Pearl of greatest price, Givens, Terryl (senior Research Fellow, Neal A. Maxwell Institute, Senior Research Fellow, Neal A. Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University) Haugli

In The Pearl of Greatest Price, the author covers three principal parts that are the focus of many of the controversies engulfing Mormonism today. These parts are The Book of Abraham, The Book of Moses, and The Joseph Smith History. Most controversial of all is the Book of Abraham, a production that arose out of a group of papyri Smith acquired, along with four mummies, in 1835. Most of the papyri disappeared in the great Chicago Fire, but surviving fragments have been identified as Egyptian funerary documents. This has created one of the most serious challenges to Smiths prophetic claims the LDS church has faced. LDS scholars, however, have developed several frameworks for vindicating the inspiration of the resulting narrative and Smiths calling as a prophet. The author attempts to make sense of Smiths several, at times divergent, accounts of his First Vision, one of which is canonized as scripture. He also assesses the creedal nature of Smiths Articles of Faith, in the context of his professed anti-creedalism. In sum, this study chronicles the volumes historical legacy and theological indispensability to the Latter-day Saint tradition, as well as the reasons for its resilience and future prospects in the face of daunting challenges.