From which we derive that π (pi) is equal to 3, exactly. None of that "irrational number" nonsense for true believers! Of course, apologists try to come up with excuses, such as that the circumference was not taken from the brim, but rather from a different part of its "fluted" shape, but those excuses are non-biblical.
As for myself, I would assume that the human writer(s) of 1 Kings had no knowledge of the evil secular notion of
fractions. Or that Hebrew, "the language that God spoke", was incapable of expressing fractions, a rather odd deficiency for a "Divine language".
There's a story about Indiana passing a law that set pi to an arbitrary (and wrong) value, presaging the rash of creationist laws that we see. Here are two of those stories:
From
The C Users Journal, Vol.11, No.2, Feb 1993: "Real-Number Approximation for Real Programmers" by Mark Gingrich,
Sidebar "Baseball, Mom and Rational Pi", page 41.
quote:
But despite these breakthroughs, mathematical truth soon after experienced an amusing episode of American democracy in action. In 1897, the state of Indiana's House of Representatives voted 67 to 0, proclaiming [pi] equal to 16/5, exactly! The bill was proposed by a physician and amateur mathematician, a Dr. Edwin Goodwin, who claimed this 'discovery.' And being a loyal Hoosier, he offered Indiana free use of the result -- all others would have to pay royalties! Fortunately, last-minute lobbying by an alert mathematics professor kept the bill from making it through the Indiana Senate.
And from Wikipedia's article on
Pi:
quote:
In 1897, an amateur mathematician attempted to persuade the Indiana legislature to pass the Indiana Pi Bill, which described a method to square the circle, and contained text which assumes various incorrect values of π, including 3.2. The bill is notorious as an attempt to establish scientific truth by legislative fiat. The bill was passed by the Indiana House of Representatives, but rejected by the Senate.
Source:
Arndt & Haenel 2006, pp. 211—212
Posamentier & Lehmann 2004, pp. 36—37
Hallerberg, Arthur (May 1977). "Indiana's squared circle". Mathematics Magazine 50 (3): 136—140.
(visit the Wikipedia page in order to iron out the bibliography)
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