Mormon Quotes

Pearl of Great Price

David O. McKay
I know of no scriptural basis for denying the Priesthood to Negroes other than one verse in the Book of Abraham (1:26); however, I believe, as you suggest that the real reason dates back to our pre‑existent life.
David O. McKay, Mormonism and the Negro, Part 2, p. 19
Fawn Brodie
In more recent times the half‑dozen leading Egyptologists who have been asked to examine the facsimiles agree that they were ordinary funeral documents such as can be found on thousands of Egyptian graves.
Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History, Fawn Brodie, p. 175
Daniel C. Peterson
We have possibly about 11 or 12 percent of the papyri that belonged to that collection, ... so it's very possible that there was a text that would be translatable, even by a conventional Egyptologist, into the Book of Abraham, but we don't have it now. But even that seems to me not altogether necessary. We know that Joseph didn't translate in the way that a scholar would translate. He didn't know Egyptian, ... so he was getting it by revelation. That even opens up the possibility to me that even if Joseph thought he was getting it from the papyri, he may not have been. How would he have been able to know? I'm not saying he wasn't. My own preferred solution to this is to say that he was, and the papyrus is missing. ...
Daniel C. Peterson, PBS, The Mormons
Daniel C. Peterson
The Book of Abraham is a lesser‑known text in the Mormon canon of Scripture. It's part of what's called the Pearl of Great Price, and it purports to be a document written by the hand of Abraham that was recovered by Joseph Smith, translated [from] a group of papyri that he recovered while living in Kirtland, Ohio. The papyri were lost for a long time, ... and eventually the papyri came back to the church, and people were saying, now this is a real chance to test Joseph Smith's claims as a translator, as a prophet: Do the papyri match up with what Joseph Smith gave us? And the answer is no; ... they don't, if you translate them in a conventional Egyptological way, give you the text of the Book of Abraham.
Daniel C. Peterson, PBS, The Mormons
Thomas Ferguson
I wonder what really goes on in the minds of Church leadership who know of the data concerning the Book of Abraham, the new data on the First Vision, etc.... It would tend to devastate the Church if a top leader were to announce the facts.
Thomas Ferguson, Thomas Ferguson to John W. Fitzgerald, March 6, 1976, John Fitzgerald Collection, Special Collections, Milton R. Merrill Library, Utah State University
Thomas A. Clawson
At Special Priesthood meeting at which the official statement of the First Presidency regarding the teachings of Adam‑God is presented, Prest. Jos. F. Smith then said that he was in full accord with what Prest. Penrose had said and that Prest. Brigham Young when he delivered that sermon only expressed his own views and that they were not corroborated by the word of the Lord in the stand works of the Church. The Bible, Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants were voted upon by the Church convened in a Conference and organized in various Quorums of the Priesthood who voted by Quorums after which the body of the Church were asked to vote to sustain the above books as the Standards of the Church.... That those Patriarchs who persisted in teaching these things and did not stop when told to do so should be handled by their Bishops and their names sent up to the High Councils for further action and be cut off.
Thomas A. Clawson, Journal of Thomas A. Clawson, 1912‑1917 Book, pp. 69‑70, April 8, 1912
A. H. Sayce
It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith's impudent fraud.... Smith has turned the Goddess [in Facsimile No. 1] into a king and Osiris into Abraham.
A. H. Sayce, Joseph Smith as a Translator, F.S. Spaulding, p. 23
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