Where does the bible give a value for pi?
YOU WROTE: “Sheldon, many thanks… This is the first definitive and wholly inarguable untruth that I’ve encountered in the bible.” I assume that you must surely be aiming for the facetious in the above statement because the Kings/Chronicles passage cited in NO WAY demonstrates a misunderstanding of PI. (Obviously!) However, I will admit that — because of the fact the passage is often used to take some sort of silly “pot-shot” at the Bible — I’ve often assigned it to my undergrad students to see how quickly they see through the fallacies involved. Anyone with more than a 4th grader’s understanding of mathematics knows that the “error” people try to find with the basin (and their erroneous claim that it suggests that PI would have to be “3”) is because they PRESUME that the basin is a perfect cylinder with NO THICKNESS to the sides. But in the REAL WORLD (not on the elementary school blackboard) things like basins have thick sides and usually varying diameters and “fluting” and patter
As a numeric dyslexic whose only understanding of pi is the shortcrust pastry that I put meat or fruit into prior to baking, I dare not attempt to directly answer your question, excellent though it is. It did occur to me, however, that there might be another way of ascertaining the mathematical integrity of the scripture writers. The structure and dimensions of Noah’s chest-shaped ark are given in Genesis 6:14-22 & 8:6. As glaciers recede on Mount Ararat, an intriguing structure is claimed by some to be this ark. There may eventually be some evidence as to the authenticity of chapter 6 in Genesis.
