GOD AND Π (PI)

Here is another very good example of how the so-called scientific wise men judge God and His Word based on their own ignorance. Their brains are incapable of registering what they read, and their conclusions reflect their prejudice against an unseen God, a Being that can be justified by the Absolute Truth of His word. In this article I want to prove that God knows ALL about the value of π (pi), and that Hiram could not have done it without His Inspiration and the two different writers of the Text could not have done it without God inspiring their thoughts.

---

The three cardinal mistakes they make are: They don’t take both accounts into consideration; they also do not apply their imagination in thinking how a brass mould of this size is cast. The third mistake is simply that they don't read the instructions Hiram had to follow carefully. Let us look at the two texts:

2 Chronicles 4:2-5
“Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. And under it was the similitude of oxen, which did compass it round about: ten in a cubit, compassing the sea round about. Two rows of oxen were cast, when it was cast. It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them, and all their hinder parts were inward. And the thickness of it was an handbreadth, and the brim of it like the work of the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies; and it received and held three thousand baths.” 

1 Kings 7:23-26
“And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. And under the brim of it round about there were knops compassing it, ten in a cubit, compassing the sea round about: the knops were cast in two rows, when it was cast. It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them, and all their hinder parts were inward. And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths.”

The one thing that inspires me about the Bible writers is that their texts sometimes differ when they write about the same subject and the Editor do not compare notes and “edit” the texts to be nicely synoptically. He knows something the refuters don’t! The Inspired eye also sees the differences, but instead of regarding it as contradictions he regards it rather as added information for the sake of getting a clearer picture. Now let us see:

The molten sea is made in three pieces, the inner sea, the outer sea and the brim. This can be clearly deduced from the fact that there are references to oxen twice, but they are there in different aspects. In the first instance the oxen, referred to as “knobs” in the 1 Kings version, were images embedded in the inner sea, just above the water level, encompassing the top of the inner sea in two rows. The outer sea has four triple sets of oxen facing the four main directions of east, south, west and north. These oxen are also cast in one piece with the outer sea.

Then there was the brim of the sea. It consisted of a ring that would nicely fit over the two edges of the inner and outer seas. This brim was decorated with “flowers and lilies”. The brim was exactly a “hand breadth wide, which will allow us now to have a closer look at the dimensions and how 30 cubits was the exact circumference of the molten sea, yet the outside dimensions of the sea was exactly 10 cubits. The simple sketch I've made will hopefully help you to see the error in the reasoning of the writer of the article I have quoted. Now let us just see how the lineal measurements worked which Hiram used. The cubit was the main measurement, and it was subdivided in 2 spans, every span in 2 hand breadths and every hand breadth consisting of five fingers. If we regard every finger then about equal to the today’s ‘inch’ or 25.48mm, it means that a ‘hand breadth will be 127.4mm, a span 254.8mm and a cubit 509.6mm, which will fit in nicely with the “Royal Cubit” of Ezekiel 40:5. 

This means that the casting of the inner as well as the outer seas was ½ a finger thick (12.74mm). With the brim being a ¼ of a cubit wide (a hand breadth = 127.4mm) and the outside diameter of the outer sea 10 cubits, which means that the outside diameter of the inner sea was 9.55cubits. If one uses π NOW to work out the circumference, you will see that “a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about” just about exactly. The answer to the nearest 10 digits will be 30.0022098417! Please note: I only included some modern-day dimensions here to facilitate easier visualizing. The point of the argument is whether God and his worker Hiram knew about the value of π or not. The calculations are done with cubits. 

Also, before the Bible is accused of giving two different capacities for the sea, just take note that the 3000 baths of 2 Chronicles 4 refers to the capacity of the inner sea if it was filled to the brim. The 2000 baths of 1 Kings 7 refers to the level the sea was filled up to. The feet of the lower row of oxen would just have touched the water, creating the idea of them walking on the water. 

This here is just another example where so-called ‘specialists’ make fools out of themselves by commenting on something they do not comprehend fully. I just hope that they are big enough to admit that they were wrong and first exhaust all possibilities before even deciding on debasing God and His Word.