Significant enough to get some loony politician to try and make it law.
Of course it was 1897, the olden days, so some leeway should be given.
I assume you mean the tighty whitey variety, right? 
Assuming that each measurement is correct to two significant figures (which is quite an assumption) then
29.5 < circumference < 30.5
and
9.5 < diameter < 10.5
Ergo, the “Biblical” value of pi would be
29.5/10.5 < pi < 30.5/95.
Doing the math, we get
2.81 < pi < 3.21
Of course, pi actually does fit into this range, so this is hardly an error.
Another argument: Assuming that the circle is exactly 30 cubits in circumference (ie C = 30.0000000…), the diameter is 30.000000…/3.141592654… = 9.549… cubits, which would almost certainly be rounded to 10.
It doesn’t actually say “circle”, though, just round. It could be referring to an oval object, which would (at certain points of it) match the description.
::Old Jewish Man:: So, whatta sayin’? Der somting wrong wit my gravy boat?"::Old Jewish Man::
I’ve heard one apologist came up with the reasoning that the circumference of the bowl was measured around the outer rim, while the diameter was the inner rim, so Pi would work out correctly if we take the thickness (not mentioned in the text itself) into account.
Damn! That’s a beauty! 
Well, even the non-literalists believe in things like coming back from the dead three days later and god and that same god inhabiting the body of his half-son/half-human earthly representative, so I’d say it’s a conflict.
I’m not entirely certain that the bible and basic things like the laws of thermodynamics sit together too easily either.
I sat down one day and figured out just how distorted the “bowl” would have to be in order to have a “circumference” of 3.0, rather than “pi”. The answer, surprisingly, is pretty distorted. It’s clealy not round.
Here’s an alternate take, that I haven’t seen anyone else suggest in just this form. Barrel-makers (coopers) figure out the size to set their compasses to when making the ends for a barrel by experimentally opening up the compass to about the right value (you can “eyeball” that), then “walking” the compass point to point around the circumference they want to fit (in this case, the groove inside the barrel staves where the lid has to fit, snugly). They have the compass set to the right value if it takes eaxctly six such “steps” around the circumference. This is essentially a recognition that you can inscribe a hexagon inside a circle in which each side is equal to the radius. But if your definition of “circumference” is “distance around the outside, as measured by steps of compass”, then the circumference divided by the diameter of the circle is just 6R/2R = 3. I’m not suggesting that anyone ever really measured the circumference iof the “Molten Sea” using a giant set of calipers, or that the ancients didn’t know the difference between a hexagon and a circle, but that, if you accept this “Cooper’s pi” as a statement of the relationship between the diameter and circunmfwerence of a circular vessel, then its value is definitely and simply 3. Maybe it was a way of coping with the evident irrationality of the actual factor in a world without decimal places, and in which people had an even harder time with fractions than we do today.
Well, this raises the question as to whether miracles which are acknowledged as such—i.e. instances of God stepping in and subverting the natural order of things—are in conflict with science, or merely beyond the scope of science.
Science says that heavy objects, on their own, are naturally drawn towards the earth. But if I pick up a rock that was lying in the ground and lift it, you wouldn’t say my actions were in conflict with the law of gravity, just that I had stepped in and supplied an outside force.
Science operates under the assumption that the universe is a closed system that obeys natural laws or predictable patterns. This is an assumption, and it’s a useful one, borne out by experience, but it’s not a proven fact. Miracles that admit of no scientific explanation, like many of those described in the Bible, are in a sense in conflict with science. But science can’t tell you what God is capable of doing, any more than an experienced user of a computer software package or video game can tell you what the programmer who has access to the source code can make it do.
You’re assuming there’s a god. Until that is proven, nothing can be attributed to him. Science not only can’t tell me what god is capable of, it cannot even tell me he* exists*.
I have to admit, when I saw this thread title, I immediately had this image of Moses and some guy in a lab coat squaring off in an arena. 5 quatloos on Science !
It seems to me that with enough data - in this case, miracles - science could in theory deduce a great deal about a god, just as it deduces a great deal about quantum mechanics. You don’t need to observe something directly to figure out it’s nature. The real reason science can’t say anything about God’s nature is that it’s never given anything to work with; no miracles/no evidence = nothing to analyze.
The Bible assumes there’s a God. That’s the basic underlying assumption of the whole thing. I was speculating on how many of the supposed conflicts between science and the Bible boil down to: The Bible says God did something, while science seeks to explain the world without recourse to divine intervention.
I have just reread what I wrote yesterday, :smack: so I knew this was coming, guy!
I used to pun a lot that someone’s Freudian SLIP was showing. This time, it’s even more apt.
Would these folks divide mainly into boxers and briefs? And so on…
True Blue Jack