Pearl of Great Deception

I purchased a copy of the second printing of Dr. Walter Martin's book The Maze of Mormonism some time around 1984.  By then the Mormon church was doing their best to discredit Egyptologist Dee Jay Nelson who claimed the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham were total fiction.  Though Mr. Nelson a member of the Latter-Day Saints was chosen by the church to translate some newly found papyri, it did not turn out in their favor.

When other scholars outside the church such as both Dr. John A. Wilson, and Dr. Klaus Baer (University of Chicago), as well as Professor Richard Parker (Brown University) came to about the same conclusion as Nelson, the church began screaming anti-Mormon conspiracy.  The reality became known that what Joseph Smith had claimed in his dubious translation was pure poppycock.  This was not something written by Abraham but in fact was an ordinary Egyptian funeral document dating to no earlier than 660 B.C. over a thousand years after the time of Abraham.  One facsimile is a known "hypocephalus" or amulet buried under the head of a body in the tomb.

Charles M. Larson an ex-member of the Latter-Day Saints chronicled the history of this fraud promoted by the Mormons in the book "...by his own hand upon papyrus", published in a revised addition in 1992 by the Institute for Religious Research.

When the Mormons bought this wagon load of Egyptian artifacts from a traveling Frenchman the science of studying the written languages of Egypt was a new thing therefore there was no one around that could call Joseph out.  He knew just enough about Hebrew and Greek to be dangerous and could baffle the average person about Egyptian.  There is no reason for anyone to be fooled today however.  Few missionaries are willing to talk about the crazy things written in the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great price for obvious reasons.  They will give you a cheap paperback copy of the Book of Mormon that has been revised numerous times but you are not likely to see those other two additional Mormon "scriptures".

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