Debunking the fallacy of Solomon's Sea and other good stuff - Pi served up ala carte

There are many commenters who blithely dismiss the Bible because of the verse in I Kings 7:23 & 24 that states the following:

"He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.  Below the rim, gourds encircled it—ten to a cubit. The gourds were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea." (1 Kings 7:23-24a)

Now there are portions of the Old Testment in which God gave the people a plan to carry out, such as when He told Noah to build the Ark.  The general sizes given in Genesis produce a massive ship that is built to specifications that modern shipbuilders use today for large ocean-going vessels.   How could Noah have known what design could withstand a world-wide flood?  But God knew.   We do not get the blueprint that Noah received in whatever form from God, but we know it worked and we know the general descriptive dimensions of the Ark are perfect for the job.

Pi image by Gordon Dylan Johnson at Openclipart

Later in the Pentateuch we see God giving Moses specific instructions concerning the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and all aspects of the Tabernacle, beginning in Exodus 25.   Instructions from God are PRESCRIPTIVE in nature.  They are telling the receiver precisely what to do.  Whatever God ordered, they matched it exactly as they could.

Once we get to I Kings, the Scripture is DESCRIPTIVE in nature.   The entire passage is describing the Temple and portions thereof.   As I have mentioned previously, we do not know what effect the rim of the sea has on the dimensions and, as the sea was not a cylinder, the measurements would vary depending upon where they were made.   We cannot be sure exactly which "cubit" was being used or which "bath" describing volume is in use here  (but I include an article farther down that speculates intelligently upon that).  Both terms have long fallen from use and both terms had slightly differing measurements depending on several factors.  Unlike today, measurements were often standardized according to individual builder or individual culture and time.   If you think that is being evasive, well, consider the English language.   Daniel Webster undertook the job of making a dictionary in part to standardize meanings of words but especially to standardize spelling.   People used to spell words as they saw fit and that did not work well in a world in which being precise was becoming more important.  The common man had become literate due to the widespread printing and reading of the Bible and so Webster saw the need to define words and spellings to aid in the process of communication in the "modern" age.

As a carpenter stick-building houses, I commonly worked from a blueprint and even in our modern world I found that some directions and requirements were precise and others not so precise.   For instance, if we were to build a room with inside dimensions of 9 feet by 14 feet according to the blueprint, we would carefully measure and erect walls that fit that requirement and seek to be precise within reason.  If we were one-sixteenth off the world would not end.   But once the drywall was erected the thickness of the drywall would slightly decrease that 9 by 14 measurement and also the trim along the bottom would come into play.   So we could get three measurements from the same room - as a stickbuilt frame, with the drywall added and also from the bottom we'd have to also add the width of the trim.   Furthermore, we would have instructions to use, for instance, two-by-fours or two-by-sixes in erecting the home.   Did you know that a two-by-four is common usage and perfectly acceptable in the building trade but in fact they usually measured 1 and 5/8 by 3 and 5/8 when I was a carpenter and now apparently 1 and 1/2 by 3 and 1/2 are accepted. 

Go ahead and find the blueprint for your home, which should be among the mortgage paperwork (If you own your own home) and see what dimensions are listed for the individual rooms.  Then go measure them for yourself.   Some homes are built with room sizes that account for drywall and some are not.  So after you do that, remind yourself that you have just proved that modern man doesn't understand how to read a tape measure...or have you?  No, you have just realized that a descriptive of a building or other items does not have to be and probably will not be precise.   Not unless there is a very good reason for precision.   The exact size of pistons within an engine must be checked to very rigid standards or either the engine will overheat or not get a good seal and lose compression and blow out oil and gas with the exhaust.  But your outdoor patio dimensions are not critical, so that a 20 by 16 porch could well be 19 and 1/4 by 15 and 1/2 and up to this moment you may not even have noticed!

Below is one look at the so-called problem...

Does the Bible Contain a Mathematically Incorrect Value for "Pi"?

by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

Does the Bible contain errors in math? If it does, this calls into question its moral and spiritual authority. Much is at stake. Let's carefully examine one of the most frequent charges of error.

When describing Solomon's Temple and its fixtures, Scripture tells of a great basin cast of molten brass "ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, . . . and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about" (I Kings 7:23).

The circumference, c, of a circle is related to its diameter, d, by the ratio "pi" or "P" according to the equation c = Pd. Mathematical derivatives have calculated the precise value of P to many decimal places, but for most applications the approximation 3.14 is sufficient.

Inserting the value of circumference and diameter given by Scripture into the equation yields a value of P to be 3, and it is this apparent error which gives Bible detractors such glee.

Read the rest here.

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When I worked in the automotive industry, we had differing requirements for various parts depending upon their purpose.   Some measurements were critical and some were not.  We had variations built in to the requirements for padding and sound deadening parts that allowed for a good bit of variation, as they were not critical parts of the automobile.   But some parts had to be made exactly right, enough so that they would fit precisely on a "buck" and their dimensions and the spacing of punched holes or added pieces of metal all hit the exact mark.   The same was true in the steel industry.   There were many items that had to be measured by a caliper to fit within a very narrow band of acceptable readings.   In all of these scenarios, I was part of the production team and was following specific instructions.

In I Kings, however, the Temple is being described.   Therefore I can assert that no matter how they described the measurements of the sea, it does not tell us precisely how, where, and with what requirements such measurement were made.   Since it is descriptive of a building and features, precision would hardly be expected.   The scribes would not write that the sea was 9.82 cubits across, for instance.   In fact, in descriptive mode it would be highly unlikely that a general description of such an object would be particularly precise.   So those who claim that the Bible is wrong here are over-reaching terribly.   Now, if God had instructed someone to make a precise sea of thirty whatevers around and ten whatevers across and demanded precision, then the builders would have had a problem.  But this is not a blueprint, it is a kind of feature story of the unveiling of the new temple.

Nevertheless, there is an article, below, which gives us a logical explanation for the measurements.   I agree with the author in that it was an Oriental/Middle Eastern culture that first came up with the Pythagorean Theory, it was that culture that adopted the modern numerical system that is far superior to the awkward Greco-Roman system, it was the Jewish peoples who first had a system of writing (actually no doubt carried on from the pre-Flood culture) found by archaeologists.   If you know the Bible you have to know that writing and using numbers predates anything we have recovered from the past.

I suggest that you go to the site and read the article there to get the links and other information but I am presenting it in plain text here.

The political value of Solomon's Pi

Most current textbooks on the history of science assert that ancient Near Eastern mathematics were too primitive for its practitioners to compute an accurate value for the circle circumference-to-diameter ratio pi. They even claim that the Bible gives the rather inaccurate value of pi = 3 for this important mathematical constant.

They refer to the reported dimensions of the “sea of cast bronze” which king Solomon placed before the Temple he built in Jerusalem, as described in 1 Kings 7:23:

“It was round in shape, the diameter from rim to rim being ten cubits; it stood five cubits high, and it took a line thirty cubits long to go around it.”

Indeed, the Rabbis who wrote the Talmud a thousand years after Solomon asserted this value based on those verses. They may not have been mathematicians, but they knew how to divide thirty by ten and get three. Accordingly, they affirmed as late as the middle of the first millennium CE:

There's some really interesting stuff in the rest of the article. Click here to finish reading.

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From "The Greatest Mathematicians of the Past":

Apastambha (ca 630-560 BC) India

The Dharmasutra composed by Apastambha contains mensuration techniques, novel geometric construction techniques, a method of elementary algebra, and what may be the first known proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. Apastambha's work uses the excellent (continued fraction) approximation √2 ≈ 577/408, a result probably derived with a geometric argument.

Apastambha built on the work of earlier Vedic scholars, especially Baudhayana, as well as Harappan and (probably) Mesopotamian mathematicians. His notation and proofs were primitive, and there is little certainty about his life. However similar comments apply to Thales of Miletus, so it seems fair to mention Apastambha (who was perhaps the most creative Vedic mathematician before Panini) along with Thales as one of the earliest mathematicians whose name is known.

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Pythagoras assembled a team of great thinkers, but to be sure the Egyptians and Mesopotamians understood the concept and practical application of the Pythagorean theorem long before Pythagoras existed.  Part of the fallacy of Darwinism is the failure to understand that man's history begins with people who were able to accomplish great feats, some of which we cannot copy today!   The Flood wiped out civilization, so even though Noah and his family had great knowledge and experience, all of their "toys' were gone and man had to "start from scratch."   This explains how Neanderthals were able to make detailed paintings deep within caves with no smoke traces - therefore, they had artificial lighting!   This explains how mankind could so accurately cut stone and design massive temples and buildings and pyramids...we didn't evolve from pond scum, we were created with a fully-functional brain.

Imagine if EMPs were exploded all over the Earth?  The electric grid?  Gone.  No machines work that are powered or managed by electric devices.  Computers would all be fried.   We don't have chimneys in most homes and, with no furnace or stove, we'd be figuring out ways to cook whatever we could hunt down on a grill and hand-making fireplaces and chimneys using mud bricks.   Suddenly horses would have value again!   

Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth and their wives came out to a world that was much more primitive than that...there was NOTHING handmade at all.   No wonder they used caves when caves were available.   The infrastructure of civilization was completely gone and had to be built back up again and specialized knowledge from the past went unused and therefore was lost.   We had to rebuild from mud on up.   But by the time of the building of Solomon's Temple, the arts of crafting wood, metal and stone were well developed.   The description of the sea in Solomon's Temple doesn't reflect ignorance of science by either God or man at that time any more than a modern weatherman stating times for "sunrise" and "sunset" does.   We know that the Sun doesn't rise and God knows the sky is not a tent.  He made it and He is the only one that could.  He also made all living things and again no one else is capable.   

Men cannot make material from nothing nor can they produce life.   At some point Darwinists need to face reality and quit playing these little games.  The fact that there is no natural source for life or information alone should be enough for scientists to drop Darwin like a hot potato and come on over to common sense.  Obviously God is a logical First Cause and the myriad design features of organisms complete with the signature of God (DNA) on each and every one of them should be enough.

To summarize, those who think God is not able to comprehend the concept of Pi are simply taking the scrutiny away from the prime issues that Darwinism miserably fails to address.   Darwinists lie and cover up and fake evidence as we know from a long history of such things.   So I will now dismiss any further discussion of Solomon's Sea by those who have any cranial capacity worth noting by this post.