THE VALUE OF PI ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE
"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 about." (I Kings 7, 23)

The same verse can be found in II Chronicles 4, 2.

It occurs in a list of specifications for the great temple of Solomon, built around 950 BC and it gives = 3.

Not a very accurate value and not even very accurate in its day, for the Egyptian and Mesopotamian values of 25/8 = 3.125 and 10 = 3.162 have been traced to much earlier dates.

But, in defence of Solomon's craftsmen, be it noted that the item described was apparently a very large brass casting, so that a high degree of geometrical precision is neither possible nor necessary.


When I was in Senior High School in Springfield, MO, 1936-7, mathematics classes were sometimes interrupted by a man from "outside" demanding that our math teachers must stop the "heretical" and "unBiblical" value of = 3.1416.... But one teacher cleverly stopped this by showing that the man had "unBiblical" wheels on his car.

He got the man to agree that "pi is the ratio of the diameter to circumference of a wheel". Using string, the teacher showed that a wheel of the protester's car did not significantly fit the value of Circumference/diamater = 3. Again, matters of precision might be questioned. But at least the man departed, and apparently did not return with this protest.