Gundulf

Of course, if the bible was going to be written with a truly accurate notation of pi, then it would still be being written.....


(And people thought the page after page of geneology was boring......)

S.C.Carlson

This exception is already built into Article XIII of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (which is about as close to official as one can get since the Evangelical Theological Society has voted to require its affirmation of its members):
Of course, if you encounter a fundamentalist who does not adhere to the Chicago Statement, your mileage may vary.

Stephen

S.C.Carlson

Even if they had trousers in those days, wouldn't it be easier to measure to the circumference (girth) directly, particularly since no human waist is a perfect circle?

Stephen

Huon

The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (i.e. papyrus British Museum 10057 and pBM 10058), is named after Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian, who purchased the papyrus in 1858 in Luxor, Egypt. It was apparently found during illegal excavations in or near the Ramesseum. The British Museum, where the papyrus is now kept, acquired it in 1865.

The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus dates to the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt. It was copied by the scribe Ahmes from a now-lost text from the reign of king Amenemhat III (1860-1814 BCE). This papyrus describes 87 problems, with their solutions. In the problems 48 and 50, Ahmes tries to compare the surface of a circle and the surface of a square. He shows that the surface of a circle of diameter 9 is nearly equal to the surface of a square of side 8.

So Pi approx. = 256/81 = 3.1604…

King Amenemhat III (1860-1814 BCE)...

Boro Nut

Well of course it would be easier. We know that. But we know pi isn't 3.

You have to remember you had a powerful lobby group from the Guild of Braces Manufacturers telling the scribes they were 'happy with the first draft of the bible, but we would just like to point out that pi is 3, and please accept this small fortune as a token of our appreciation'.

The invention of the fully functional belt would have been devastating to braces. Yet to this date they are still commercially available from any shop that still sells them. You only have to look at the bible to know why. I work in the belt industry and am the world's leading authority on braces strap chaff. I know what I'm talking about.

Boro Nut

pharoah

Of course I hope you realize as a scholar that this list of exceptions is their get-out-of-jail-free card. Most of the exceptions that they list are the very things that tend to show that the text is human-inspired rather than god-inspired. A god-inspired text has no reason to use "hyperbole" (stuff that they believed then that we now know to be false) or "round" (read grossly exaggerated) numbers, or contain "variant" (read contradictory) parallel accounts, or contain "observational" (read inaccurate) descriptions of nature.

Gundulf

I checked out what time the sun rises tomorrow on The Weather Channel home page. What an inaccurate site! How can we trust those nuts?

S.C.Carlson

:devil1: Some people wonder whether the exceptions swallow the rule, but I leave that to the theologians to argue about.

John Kesler

Sunrise/sunset is an obviously anachronistic term used for convenience. That we know that the sun doesn't actually "rise" or "set" can be established from science textbooks, scientific journals, documentaries, etc. and, as much as biblical inerrantists would like it to be so, is not parallel to scientific errors made at a time when there is no evidence that the correct understanding was known.

Gundulf

I have such problems with this exact concept - that "incomplete" knowledge = scientific error. And not just in this context, it irks me everywhere I see it.

Like referring to Newtonian physics as a "scientific error" because Newton didn't have the correct understanding of quantum mechanics. How about simply, his perspective was incomplete and limited, but what he described, insofar as it applied to his perspective and purpose, was true.

We describe the world as we experience it. "Sunset" is not just an anachronistic term - we use it because that's how we experience it. Listen to just about anyone describe a sunset - they will talk about "look, there goes the sun." They don't say, "Look here we rotate far enough away from the sun that it will disappear from our view..."

Speaking of other scientific errors, did you know traffic regulations require us to stop at red lights! Apparently they forgot that, because the earth is travelling through space, we can't stop...