So are Smith and Young, except they are in hell. The persistence of Mormonism is a testament to human gullibility, not its truth, hayseed.

No. It's not even good bull****.

Your clarifying response and printable graphics are much appreciated, and I am pleased to learn that someone else has been thinking along the same lines as me. I would be interested in reading Vance's argument. Could you provide a link?

However, if one then reasonably assumes that the peaks in your autocorrelation analysis represent the distance between half-windings rather than full windings, what effect does that have on the calculated dimensions of the Hor papyri--particularly the length?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I can see how narrow and closed minds would view it that way. To each their own.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Does anyone disagree with Will that the coffins represent certain people's LDS faith rather than the general status of the Book of Abraham within the restored gospel?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I disagree. I know several people who do not believe the missing-scroll theory but are active, believing Mormons. I don't know why Will seems to think that adherence to that theory is an indicator of faith in the gospel.

Nope, I don't dispute it. The Book of Abraham remains viable in the LDS Church, as do the ideas that a vast Hebrew civilization persisted for a thousand years in pre-Columbian America, that the human race began with two people in Missouri around 4,000 B.C., that the entire planet was covered with water some time during the last 7,000 years and every animal species on Earth is a descendant from the mating pairs on Noah's ark, that the Tower of Babel story really happened, that a flotilla of Bronze Age submarines was set adrift in a typhoon in Asia and made it to America a year later, and that Masonic handshakes will get you past the angels guarding the Celestial Kingdom.

And wouldn't you know, some bitter apostates who really know in their hearts that it's all irrefutably true just stubbornly won't admit anything about the gigantic mountain of evidence in favor of the Church's truth claims. Obviously, they are all gay and addicted to pornography.

I haven't believed in your deity for a while now.

But when I did, I remember being under the impression that he had sent his only son to die an agonizing death for, amongst others, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Some of my co-religionists used to hold the position that he would have done that even if only one or two people - say Joseph Smith and Brigham Young - needed his help. I think we would have been very uncomfortable with taking it on ourselves to decide that our saviour's self-sacrificing love had, appallingly, failed to accomplish its work in some particular case, even if we had been willing to agree that the freedom to refuse salvation was always there to be exercised in the last analysis.

But I have the impression that yours is the kind of religion that gives you quite a lot of confidence in making decisions of that kind. That is no doubt why you feel entitled to say what you did.

I would guess that is because, unlike (I suspect) the vast majority of believing LDS, but like John Gee, Schryver has read both the Book of Abraham and the views of Egyptologists on the surviving papyrus carefully enough to realize that there is no way that the one could have come from the other in any way involving what normal people could call 'translation'.

So either the Book of Abraham came out of the air, or it came from an original now lost.

Most people never look at the evidence long or hard enough to get to this point, any more than most non-EV mainstream Christians could tell you anything about when the Gospels are currently thought to have been composed.

The missing scroll theory has about as much credibility as OJ's "real killer" theory.

I will open a thread in the Celestial Forum so you can make this case and entertain discussion and criticism.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I understand your position but can you demonstrate the unique value of the book in the first place?

I don't know that its value is unique. For me, its value, as with other scriptures within the LDS canon, is in how it helps in bringing people to Christ and enabling them to become like him. All key aspects of the gospel are oriented towards that end.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

An end that does not exist if the Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon are not true, so very important to evaluate this. :)

Wade, how you would you rate Jesus Christ Superstar in relation to the Book of Abraham, given that the Book of Abraham does not have any really unique value?

(a) more value in bringing people to Christ

(b) the same value in bringing people to Christ

(c) less value in bringing people to Christ

I don't do Celestial stuff. You can talk here or nowhere.

Anyhow, the burden of proof is on you in this case. I take it you don't dispute that the surviving papyrus is a normal Egyptian funerary text? You're the one that has to show that you can get the Book of Abraham out of it.

Chap:

In the first place, since they all differ to some degree one from another, I don't know that there is really anything that qualifies as "a normal Egyptian funerary text," least of all the extant fragments of the Joseph Smith papyri, which are rather exceptional when compared to the larger body of extant Egyptian Book of the Dead literature (the human figure holding a knife above the living person on the lion couch being only one among several exceptional aspects).

The framed fragments were separated from the intact rolls after the death of Lucy Mack Smith. The trails of the rolls can be traced to the Wood Museum in Chicago, and were almost certainly destroyed in the great fire of 1871. The surviving fragments are from the glass frames that passed through several hands before coming into the possession of the church in 1967.

The surviving portion of the scroll of Hor measures 68 cm in length. A conservative estimate of its original length is somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 cm. The surviving portion of the larger scroll represents a similar fraction of the original whole. This means the surviving fragments represent less than 7% of the scroll material purchased from Michael Chandler, not even counting the third Book of the Dead fragment and what fraction of the original whole it represents.

I think he means one that does not involve the patriarch of the Semitic people teaching Mormon theology and 19th-century astronomy to a king who was called Pharaoh quite some time before the fact.

I do Celestial stuff, and have already openned the thread. If you don't wish to participate there, that is your choice. I am certainly not going to feel deprived if you decide not to contribute.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Yeah, one would think that was obvious.

I figured he wasn't referring to the unique nature of a vignette that shows an Anubis figure with a human head wielding a knife over a living person on a lion couch.

That said, there are unique aspects to pretty much every lion couch scene found on extant Egyptian papyri. However, there is only one instance, of which I am aware, of an Anubis figure with a human head wielding a knife over a living person on the couch. Therefore I wouldn't be too hasty to dismiss the Joseph Smith papyri as nothing more than "common Egyptian funerary texts." They are anything but "common," as has been repeatedly noted in books you've apparently never read.