Couldn’t the 30 be the distance across the rim and around the height? Just because it is circular, doesn’t mean it has to be hemispherical (you won’t want it rolling around for starters). pi*5 < (30-10) so that just says it probably had a flattened bottom to me.
Did it have a lip? If so, the difference between the outside diameter of the vessel and the interior diameter could easily account for the pi equals three discrepancy.
Couldn’t it? I am having trouble visualizing tonight…
You DID notice the 
didn’t you?
Or, that, pre-algebra, etc, they just went for lower 'sig figs" than we usually do. They could not possibly get the circumference EXACTLY right, even if the entire rest of the Bible was filled with the rest of the value of Pi, it would still be off. Modern engineers sometimes go for 4 “sig figs”, they just went for one. 4 or even 1000 “sig figs”, is still wrong, tho, isn’t it? Hey it WAS “government work”, right?
Of course…I’m not a * complete * space cadet 
The thing is, I would have added one myself to make it clearer, but I’m trying to wean myself off’ve them.
That wasn’t my point. My point was that there was no need to mention the circumference anyway, especially if they were going to get it wrong by a cubit and a half. Whether the error was acceptable or not, the fact that they gave both diameter and circumference on something that was a circular bath indicated an ignorance of Pi on the part of the writers.
Not that it’s a big deal in my opinion. Obviously the people writing that text didn’t have a direct line into the mind of God, so they made whatever errors could be expected of their time.
Most Christians would agree with this too, so that’s why this text isn’t quite that earth-shaking.
Most representations I’ve seen of it has the artist visualizing it as a hemi-spherical bath resting on some supports. Not that it matters, I was just generalizing it to a sphere. If that dimension is uncertain, then there is still there “error” in 2 D, that they both were off by a cubit and a half (which implies either pathetic tape measures, or some later writer who thought Pi was 3) and that they were giving the circumference, which is unnecessary information.
No, I still don’t get you. For a box you need three measurements (length, width, height), and for a spheroid or elliptoid (whichever is the right word) you generally need the same. A perfect sphere requires only one measurement, as would be the case here if all radii from the center were equal (e.g. a half sphere of 5 cubits radius). But it seems to me we have an elliptoid here that is basically a squished half sphere. 10 cubits from rim to rim (in the x-y plane). 5 cubits in height (in the z direction). 30 cubits around (in the x-z and/or y-z plane).
So when you are done, there are no left over measurements.
Of course, if what they are describing really is a hemisphere there would really be two left over measurement, since then the height value wouldn’t be needed either.
All this implies that somehow the ancients could think in three dimensions while fundamentalist congressmen can’t, which I always thought was part of the joke, not a reasonable example of bible inerrancy.
Do you get me?
You know, this is a major case of special pleading on both sides of the aisle.
Whenever anyone gets arguing human evolution with a creation science freak, he brings up one or more of three things: Piltdown Man, Hesperopithecus (the pig molars from Nebraska misidentified as hominid teeth), or duBois and the gibbon thing). I’ve been fighting all three battles on another board.
But the same dude made some salient points about this supposed “disproof of the accuracy of the Bible”:
Nobody – not even the inerrantists – suggests that normal figures of speech don’t exist in the Bible. When the Psalmist calls on the hills to rise and sing to God, nobody expects a chorus of basso profundo mountains in choir robes; it’s assumed to be metaphorical language. Similarly, if the distance from Jerusalem to Emmaus is given as 30 leagues, nobody expects that to be an exact distance, just a round figure.
In a report in Smithsonian about a recently-excavated cauldron, nobody would misinterpret “a meter in diameter and three meters in circumference” to be precise measurements. And the passage in First Kings is reporting the dimensions of a large object in a courtyard, and round numbers are quite sufficient for the purpose.
For what amusement it may bring people, there are suppositions that the vessel in question, like most large objects for holding liquids, had a flange around the edge. And if the circumference were measured around the inside and the diameter across the vessel as a whole, including the flange, a ratio of three exactly could be quite possible. This is, of course, special pleading to make the Bible figures work out. But it’s an intriguing point.
Bottom line: God was not involved in interior decoration. Nor was he teaching mathematics. Round figures work for the purpose of the account; to presuppose that they ought to have been precise figures and therefore either (a) God does not know mathematics; (b) a miracle occurred where pi was set equal to three; or © the Bible is a bunch of malarkey are all equally silly conclusions. (Well, for someone not involved with the God of the three Abrahamic faiths and reacting violently to this sort of literalist mumbo-jumbo, the last conclusion is probably vaguely sensible, but I’d tend to disagree!)
I just wanted to clear something up.
Pi is 3.1415926535897932384626433832795…
So, 3.14159 not 3.141509.
Um. Nen, if you’d read my post, you may have noticed I was commenting on the Rabbi’s approximation to Pi.
He was saying that:
( 111 / 106 ) = ( 3.14159 / 3 )
When in fact, that fraction was:
( 111 / 106 ) = ( 3.141509 / 3 )
Which diverges from Pi at 3.1415, and is a little less impressive. (not that bible code games have ever had that much significance)