Missing Papyrus

[Guest]

Could someone please enlighten the ignorant (i.e. me) here?

Why does the thickness of the papyrus make such a big difference? The only way that I can see if being of significant importance is if 1) we know what it was wrapped around, and 2) we know how tightly it was wrapped.

Do we know these things?

[_William Schryver]

If I didn't know you were being intentionally obtuse, I would really think you belong here.

But I'm convinced you're just here for the chicks. You know, like Neil Young said: "Welfare mothers make better lovers."

If you believe that Shades is being intentionally obtuse, then you must think that his question is extremely easy to answer.

Why don't you enlighten the "obtuse"?

There are some of us who haven't studied this topic in the depth you have, Will. It doesn't mean we're stupid. It just means we haven't studied it.

And...the welfare mothers joke......not funny, Will. Bad form.

lizzy dear,

Shades knows that no one believes or argues that Abraham ever wrote anything on this particular scroll. He knows that this scroll dates to the Greco-Roman era in Egypt, and that any possible record of Abraham on such a scroll could have been written at that time and yet still read, "written by his own hand upon papyrus." The "written by his own hand" phrase is a motif. It has been the topic of several scholarly essays. Shades knows this. He understands it. He's just trying to play stupid in order to score a cheap rhetorical point.

As for welfare mothers, well ... they do make better lovers. It's a well-known fact. They are notoriously willing to please. And anyone with any appreciable trailer park experience would know that.

Maybe the real problem is that you don't belong in the trailer park. Ever consider that?

You should.

[_Sethbag]

I've been out of it for a while. Whatever happened to the approximations of length using the regularly-spaced lacunae along the edges?

Anyhow, 8 feet? ROFL. That's very generous. If I were to take a narrow dowel, and tape or glue the end of an 8-foot roll of paper onto it, and then, with the paper held under tension, I rolled it up as tight as I possible could, to make a nearly solid paper tube (amateur rocket enthusiasts sometimes do this) I might make one small enough to have been buried with a body like this, that wasn't larger than, say, several inches and diameter and solid as a rock. But were Egyptians trying to make solid paper tubes, or just rolling up a scroll by hand?

Anyhow, I personally would be willing to grant that if the paper or whatever material were thin enough, and rolled starting around a narrow enough stick or pole, and tensioned hard enough to get the most wraps around the post, one could get quite a bit of material in one tube.

But really, what's the point here? This whole missing papyrus theory is just an egregious mixture of wishful thinking and willful misdirection. As long as apologists can claim missing papyrus, people are free to believe that anything they want was on there, including handwritten scriptures by Abraham.

This is like receiving a 419 scam in your email inbox and then arguing that it cannot be dismissed out of hand as an obvious scam, because it's always possible that Dr. Matenge really does have $200 million he is being unjustly kept from, and the help of some random person on the Internet is all he needs to gain access to all his hard-earned cash. I mean, until it's conclusively proven through exhaustive research that this is not the case, it's always possible.

Whatever. Will, enjoy. You want to believe in the Book of Abraham, and you will find reasons to justify continuing to do so, whether it makes any real sense or not. The Book of Abraham is obviously not true. You can't accept this because it undermines the validity of the claims your manmade religious organization makes. So you don't accept the truth, and clamber around looking for ways to keep believing in fiction. You're not alone. There are true believers in thousands of other manmade religious organizations doing their own version of the same thing.

I'm not even saying you're abnormal in this. On the contrary, it's a very human thing to be doing.

[_JohnStuartMill]

JSM:

Are there any other "clarifications" (i.e., admittedly non-ancient writings) in the Mormon canon?

Are you serious?

If so, the answer is: YES.

Well, what are they? Kevin's right that the JST is a totally different ballgame, and I'd add that latter-day pronouncements don't meet the criteria here, either. So what is it: did Joseph Smith "redact" I Nephi as an explanatory prologue? Did he "redact" the Lehites' voyage to America as an explanation for how they got there? If the Book of Abraham is open to this interpretation, why not everything else?

[_Who Knows]

...if 1) we know what it was wrapped around,...

... rolled starting around a narrow enough stick or pole...

Hello? Anyone out there? Can someone answer my earlier question?: "Sorry if i've missed this (since i don't care to read the minutiae) but what were these scrolls wrapped around? I'm assuming there's some sort of core rod or something. Were these always a standard diameter? How does anyone know what this was wrapped around?"

[_JohnStuartMill]

I think the thinking is that the semi-regularity of the lacunae suggests how tightly the scroll was wound. Imagine rolling up a piece of paper around itself several times, cutting a chunk out of the roll, then unrolling it again. The distance between chunks would approximate the circumference of the rolled-up paper.

[_CaliforniaKid]

I've been out of it for a while. Whatever happened to the approximations of length using the regularly-spaced lacunae along the edges?

Since measurements taken from the various sets of published photos are not amenable to the apologetic case, William has turned to digging up Egyptological precedents to try to place Gee's measurements within the realm of feasibility. From there, it's just a matter of insisting that Gee is trustworthy whereas photographs are not (with some variation of "Chris Smith is an idiot" thrown in now and then for color).

At this point, the debate is not going to make any serious headway. Will has conceded that Gee's measurements might be off enough to make the papyrus 20 feet instead of 40, and I have conceded that even though the photographs I looked at all appear to belie Gee's measurements, they don't precisely agree with each other. We're not likely to find more common ground than that until additional measurements are taken, because William has faith in his friend Dr. Gee and I don't. (It always comes down to faith, doesn't it?)

Anyway, to William:

If you're going to argue against my position, please take the time to understand it and represent it accurately. I have not argued that the Hor scroll was 500 microns thick. And a 290 micron thickness does not give a length of 8 feet of papyrus when we take into account the value of E that I obtained during those same measurements, and subtract the innermost wrappings as Hoffmann instructs. In my calculations it gave a length more on the order of two or three feet.

Talk to you when I have measurements to report,

-Chris

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hello? Anyone out there? Can someone answer my earlier question?: "Sorry if i've missed this (since i don't care to read the minutiae) but what were these scrolls wrapped around? I'm assuming there's some sort of core rod or something. Were these always a standard diameter? How does anyone know what this was wrapped around?"

There could theoretically have been a core of some kind, but there is no evidence that there was, and quite often papyrus rolls were just rolled up like a towel with no core at all. Hoffmann states that wrappings cannot be actualized below a length of ~ 2.5-3 cm, so the very innermost wrappings have to be subtracted even if there was no solid core.

[_William Schryver]

...if 1) we know what it was wrapped around,...

... rolled starting around a narrow enough stick or pole...

Hello? Anyone out there? Can someone answer my earlier question?: "Sorry if i've missed this (since i don't care to read the minutiae) but what were these scrolls wrapped around? I'm assuming there's some sort of core rod or something. Were these always a standard diameter? How does anyone know what this was wrapped around?"

No one bothered answering you because it's not a significant issue. We don't know if these particular scrolls were wrapped around a small dowel, or not. But, in either case, it wouldn't make a significant difference to the total length of the scroll -- unless, as I have said before, you wan't to claim that it was wrapped around a stick the size of a telephone pole.

CS:

If you're going to argue against my position, please take the time to understand it and represent it accurately. I have not argued that the Hor scroll was 500 microns thick. And a 290 micron thickness does not give a length of 8 feet of papyrus when we take into account the value of E that I obtained during those same measurements, and subtract the innermost wrappings as Hoffmann instructs. In my calculations it gave a length more on the order of two or three feet.

OK, Chris, three simple questions:

Do you agree that the Hoffmann formula returns reliable results?

Do you agree that a known papyrus thickness and an outside circumference permits the spiral length formula to return reliable results?

Do you agree that papyrus 100 microns thick was routinely manufactured over the course of at least 1000 years in ancient Egypt? (New Kingdom - Roman era)

If the answer to those questions is yes, I'd say you have a few problems in your attempt to argue that the uncut portion of the scroll of Horos was only three feet in length.

But I am not only willing to have you attempt it, I'm literally begging you to do so. If anyone at this point deserves a good smack-down, I've concluded that it's you. And, mark my words, if you insist on pursuing this pet argument of yours, you've got several more smack-downs ahead of you.

[_Dr. Shades]

Shades knows that no one believes or argues that Abraham ever wrote anything on this particular scroll.

The Chapel Mormons do.

He knows that this scroll dates to the Greco-Roman era in Egypt, and that any possible record of Abraham on such a scroll could have been written at that time and yet still read, "written by his own hand upon papyrus."

I know the first premise, but I disagree with the second.

The "written by his own hand" phrase is a motif.

A motif invented by Mopologists to make it seem like Joseph didn't lie.

It has been the topic of several scholarly essays. Shades knows this. He understands it. He's just trying to play stupid in order to score a cheap rhetorical point.

I fully understand that that's the cover story the Mopologists have cooked up, but I'm unaware of a single non-Mormon who agrees with it.

Hence my original premise remains valid.

But, playing devil's advocate for the moment, let's say that that particular Mopologetic holds some water. Now, what are the odds that a group of Egyptian morticians would drop what they were doing as some Jewish redactor strolled in, sit calmly and idly by as he penned the Book of Abraham on their scroll, and then pick up where they left off after the Jewish redactor walked out?

The odds are statistically 0.