Sacred Texts: Mormons

Pearl of Great Price: Moses: Chapter 3

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This is a scriptural text from the Pearl of Great Price, a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) canonical scripture, specifically Moses Chapter 3 — Joseph Smith's revealed rewrite of Genesis 2. The chapter recounts the completion of creation, God's rest on the seventh day, the planting of the Garden of Eden, and the creation of Adam and Eve. Its most theologically distinctive feature is verse 5's explicit doctrine of "spiritual creation" preceding physical creation: God declares he created all plants, animals, and humans spiritually in heaven before they existed materially on earth — a concept absent from the Genesis account and central to LDS cosmology. The text is narrated in the first person by God himself ("I, the Lord God"), lending it an unusually direct, authoritative voice compared to the third-person Genesis parallel. It also notably softens the prohibition on the tree of knowledge, adding "thou mayest choose for thyself" alongside the forbiddance, which LDS theology uses to frame the Fall as a necessary exercise of moral agency rather than a simple transgression.

Pearl of Great Price: Moses: Chapter 3

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