covenants, we recommend our books, Covering Up the Black Hole in
the Book of Mormon and Major Problems of Mormonism. For a very
detailed study of the changes, plagiarism and other problems found in the Pearl
of Great Price the reader should have our new publication, FLAWS
IN THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE....
Utah Lighthouse Ministries at http://www.utlm.org
ulm@utah-inter.net: Do you have
comments or input regarding this or other publications from Jerald and Sandra
Tanner. Drop them a line. Also, if you have additional information on this and
other LDS related topics they would like to hear from you. (No mindless, blind-faith,
dogmatic diatribes please!--However, sincere differences of opinion and insight
are always appreciated).