Pearl of Great Price
Pearl of Great Price (PGP) is a collection of scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The PGP includes: the Book of Abraham, a book dealing with Abraham's journeys in Egypt, containing many distinctive Mormon doctrines such as eternal progression; the Book of Moses, which comes from the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible; the Joseph Smith-History, a history of the early Mormon church by Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith-Matthew, a translation of a portion of the Gospel of Matthew by Joseph Smith; and the Articles of Faith, a brief summary of the major doctrines of the Mormon faith written by Joseph Smith for a newspaper.
Considerable controversy surrounds the Book of Abraham, and the Papyri that some claim it was supposed to have been translated from. Others dispute that such papyri has been found, or that Joseph used direct revelation from God, rather than any other source write it.
To read the text, go to http://scriptures.lds.org/pgp/contents.
External link
The Pearl of Great Price also refers to a parable told by Jesus Christ, recounted at Matthew 13:45-46 in explaining the Kingdom of Heaven. A man discovered that a certain field had an extremely valuable pearl in it. He then sold all that he had to raise money to purchase the field, so that he could obtain the pearl, with the final result that he was wealthier than before.
The Pearl, a 14th century Middle English alliterative poem written by the Pearl Poet, makes allusion to the parable in describing the narrator's dead daughter, Pearl.
It begins:
Perle, pleasaunte to prynces paye
To clanly clos in golde so clere,
Oute of oryent, I hardyly saye,
Ne proued I neuer her precios pere.
