>"He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits
>from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits
>to measure around it." (1 Kings 7:23)
>
>Rather than being a definition of pi, the ten-cubit dimension is an
>inside diameter, and the circumference is around the outside. The
>~1-inch thickness of the basin wall makes the difference.
Bill, your explanation must be incorrect [unless the measurements were
carried out in some sort of twilight zone having a Riemannian (spherical-
type) curved geometry whose radius of curvature was about 4.71 cubits]
because your explanation makes the error in [pi] *worse*, not better. If
we take your estimate of a rim thickness of 1 inch and a typical estimate
of 17.5 inches for the length of the cubit we have that the outer diameter
of the sea was 177 inches and its outer circumference was 525 inches.
This yields a value for [pi] which is 525/177 ~= 2.966 which is less
accurate than just the simple rounded value of 3.
It seems to me that the passage is not intended as a math lesson, and that
crude measurements with only 1 significant figure of were called for to
give the reader some idea as to the size of the vessel. (Decimal fractions
are a relatively recent innovation in history.) I suspect that the
writer/editor of I Kings did not know the precise measurements of it
anyway.
David Bowman
dbowman@georgetowncollege.edu