Pearl of Great Price

                            The Pearl Of Great Price
                                And the Doctrine &Covenants

THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE contains the Book of Abraham, which is a proven fraud. The book of Abraham was
supposed to have been translated by Joseph Smith from some papyrus that Joseph Smith had acquired. The problem is that
the papyrus that Smith used to supposedly translate the book of Abraham and conveniently disappeared resurfaced. It was
hoped by the church to be a very significant find. However it turned out to be a fraud. Rather than the text we see in the Pearl of
Great Price it turned out to be an Egyptian book on the dead. For a detailed documented examination I would refer the reader
to the book "Mormonism Shadow or Reality" By Sandra and Jerald Tanner pages 294-396. I have looked up a lot of quotes
found in this book by the Tanners in the L.D.S Collectors Library on CD Rom and found the book "Mormonism Shadow or
Reality?" to be very reliable in its quotations.

I will just give a couple of quotes here.

Michael Dennis Rhodes, BYU Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, p.274 . (L.D.S Collectors Library 97 by Infobases.)
Conclusion
Although we can, with the help of other similar texts, reconstruct the text and figures of the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus with a
fair degree of accuracy, we are still far from completely understanding the message which the Egyptians meant to convey by it.
The text of the hypocephalus itself seems to be an address to Osiris, the god of the Dead, on behalf of the deceased,
Sheshonk. As is the case with most Egyptian text (especially religious text), it is full of references to matters either obscure or
unknown to us, although undoubtedly clear to the Egyptians. Needless to say, much work is still to be done before we can fully
understand the import of the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus, and hypocephali in general. Unfortunately, there has been little or no
work done on them since the end of the last century. I hope, however, that I have been able to contribute to our knowledge of
this interesting group of texts.

(Quote found in Mormonism Shadow or Reality pg.332)
Naomi Woodbury a Mormon who studied Egyptology had this to say which is found in     "A Journal of Mormon Thought"
Autumn 1968, page 8
"I myself studied Egyptian hieroglyphics at UCLA several years ago in hope of resolving some of the problems connected with
the 'Book of Abraham' in Joseph Smith's favor. Unfortunately, as soon as I learned the language well enough to use a dictionary
I was forced to conclude that Joseph Smith's translation was mistaken, however sincere it might have been. Facsimile No.2 in
the Pearl of Great Price contained enough readable writing to convince me that it had purely Egyptian significance. This was a
disappointment to me, but the discovery has given me more time to restructure my thinking about Joseph Smith and the Book
of Abraham than most of your readers will yet have had. My faith in the Church rest on personal feelings, but it has to find a
place in historical facts as well.

"After the appearances of the photographs of the papyri … I made some attempts to translate the 'Book of Breathing(s)' text,
with the help of.. a book, which included..a fairly good text of the Book of Breathings… It belongs to a kind of literature, which is
alien to Christianity and our Church…

Let us not lose sight of what I think is the primary importance of this papyri find. It can free us from our dilemma about excluding
Negroes from the Priesthood. Perhaps our Father in Heaven intended the papyri to come to light now for just this purpose."

I find it interesting that Naomi here justifies the idea that a so-called prophet of God, here translating Gods written word, under
God's authority entirely mistakes an Egyptian book on the dead to in fact be the Book of Abraham. Then God only brings this
mistake to anyone's attention a hundred years or so later to allow the Negro to have the priesthood. That is a pretty major
mistake for God and his prophet to make.

(Quote found in Mormonism Shadow or Reality? pg.321)
Improvement Era, Vol.16, page 615
More than fifty years ago the Egyptologist Samuel A.B. Mercer made this observation concerning Joseph Smith's work in the
Egyptian language:
"All scholars came to the same conclusion, viz: That Smith could not at all correctly translate any Egyptian text, as his
interpretation of the facsimiles shows. Any pupil of mine who would show such an absolute ignorance of Egyptian as Smith
does, could not possibly expect to get more than zero in an examination in Egyptology......
"I speak as a linguist when I say that if Smith knew Egyptian and correctly interpreted the facsimiles which you submitted to me,
then I don't know a word of Egyptian, and Erman's Grammar is a fake, and all modern Egyptologist are deceived."

The Doctrine & Covenants
This document contains known false prophecies. Examples shown were D&C Section 84 and D&C 87. This was shown
previously on this site under. This leads to the logical conclusion that it is not the word of God.

Since Joseph Smith did make false prophecies and there is evidence against the Book of Mormon and the Pearl Of Great
Price it is not logical to accept any document that was introduced to us by this man as the word of God.