GakuseiDon

As I said, you confuse accuracy with precision.

So, "Pi = 3" is wrong? I'll ask you again, Goliath, it's a perfectly straight-forward question: "Pi to 0 decimal places is 3". Is that a true statement or a false statement?

Doctor X

For what it is worth, the text does not state "to 0 decimal places."

--J.D.

GakuseiDon

Yep, and other than the height of Goliath (at 7.5 cubits), I can't find any other measurement in the Bible greater than 4 cubits that aren't measured in full cubits. (If anyone knows any, I'd be interested to see it). So we can assume rounding.

But the killer is that the diameter is measured "brim to brim", and the "brim was shaped like the brim of a cup, like a lily blossom", so if measuring from brim-to-brim, the line of the diameter section would have been larger than that of the circumference section anyway!

GakuseiDon

Exactly!

GakuseiDon

Yes, Matthew does seem to put it in to match Zech. But Zech makes it clear that it is "a colt, the foal of a donkey". What better way for Matthew to show that than to have both foal and parent there?

It may well be that Matthew has misinterpreted Zech, but a clear reading of the passages show there are no problems. You first have to assume that Matthew misinterpreted to show a problem.

JGL53

Exactly.

Since there was a brim with a certain thickness, the diameter referred to could be from the inner rim to the opposite inner rim, or from the outer rim to opposite outer rim, or even from one inner rim to the opposite outer rim.

As for the circumference, it could have been measured from either around the OUTSIDE of the brim or the INSIDE.

We have no way of knowing any of this, ergo this is not an irrefutable contradiction. Time to move on.

Godless Wonder

Ah, I see you have your Christian error-masking-goggles on Are you kidding me? Where did the ass come from? Clearly Matthew is refering to 2 animals. You cannot say that he is upon the "clothes" . Matthew's got him sitting on both of them at the same time, does he not? Why? Clearly he does so to match Zechariah, which he misunderstood. You don't think Jesus really rode in sitting astride two beasts simultaneously, do you? Just in order to divinely anticipate Matthew's misunderstanding of Zechariah's "prophecy" and render it "true" nonetheless?

It is clear that Matthew considers the colt and the ass to be 2 animals. In Zechariah, they are meant to mean one animal (according to what I have read.) Are you proposing that Matthew wrote his passage such that it matches Zechariah purely by accident, and that he didn't mean to imply that Jesus rode both the colt and the ass at once, and the introduction of the ass had nothing to do with Zechariah?

Even if Matthew didn't intend to have Jesus riding both animals at once, the introduction of the ass, and the asserted prophecy fulfillment reek of fabrication, considering Mark and Luke's descriptions lacking the ass. This, at the very least, puts biblical inerrancy in a bad place. (Not that I suppose you subscribe to biblical inerrancy, as Noah's flood is quite enough on that front.)

Vinnie

Does the Bible Get it Wrong.

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Doesn't it depend on the shape of the thing? What if the cirumference was measured around the object while its length across on the top of an outward sloping edge?

The section across the top from rim to rim there may have been 10 cubits but what if below it the distance was only 9.55 cubits or around their ? If the two outward slopes equal about .45 cubits we would have an accurate measurement of pi to two decimal places.

This objection assumes a uniform shape of the object. Maybe they had them. I do not know. But it is very possible there was a rim to it.

Unless we know exactly what these things looked like (do we have any) this objection cannot be given. The bible is descirbing distances, not defining pi.

Amos

In Matthew the donkey and the colt are side by side as in "the father and I are one" with the father being the donkey and Jesus being the colt. The coats were the cloak of faith whereupon Jesus counted to move towards the complete unification of the father and the son as it already was for Zachariah. Assention does this later for Jesus.

Godless Wonder

Replace "n" with "r" and you may have a point. (Just a joke. "Assention" is spelled "ascension" /pedant off.)