The most recent issue of the Maxwell Institute (FARMS) publication Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture (21:1) is now available online, and it has an article by LDS Egyptologist John Gee titled, "Formulas and Faith." Here, Gee addresses mathematical attempts to determine the length of the Joseph Smith papyri (which I discussed earlier). I should make clear that I am not any kind of expert on the papyri or the running arguments surrounding them. Nor do I know much about the persons involved. Nevertheless, I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed in this article for reasons that I will explain below.
Gee sets the issue up as follows:
One of the more prominent issues with the Book of Abraham is the relationship of the Book of Abraham to the Joseph Smith Papyri. There are three basic positions here:
1. The text of the Book of Abraham was translated from papyri that we currently have. (Or, from the unbelieving perspective, Joseph Smith thought that the text of the Book of Abraham was on papyri that we currently have.)
2. The text of the Book of Abraham was translated from (or Joseph Smith thought the text of the Book of Abraham was on) papyri that we do not currently have.
3. The text of the Book of Abraham was received by revelation independent of the papyri.
Gee notes that hardly any informed Mormons accept the first proposition. It may come as a surprise that Gee claims that the third option is held by a majority of Church members (something that may be worth some further attention later). From that perspective, the issue of scroll length is moot, but in light of the second theory Gee is willing to discuss the matter anyway (though I think I detect a sigh and roll of the eyes).
The crux of Gee's argument is that the formulas
developed by Cook and Smith, and others, have not been tested on papyrus scrolls of known length. But Gee says that he has done so.
In November of 2010, I had the privilege of measuring the interior seventy-three windings of [a scroll at the Royal Ontario Museum] (after that point the scroll is no longer contiguous).
With the data gleaned from this intact roll in Toronto (that is, the individual winding lengths), I applied each of the mathematical formulas, using the assumptions made by the authors of the formulas concerning papyrus thickness, air-gap size, and size of smallest interior winding. I then compared the outcome with the actual interior length of the scroll. The results are shown on the graph.
I have to admit that I'm not entirely clear on how to interpret this graph--I think it shows the predicted remaining length as each additional winding is included in the calculation, with the outermost winding being number 72. Nevertheless, Gee's message is clear: neither formula is perfect, but Cook and Smith's formula is not even close.
On the basis of observations I have made while measuring various scrolls, I am not convinced that these formulas can ever yield anything more than rough approximations. More empirical data is needed to make refinements in the formulas.
Fair enough. It's worth noting, however, that if Cook and Smith's method underestimates true length by up to 75% (as Gee claims), that still puts the Hor scroll length at only 600 cm, less than half of
Gee's estimate using the Hoffman formula, and perhaps a little cramped for the Book of Abraham. Nevertheless, Gee's caution is a point well taken. However, if you recall my previous post, Cook and Smith were explicit about their methodology, spelling out measurements, assumptions, and formulas. They wanted others to be able to reproduce their work. Now if you were Cook and Smith (or an interested third party) you might want to know where their formula breaks down, or how to adjust it to make it more accurate. Unfortunately you won't get any help from Gee in this article. Aside from the number of windings and the total length of the scroll, no measurements or details of how the winding locations were identified are given, nor is there any hint that they are forthcoming. All we have to go on is a graph and his assurance that it doesn't work. Nor does Gee address Cook and Smith's different winding length measurements for the Hor papyri. That seems like an insufficient response to me.
Moving on, I think Gee's article mis-characterizes the Cook and Smith article. First let's review the basic argument of Cook and Smith (my paraphrase):
1. Based on our calculations, the Hor scroll is too short to contain the Book of Abraham.
2. There is reason to think that the Hor scroll was the one identified as having the writings of Abraham.
3. Therefore, the Book of Abraham is probably not a direct translation of Egyptian text.
Before we look at Gee's further criticisms, you need to know that one witness described seeing a "long roll" (the apparent source of the Book of Abraham) and "another roll." Now let's look at Gee's criticisms, which are mostly confined to three paragraphs. We'll take them one at a time.
Although the Cook and Smith method of determining scroll length is anything but accurate[,]...even if it had been successful, it would have created other problems. Cook and Smith fail to establish which was the long roll because they applied their formula only to the Horos scroll; they did not apply it to any of the other extant scrolls and thus fail to meet another of the necessary conditions.... They measured only the Horos scroll because they assumed it to be the source of the Book of Abraham. Yet the eyewitnesses identify the long roll as the source. Bent on proving that the Horos scroll was not the long roll, they overlooked the implications of such a view. If the scroll of Horos is not the long roll, it simply cannot be the source of the text of the Book of Abraham (according to the accounts of the eyewitnesses). By endeavoring to prove that the Horus scroll was not the long roll, they would have undermined their own case, which depended on the Horos scroll being the proposed source of the text of the Book of Abraham.
'Long' is a relative term, and it seems to me that Gee is perhaps putting more weight on the distinction between a
roll and a
long roll than is warranted. (Wouldn't five feet be long to a non-Egyptologist?) Be that as it may, I don't see any evidence that Cook and Smith were "bent" on proving the Hor scroll was not the
long roll. They don't frame the question in that way and, in fact, they don't even address the issue of the
long roll until the end of their article when, lo and behold, they suggest that the Hor scroll was indeed the
long one. But even if Gee is right about Cook and Smith disqualifying the Hor scroll as the long one, does that undermine their case? I guess it depends on what you interpret their case to be. Gee seems to imply that their case is that the Book of Abraham is bogus. But whatever the authors think personally, their article does not argue such a thing. At any rate, their immediate conclusion is that the Hor scroll did not contain the text of the Book of Abraham. If they unwittingly demonstrated that the other scroll was longer, then by Gee's criteria their conclusion is actually stronger.
Cook and Smith would like to minimize the length of the Horos scroll because they believe that finding would eliminate the possibility that the Book of Abraham was translated from a scroll that we do not currently have (theory 2). Even if their calculations had been correct and thus had shown that the scroll of Horos was not the long roll observed by the witnesses, that simply would have meant that another scroll would have been the scroll containing the Book of Abraham. So their attempt to eliminate theory 2 as a possibility would not, in fact, have actually been successful even had their formula correctly predicted a short length for the scroll of Horus.
Here Gee makes a logical leap of his own, which is to assume that if the Hor scroll was too short to contain the Book of Abraham, then another scroll must be longer. What is the justification for that? Gee makes a good point--that it would have been better if Cook and Smith had also evaluated the other fragments for comparison. But if Cook and Smith had determined that another scroll was longer, would that necessarily mean anything? I guess it depends on how much longer. But at the very least, someone would need to explain why the Book of Abraham referred to a vignette (Facsimile 1) on a totally different scroll, which was owned by a different person [1].
Furthermore, their attempt, even if successful, would not have eliminated the most popular theory—that Joseph Smith received the Book of Abraham by revelation unconnected with the papyri (theory 3). It certainly cannot force anyone to accept the theory that the Book of Abraham was translated from the extant fragments of the Joseph Smith Papyri (theory 1) since that theory is excluded by the historical evidence. So for those who care about such matters, there are still two theories (2 and 3) that are not excluded from consideration.
Here we come to the reason I quoted the conclusion of Cook and Smith in my
previous post. Having ruled out the scroll of Hor as the source of the text, they listed several alternatives. Here they are again:
(1) the Document of Breathing served as a mnemonic device for the Book of Abraham, (2) the Breathing text served as a catalyst (rather than source text) for the Book of Abraham, (3) the Document of Breathing is a corrupted version of the Book of Abraham, which Smith restored to its pristine state, or (4) the Book of Abraham is simply an imaginative mistranslation of the hieratic script.
Hey, I recognize that second option and it looks a lot like Gee's
theory 3. Gee doesn't seem to recognize that Cook and Smith's work supports his preferred theory (at least by popularity--allegedly), by their own admission.
All of this leads me to conclude that Gee's article does not engage Cook and Smith's work in a fair or convincing manner. People who only read Gee's article will get the impression that he has bested bumbling critics who can't construct a coherent argument. However, having read both articles, I get the impression that Gee didn't read theirs very carefully.
Notes:
1. One suggestion that I have seen is that Abraham referred to a figure that was missing from the papyri, so Joseph adapted by using a different illustration.
Further Reading:
A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri by John Gee
Eyewitness, Hearsay, and Physical Evidence of the Joseph Smith Papyri by John Gee
Some Puzzles from the Joseph Smith Papyri by John Gee
I Have a Question: Why doesn’t the translation of the Egyptian papyri found in 1967 match the text of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price? by Michael D. Rhodes
Criticisms of Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham, by W. V. Smith
FAIR Wiki: Book of Abraham Papyri
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