Scroll Length?

[Mortal Man]

I will be taking John Gee's advice and henceforth cease discussing these matters via message board.

Yeah, I figured he's shut you down after you exposed his blunder with the Toronto scroll.

Edited November 17, 2011 by Mortal Man

[wenglund]

Why is scroll length of interest?

If the scroll length is closer to 5 of 6 meters, then the Cook/Smith calculations are demonstrably false, and the world of the critics is thrown into a panic, leaving them with one less argument to justify their loss of faith.

If the scroll length is closer to 1 or 2 meters, then Cook/Smith have crowing rights, and the apologist will be left to endure terminal ridicule and accusations of lying from certain critics.

Either way, as previously explained, the verity of the restored gospel is kept inviolate and the faith of its rational and pragmatic members left intact.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 17, 2011 by wenglund

[Senator]

If the scroll is over 6 meters long then the church is true.

If the scroll is shorter than 6 m then the church is false.

Your salvation depends on a few millimeters of winding lengths.

Oh, Snap!

I've always felt 6 and over was better.

[Senator]

If the scroll length is closer to 5 of 6 meters, then the Cook/Smith calculations are demonstrably false, and the world of the critics is thrown into a panic, leaving them with one less argument to justify their loss of faith.

If the scroll length is closer to 1 or 2 meters, then Cook/Smith have crowing rights, and the apologist will be left to endure terminal ridicule and accusations of lying from certain critics.

Either way, as previously explained, the verity of the restored gospel is kept inviolate and the faith of its rational and pragmatic members left intact.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

What is the implication/argument attached to either a short or long roll? (deserving 17 pages of debate)

Feel free to be brief.

Edited November 17, 2011 by Senator

[wenglund]

What is the implication/argument attached to either a short or long roll? (deserving 17 pages of debate)

Feel free to be brief.

As previously intimated, the implications are primarily whether or not the Cook/Smith published calculations and conclusions are warranted.

There are several of us who look to the results of Cook/Smith calculations, particularly the effective thickness, and believe it to be problematic given actual physical measurements of the thickness of the papyri (effective thickness is the sum of physical thickness and space between spiral rings), and what one might reasonably expect in terms of the physics of a scroll (elastic tension), thus drawing into question the Cook/Smith estimation of the length of the papyri.

I hope that was brief enough.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Calm]

So it has nothing to do with potential content of the scroll? It is a mental exercise, more or less?

[Gervin]

As previously intimated, the implications are primarily whether or not the Cook/Smith published calculations and conclusions are warranted.

There are several of us who look to the results of Cook/Smith calculations, particularly the effective thickness, and believe it to be problematic given actual physical measurements of the thickness of the papyri (effective thickness is the sum of physical thickness and space between spiral rings), and what one might reasonably expect in terms of the physics of a scroll (elastic tension), thus drawing into question the Cook/Smith estimation of the length of the papyri.

I hope that was brief enough.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I think [the] Senator was looking for some elucidation with regard to implications involving the church's claims about the larger BoA. I may be wrong.

[Fifth Columnist]

What is the implication/argument attached to either a short or long roll? (deserving 17 pages of debate)

Feel free to be brief.

Here is the gist of it. The Church has a portion of a roll of papyrus in its archives that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Abraham. The problem is that it contains some Egyptian writing on it, but it doesn't translate into the Book of Abraham. Defenders of the Church such as John Gee have argued that the Church only owns a small piece of the original roll and most of it was lost since the days of Joseph Smith (burned in a fire in Chicago in the 1800s).Defenders argue that the missing portion of the roll had the text of the Book of Abraham written on it in Egyptian and that is what Joseph Smith translated to produce the Book of Abraham. Critics acknowledge that a portion of the roll is missing, but they argue that it is far too small to contain the text of the Book of Abraham written in Egyptian.

[wenglund]

So it has nothing to do with potential content of the scroll? It is a mental exercise, more or less?

It has something indirectly to do with the content since only so much content can exist on a given length of scroll. In short, one of the questions may be whether, assuming that the Book of Abraham isn't part of the extant portions of the scroll, there is enough of the scroll that is missing to accommodate the Book of Abraham. (I just noticed Fifth Columns excellent summation, which comports with what I just said.)

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 17, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

I think [the] Senator was looking for some elucidation with regard to implications involving the church's claims about the larger BoA. I may be wrong.

I don't know what the Church's claim is regarding the "larger BoA." To what specifically are you referring?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Senator]

Here is the gist of it. The Church has a portion of a roll of papyrus in its archives that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Abraham. The problem is that it contains some Egyptian writing on it, but it doesn't translate into the Book of Abraham. Defenders of the Church such as John Gee have argued that the Church only owns a small piece of the original roll and most of it was lost since the days of Joseph Smith (burned in a fire in Chicago in the 1800s).Defenders argue that the missing portion of the roll had the text of the Book of Abraham written on it in Egyptian and that is what Joseph Smith translated to produce the Book of Abraham. Critics acknowledge that a portion of the roll is missing, but they argue that it is far too small to contain the text of the Book of Abraham written in Egyptian.

Thank you that is what I was looking for.

What part of the extant scroll is missing. Is the end missing? a chunck out the midde? the beginning?

[Nathair/|\]

Something occurred to me while reading this thread that I've never seen discussed. If these scrolls and other grave goods are supposed to benefit the deceased in the afterlife, what effect are we having on them by digging them up, etc?

[Cobalt-70]

To test your claim, try this experiment: take 5 sheets of printer paper and as a stack roll them lengthwise into a spiral with a diameter of 3.3cm. Then, take a stack of 7 other sheets and see if you can easily fit the corner of the second stack between each of the windings of the first stack. If you can't, then perhaps you can begin to understand the problem that we are having with Cook/Smith calculations.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

This thought experiment has several problems:

(1) By using five separate stacked sheets, rather than one long one, you are significantly decreasing the amount of dead space between the sheets. Modern printer paper is very uniform, and it comes pre-stacked, with very little void space. By rolling them together, you are not introducing any further void space between them.

(2) By rolling the five sheets together, each of the sheets has the same pattern of wrinkles and bumps, and these wrinkles and bumps "spoon" with each other to minimize void space. If you are rolling up an actual scroll, particularly one made of non-uniform papyrus, or papyrus that is particularly stiff, the pattern of bumps, waves, and small folds will have an additive effect, creating void space between the windings.

(3) You can't insert another paper within the void spaces between the sheets of paper, or between the windings of an actual scroll, because the void space is not of uniform thickness. It is not, in other words, in the in the shape of a paper. In some places, the adjacent surfaces of the papyrus will be touching, while in other places, they will not. You may have a large average void space, but because of touching in numerous locations, as well as bumping, bending, and wrinkling of the paper you are trying to insert, you can't fit anything in between.

[Cobalt-70]

Maybe you should look at the photos of actual scrolls posted above and it will become more obvious to you.

I don't think looking at the edge of an ancient rolled-up scroll tells you much about the proportion of void space to papyrus thickness. The papyrus is going to seem thicker in photographs of the edges than the papyrus really is in the middle of the sheet, away from the edges. Part of this is perspective, and part of this is that the fibers on the edge are going to slightly unravel and become microscopically frayed, wavy, and bent, and thus appear thicker.

[Cobalt-70]

Given the same circumference, the actual length of the scroll will be dependent on two variables, the thickness of the papyri, and the tightness of the winding. This seems absolutely obvious to me. The fact that Smith/Cook must reject this to make their theory work seems to invalidate their theory.

That would be one way to measure the length if (1) you knew the exact circumference (major and minor axis), (2) you knew the thickness of the papyrus at every point along the length and width of the papyrus, and (3) you had some mechanism to measure the dead space between the papyrus windings before it is unwound. With the Hor papyrus, you have none of these things, so your formula doesn't get us anywhere. On the other hand, nobody has, as far as I can tell, challenged the math behind the Cook/Smith methodology. As Will seems to acknowledge, the only way that Cook/Smith could be wrong is if they made a mistake in their determination that their cited winding lengths are statistically the most probable ones.

[Cobalt-70]

Will has explained the measuring methodology to me in a private message. It will eventually be published in a forthcoming article. It seems to me the methodology is very clever, very strait forward, and absolutely empirical. It was undertaken by an independent third party (i.e. not Gee or Schryver) with PhD-level, technical and commercial expertise in the field of metrology. I can say with a high degree of confidence that Andrew and Chris are wrong, and Will is right.

It doesn't seem to me that you can rely on such measurements for much of anything, unless you measure the thickness at hundreds of points and then perform a pretty sophisticated statistical analysis. If you measure the papyri in one location, that only tells you the thickness at one discrete points. That may be an interesting exercise, but it doesn't appear to help you determine the length of the Hor papyrus.

Setting aside things like bumpiness, small folds and bends, local stiffness, and the various other factors that add dead space between windings, you're not going to be able to roll a sheet more tightly, at any given point along the length of the scroll, than the thickest part of the papyrus along the vertical line passing through that point. I'd like to know whether Dr. Fisher did a statistical analysis to estimate the standard deviation of thickness along each vertical line, so that he can calculate the maximum thickness along each vertical line with at least 95% certainty. Averages of thickness aren't enough--because papyrus is nonelastic, you need the maximum thickness along each vertical line. We know that this particular scroll has poor quality writing, and if the quality of the papyrus itself is any reflection, you'd expect it to be more non-uniform than better examples of fine papyrus.

[Pahoran]

Yeah, I figured he's shut you down after you exposed his blunder with the Toronto scroll.

Conspiracy theories are always amusing. But tell us, MM: does this kind of spite motivate all your Mormon-related activities, or only your message board interactions with Will Schryver?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Regards,

Pahoran

[Senator]

Thank you that is what I was looking for.

What part of the extant scroll is missing. Is the end missing? a chunck out the midde? the beginning?

As a follow up question: is this whole exercise in determining the length of a missing portion of papyrus?

[Mortal Man]

What part of the extant scroll is missing. Is the end missing? a chunck out the midde? the beginning?

Most of the scroll is sitting in the Church Historian's Vault. All that's missing is a small section of text between fragments 1.2 & 1.3 and the innermost segment, which contained Facsimile 3 and the last column or two of the Book of Breathings.

Edited November 17, 2011 by Mortal Man

[Mortal Man]

Something occurred to me while reading this thread that I've never seen discussed. If these scrolls and other grave goods are supposed to benefit the deceased in the afterlife, what effect are we having on them by digging them up, etc?

We have robbed Hor of his spells needed to navigate the afterlife. He will now be eaten by Apophis.

[Mortal Man]

As a follow up question: is this whole exercise in determining the length of a missing portion of papyrus?

You can find the answers to all your questions in this fascinating paper.

[wenglund]

This thought experiment has several problems:

(1) By using five separate stacked sheets, rather than one long one, you are significantly decreasing the amount of dead space between the sheets. Modern printer paper is very uniform, and it comes pre-stacked, with very little void space. By rolling them together, you are not introducing any further void space between them.

Whether there are 20 windings (the approximate number proposed by Cook/Smith) with 5 sheets or 20 windings with a single roll, the dynamics are little different. If you doubt this, try it both ways. Sorry, you are mistaken.

(2) By rolling the five sheets together, each of the sheets has the same pattern of wrinkles and bumps, and these wrinkles and bumps "spoon" with each other to minimize void space. If you are rolling up an actual scroll, particularly one made of non-uniform papyrus, or papyrus that is particularly stiff, the pattern of bumps, waves, and small folds will have an additive effect, creating void space between the windings.

Go ahead and invert every other sheet and even turn several of the sheets the opposite direction so that the bumps and waves are off-set. I think you will find that it makes no real difference, and that is because your supposed problem isn't an actual problem.

(3) You can't insert another paper within the void spaces between the sheets of paper, or between the windings of an actual scroll, because the void space is not of uniform thickness. It is not, in other words, in the in the shape of a paper. In some places, the adjacent surfaces of the papyrus will be touching, while in other places, they will not. You may have a large average void space, but because of touching in numerous locations, as well as bumping, bending, and wrinkling of the paper you are trying to insert, you can't fit anything in between.

Even assuming a lack of uniformity, some of the so-called voids ought to be greater than 7 sheets, so as to offset those voids that are less. Again, you are mistaken that this is a problem.

Granted, I am not suggesting that the experiment is perfect, but I believe it is enough of a fit to reasonable illustrate the point that I was make.

Feel free, though, to continue to think my experiment through and try to find holes to poke in it. I believe the more you try, the more you will see my point.

By the way, did you actually roll up the five sheets of copy paper into a spiral with a 3.3cm diameter, rather than just thinking it through? If not, it would help if you did.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

I don't think looking at the edge of an ancient rolled-up scroll tells you much about the proportion of void space to papyrus thickness. The papyrus is going to seem thicker in photographs of the edges than the papyrus really is in the middle of the sheet, away from the edges. Part of this is perspective, and part of this is that the fibers on the edge are going to slightly unravel and become microscopically frayed, wavy, and bent, and thus appear thicker.

Will's suggestion was intended to give you a practical sense for what he was suggesting. He wasn't advocating a scientific experiment. Sorry you didn't understand this.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

That would be one way to measure the length if (1) you knew the exact circumference (major and minor axis), (2) you knew the thickness of the papyrus at every point along the length and width of the papyrus, and (3) you had some mechanism to measure the dead space between the papyrus windings before it is unwound. With the Hor papyrus, you have none of these things, so your formula doesn't get us anywhere. On the other hand, nobody has, as far as I can tell, challenged the math behind the Cook/Smith methodology. As Will seems to acknowledge, the only way that Cook/Smith could be wrong is if they made a mistake in their determination that their cited winding lengths are statistically the most probable ones.

Actually, we do have an approximate outer circumference measurement that both Will and Cook/Smith agree upon, and Will has taken a number of measurements of the physical thickness of the papyri. So, the premise upon which you base your comments above, are demonstrably false. Sorry.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

Most of the scroll is sitting in the Church Historian's Vault. All that's missing is a small section of text between fragments 1.2 & 1.3 and the innermost segment, which contained Facsimile 3 and the last column or two of the Book of Breathings.

This assumes that MM's calculations are correct, and thus begs the very question of this thread.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-