Bibliolatry and Pi

Pi is an irrational number -- one that cannot be expressed as a ratio between two integers, Modern (since the 18th Century) mathematicians are comfortable with irrational and transcendental numbers. Not so the ancients -- Pythagoras is supposed to have been so opposed to them that he drowned one of his students who had the temerity to use the idea in a proof.

The Hebrews (or at least the author(s) of 1 Kings) seem to have had the same problem with irrational numbers; 1 Kings 7:23 says:

"Then he [Hiram of Tyre] made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference." [RSV]

This would seem to require that Pi = 3.0. Anyone who passed Basic Science in Grade School knows that Pi is approximately 3.141... -- NOT -- 3! Any honest and experienced workman, such as Hiram of Tyre certainly was, knew that a circle 10 cubits across had a circumference of 31 cubits plus a handspan (about 5 inches) and a half.

Why then, does 1 Kings 7:23 try to make it 3.0? 11th Century BC Political Correctness, as far as I can tell.

All God's handiwork must be perfect, and the circle is the expression of God's perfection -- surely no ugly irrational number like that can have anything to do with the circle! This is not really bad reasoning, given the state of formal mathematics at the time -- and for a millennium or so afterwards.

Come forward in time to September 1st, 2007. I just spent a couple of hours on IRC watching a bunch of blithering idiot innumerate Fun_DUH_mentalists justify that number 3.0 in 1 Kings. The dumbest arguments was "if you measure the angles of the diameter" D'oh -- ain't no angles in a diameter. It's a straight line. The next less dumb was "Well, 3 is close enough." Hiram of Tyre would not agree, especially when he was calculating how many bronze ingots he would need to melt to cast the thing. The arguments went on for most of 2 hours -- from dumb to dumber.

The reason these innumerate idjits were pulling laughable arguments out of . . . -- let's say "thin air" for politeness sake -- is that they worship the Bible, and are required by the tenets of that bibliolatry to consider each and every word in it as literal truth. Extreme Biblical literalism is one of the diagnostic heresies of extreme Fun_DUH_mentalism, and here it is in its most obvious form.

The educated Christian position is that Scriture tells no outright lies, and never leads the educated believer astray. Parts of the Bible (Song of Solomon, for instance) are poetry, parts are metaphor, parts are fairly sober history, parts are not. And parts reflect the political correctnesses of their times.

Pi is not ever 3.0 -- that is a singularly bad approximation, and not useful for any technical purpose. It is, however, a politically correct approximation, given the prejudices against irrationl numbers at the time.

Any engineer or scientist can give you numerous stories about Management demands for politically correct solutions that are simply incoherent and idiotic from a technical viewpoint. Politicians are even better than corporate management at that kind of exercise.

And so are mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, Bahbul-worshippin' Fun_DUH_mentalists.

1 Kings 7:23 is an example of the Bible being flat wrong.

That it is wrong in this one instance has no bearing on the believability or value of all the rest of the book. Unless you are a bilbiolator, of course. ;-)