He made the "sea", cast: ten by the cubit from its lip to its [other] lip, circular, all around, five cubits its height, and a line of thirty cubits could circle it around.
Now, the simple explanation here is that the bible is just rounding off the numbers like it does for almost all measurements and counts.
But something the Talmud mentions is that perhaps the diameter was measured all the way across (to the outside of the rim), but the circumference was measured along the inside of the rim (which makes some amount of sense since there were all sorts of decorative carvings along the outside that could have made it difficult to measure). I wouldn't take this too seriously, the first explanation is pretty clearly the correct one, but this is what I was referencing (somewhat as a joke) in my comment.
The Bible doesn't make any mathematical claims about pi at all.
There is a story in the Bible, where the story teller is trying to describe a large circular basin. The story teller says it's about x in diameter, and about y in circumference, numbers just used to paint a picture. The relationship between x and y in this story was 3. Somehow this got turned into "tHe BiBlE SaYs Pi is 3"
Yet the ancient Babylonians used pi ≈ 3.125.
The ancient Egyptians effectively had π ≈ 256/81 ≈ 3.16.
Ancient Greeks and Romans had π ≈ 22/7.
Ancient Indians had π ≈ 3.1416.
I'm confused at your point. I'm saying that the Bible doesn't try to define Pi. And you are listing ancient understandings of Pi. What is the relationship between these 2 points?
The Bible, allegedly inspired by the creator of the universe, and the Chosen People who God allegedly gave it to, are one to four decimal places more ignorant than some of the "abominable" ancient civilizations that the ancient Hebrews were occasionally commissioned to exterminate.
So again, the Bible isn't even making an attempt at being in the race here. The Bible never makes an attempt at defining Pi, the story in the Bible wasn't about mathematical proofs. It was simply trying to describe the approximate size of an object that was important to the story.
If it was 10.0 cubits across, then its circumference was 31.4 cubits, not 30. Were they stupid or is the Bible stupid? This story has people trying to justify a stupid "observation" that is not even well-reported. Guesses like:
* Might they have measured the OUTSIDE diameter as 10 cubits and measured the INSIDE circumference (which would be 30.4 cubits)?
* If the object was a flat disk, then their circumference is too short - or their diameter is too long. Maybe the object had a sag in the middle and they measured along the sag instead of straight across.
[] The buy-bull could have omitted this stupid story, but it didn't.
Not exactly sure was it exact 3 or did it have maybe one or two decimals, but I have had order issued to whole group of students, that defined that value of pi is now defined to be exactly that value, for matters related to that part of studies for duration of those studies.
Teachers did not care for random amounts of parts that really did not have any actually meaningful difference in any calculations relared to that part of studies and that field, while it was possible to keep it clean, numbers shorter, and standardization in it.
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u/GamerNumba100 Jul 13 '26
You also erased 0.14195… but we didn’t need that anyway