Uhm. Well, he does illustrate his results with a graph. But yeah, he doesn't say much about how he got those results. And to be honest, his explanation of our method doesn't show much understanding of how it works. He says we used the thickness of the papyrus, which he says we didn't measure, but rather simply estimated. Actually, what we did was derived the effective thickness (change in scroll radius) of a single wrapping from the change in winding lengths, which we did measure using a computerized method invented by Andrew. (Andrew, by the way, is a computational physicist, and the paper received glowing peer reviews from an Egyptologist, a statistician, a physicist, and two mathematicians. The purpose of the computerized method of measurement was to minimize human error and subjectivity.)

All Gee says about how he obtained his results is that he "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." This is a bit of a head-scratcher, because we didn't really make any assumptions about those things. We derived those values. So if Gee didn't use our method of measurement, then did he just take the thickness value we derived for the Hor scroll and stick it into the equation for the Toronto scroll? Or what? I really have no idea. Hopefully Gee will come forward with some more explanation of his method.

In the meantime, my defense of our paper is basically this: if Gee didn't use our autocorrelation method for measuring winding lengths, then he didn't really do a test of our method. Because that's what our method was all about.

Without more information, I'm not sure how to respond to this critique. The ideal response would be for us to apply our method to the scroll Gee used, and see if our results differ from the results he obtained. But that would be a very time- and energy-intensive project, and I'm not sure it's worth going to all that trouble.

The main tactic of Mormon apologetics is diversion and Gee is a master of this method. His mentor, Hugh Nibley was also a master of diversion, he did not want to tackle difficult questions or provide real analysis.

From your description of Gee's paper, I am glad you are not going to waste your time with Gee on his measurements. Your comments in this thread have been excellent and informative. The FARMS/MI guys diversion tactics are developed to waste peoples time. Yours and Andrew's article will stand on its own as Gee's papers and apologetics falls by the way side.

You have produced wonderful papers that have honest Book of Abraham scholarship and present the evidence accurately. This cannot be said for Gee's work.

Those many years ago that I decided I was going to tackle the Book of Abraham issue I read everything I could get my hands on. I was completely confused and found the information from FARMS no more helpful than watching static on television. Stephen Thompson's article was then published in Dialogue. It was like the heavens opening up for me and at that point I realized that the FARMS people were trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Thompson's article place the round peg smoothly in the hole and all the questions I had developed were answered. Amazing what happens when a scholar presents the information honestly.

...

FARMS can talk about missing papyrus until the cows jump over the moon but they cannot say that the Explanations of Facsimile No. 3 are missing their counter parts. It's the nail in the coffin for John Gee and he knows it ...

Paul O

Explanation

1. Abraham sitting upon Pharaoh’s throne, by the politeness of the king, with a crown upon his head, representing the Priesthood, as emblematical of the grand Presidency in Heaven; with the scepter of justice and judgment in his hand.
2. King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head.
3. Signifies Abraham in Egypt as given also in Figure 10 of Facsimile No. 1.
4. Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, as written above the hand.
5. Shulem, one of the king’s principal waiters, as represented by the characters above his hand.
6. Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince.

It bears repeating that this is a clear demonstration that where we can identify the Egyptian text said to be the source of the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith's translations were just plain wrong. What is more, they are not wrong in the way they might be if Smith was really receiving a quite unrelated text from God, and mistakenly thinking he was translating some unrelated Egyptian text. He was quite clearly trying to translate the text in front of us, and getting it wrong.

This bears repeating from time to time.