Abraham

Although the Book of Moses is first in order in the Pearl of Great Price, I want to begin with the Book of Abraham.  I believe it is reference to this book that the connection with a pearl of great price was made.

Jesus gave a short parable as recorded in the Book of Matthew which compares Heaven with a man who has been seeking a Pearl of Great Price and, when he finds it, he sells all he has to purchase it.  This is an appropriate analogy to the Book of Abraham and the story of how Joseph Smith acquired it.

One day, early in the history of the Church, Joseph was approached by a man named Michael Chandler who said he had some Egyptian mummies and papyri.  Chandler had been traveling around the country to exhibit his possessions.  The mummies had been discovered in Thebes and acquired by Antonio Labolo who was working on the dig.  Labolo sold the mummies to Chandler in 1833.

Chandler's reason for bringing the papyri to Joseph was that he had heard of Joseph translating ancient American documents - the Book of Mormon.  He was hoping that the young prophet could make sense of his documents from Egypt.  At that time, no one in America was able to translate Egyptian text.  The Rosetta Stone had been discovered in 1799 but it was years before the code was broken.  It wasn't until 1850 that the ability to read Egyptian hieroglyphs was a reality.

After Joseph examined the scrolls and found them to be of worth, Joseph Coe and Simeon Andrews purchased the four mummies and at least five papyrus documents for $2400 and gave them over to Joseph's care.

After Joseph's death, the scrolls and mummies remained with Joseph's mother, Lucy Mack Smith and, after her death, were given to Joseph's widow, Emma Hale Smith Bidamon.  Emma later sold the mummies and documents and they were given eventually to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  A few of the fragments were later acquired by the LDS Church in 1969.

There was among the documents what Joseph considered to be a Pearl of Great Price: the writings of the great patriarch, Abraham, while he was in Egypt.  Joseph wrote in the his preface to the Book of Abraham: The Translation of some ancient Records, that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt - the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt. written by his own hand upon papyrus.

Some scholars have looked at the fragments acquired by the Church and have identified portions of the Book of Breathings from the Book of the Dead - what some have called an Egyptian endowment.  They claim no resemblance to the Book of Abraham.  To them I would say, "Keep in mind the number of hands through which these documents have passed.  They in no way represent the entire collection of documents Joseph had to peruse."  The best testimony of the origin of the book is not through scholarly examination of the hieroglyphs but, rather, through the content of the book itself. I will share my personal journey with you.

© Gebara Education