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The Pearl of Great Price (PGP) is a collection of scriptures of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church; see also Mormonism). The PGP includes: the Book of Abraham, a book dealing with Abraham's journeys in Egypt, containing many distinctive Mormon doctrines such as exaltation; the Book of Moses, which comes from the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible; Joseph Smith-Matthew, a translation of a portion of the Gospel of Matthew by Smith; the Joseph Smith-History, a history of the early church by Joseph Smith, Jr.; 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 surviving papyri from that is available today.
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The Pearl of Great Price also refers to a parable told by Jesus, 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 implied analogy was that the Kingdom of Heaven was of such worth that his disciples should gladly be willing to give up their wealth and comfort to obtain it.
See also: The Hymn of the Pearl
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.
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