Let the Papyrus-Length-Calculation Wars Begin!

I just got word from Kristine Haglund, editor of Dialogue Journal, that a preliminary version of a paper I recently co-authored with Andrew Cook is now available on the journal's website! Hopefully this posting came in time for some people to take a look at the paper before Sunstone and FAIR. We were hoping to generate a little buzz at the conferences.

This is a somewhat technical paper, but hopefully interesting anyway. Essentially, we have developed a rigorous mathematical methodology to calculate the original length of the scroll of Hor. Some LDS scholars have speculated that the source from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham may have been on a missing, interior portion of this scroll. We find that this cannot be the case, since the physical dimensions of the scroll allow only about 60 cm of papyrus to be missing. This is just enough papyrus to accommodate the missing portion of the Hor Document of Breathing. It is not enough to accommodate a Book of Abraham. This suggests that the evidence that the extant fragments of the Document of Breathing were the source of the Book of Abraham should be taken at face value. Hopefully our findings will help clear the ground of the "missing papyrus" apologetic, and facilitate a study of Joseph's translation process in light of the papyrus source the evidence suggests he actually utilized.

Incidentally, our calculations are partly a response to the less exacting methodology of John Gee, who calculated that some 41 feet are missing from the end of the scroll. I understand there are also at least two other papers currently in preparation by LDS scholars that attempt to compute papyrus length using methodologies similar to our own. If and when these papers are published, it should be very interesting to see how their findings compare with ours. I predict a lively debate, at least in a very small corner of cyberspace and/or the academic literature.