Pi in the Bible (update?)
Posted on: March 28, 2011 - 3:24pm
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Pi in the Bible (update?)
Now, I know this is one point that we use to defy God's hand in the Bible.
But then there's this site where someone claims the Bible actually has a very precise definition of Pi.
I can't find any sources or anything... So, is there someone who can read Hebrew and confirm what is stated here: http://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/Pi_In_The_Bible.html
Quote:
In this case the word for circumference="line" (
in Hebrew)
But in this verse "line" is written with an extra letter (
Given that the gematrial letter values are
three times (
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OK, I don't read hebrew but I did check Strong's concordance and got completely different hebrew text. That being said, yes that is in the bible.
I have also seen other attempts to justify the matter. One of my favorites is that because the text specifies that it was molten, the diameter was taken on the liquid metal and the circumference only after it had solidified thus rendering the numbers accurate. The only problem being that the people who make this argument are unaware that bronze expands as it cools.
Here, I would also point out that 1 kings is very specific to the matter of Solomon doing all of the work himself. I guess that his people were standing around watching him. Not once did someone offer him a hand, even on those really huge bits of stone.
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I accidentally linked to the wrong page, it's supposed to be this one: http://www.apocalipsis.org/difficulties/pi.htm
Your 'explanation' is kinda fun, too. It's kinda fun to see people turning and bending in all possible direction to solve these problems. Just like Judas' death: they solve the problem of the body being both hang and blown apart, but they forget the whole sentiment of the verses: one portrays Judas as an evil motherfucker who uses Jesus death money to buy himself stuff and is killed by God Almighty Himself, and the other portrays him as a sad person who didn't know what he was doing when he betrayed Jesus.
lol, is that really in there? I'm going to check that out
Apart from the fact that if the 'sacrifice' of Jesus is part of God's plan, Judas is performing a necessary service.
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I assume you mean the bit about Solomon building the temple. Yes, that is in chapter 6. Although to be fair, we all know that that really can't mean anything more that when the king of England said to build Buckingham Palace but got credit for the act.
Also, in chapter 5, we find out that he had a work force of over 180,000 and that just for the quarry men and forestry services. No mention of how many people did the actual site work or what it took to feed them. So presumably a total work force of something like a quarter million men would have been needed to get the job done. Which begs the question of just why the whole region is not littered with ancient camp grounds.
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I'm reading David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman
http://www.amazon.com/David-Solomon-Search-Western-Tradition/dp/B003IWYM3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301411754&sr=1-1
During 1000 BCE when David and Solomon actually lived, the entire area of Judah was very sparsely populated. No evidence of writing, a governmental body capable of coordinating such an endeavor, the resources to do so and so on. It wasn't until about 700 BCE that there was a population, government, and resources to build the elaborate temple as described in the bible.
The David and Solomon stories appear to be concocted to support the political changes during 800-700 BCE.
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Well, I figured that there was something up with those numbers.
If you go with the literal description of the area, you find 4-5 buildings of similar size to a decent night club or car dealership. That hardly required the industrial output of a city that could not possibly have existed and 13 years of work.
On the other hand, a few dozen workers in perhaps 3-5 years could probably build a complex about as big as a modern strip mall and that would likely disappear into the archaeological record. Then, as you say, later on when they did have a decent sized city built out after like 300 years, they could have claimed that it was a mighty work that required a huge work force. After all, anyone who had done the original work would be long dead.
That and if you follow textual criticism, you would know just how common it is for the text to be changed in odd ways. According to Bart Ehrman, there is a version of the genealogy of god jr where the original text was in two columns but a scribe read across the page as if it was one column and all the names came out in a non standard order.
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If I'm reading that right, it says 605 divided by 106. This is about 5.7, which is a much worse estimate than 3.
Also, how are they getting the formula they use? If three letters are written, what tells them the value is (L1 + (L2*L3)) / (L2 + L3) instead of the more accurate (though still quite abysmal) (L1 + (L2*L3) / (L1 + L2 + L3)?
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
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Sorry, Zaq, I kind of misquoted it. It's supposed to be all of them added up (5+6+100), divided by the other number times three, gets you about pi.
Yeah, you're right the formula was just made up by people searching for a proper answer. But it's still quite amazing that you can get so much from a little snippet of text. The human mind is amazing
But the thing is that they used (L1 + L2 + L3)/(L1 + L2) because the word line is L1L2, but they wrote it like L1L2L3 here, so you must use those differences. Unless you don't get a good answer out of that, then you can use your more accurate formula