Mummies, Manuscripts, and Making Scriptures: The History and Controversies of the Pearl of Great Price

by Terryl L. Givens, Brian Hauglid

The Pearl of Great Price is at the focus of the most pressing controversies involving Mormon theology and Mormon history today, including disputes over the historicity of the Book of Abraham, conflicting versions of Joseph Smith’s visionary accounts, and the viability of Mormonism’s professed anti-creedalism. At the same time, the study will impact issues far beyond the scope of Mormon Studies, including questions of canon formation, the sustainability of creeds in the modern church, and the survival of enchanted worlds in a secular age

Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

Terryl L. Givens was born in upstate New York, raised in the American southwest, and did his graduate work in Intellectual History (Cornell) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. UNC Chapel Hill, 1988), working with Greek, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and English languages and literatures. As Professor of Literature and Religion, and the James A. Bostwick Professor of English at the University of Richmond, he teaches courses in Romanticism, nineteenth-century cultural studies, and the Bible and Literature. He has published in literary theory, British and European Romanticism, Mormon studies, and intellectual history.

Dr. Givens has authored several books, including The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (Oxford 1997); By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Oxford 2003); People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (Oxford 2007); The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2009); and When Souls had Wings: Pre-Mortal Life in Western Thought (2010). Current projects include a biography of Parley P. Pratt (with Matt Grow, to be published by Oxford in 2011), a sourcebook of Mormonism in America (with Reid Neilson, to be published by Columbia in 2011), an Oxford Handbook to Mormonism (with Phil Barlow), and a two volume history of Mormon theology. He lives in Montpelier, Virginia.