Puzzler:
What could make me conclude that God is a bit sloppy at geometry? Or at the least that He’s rounding off some significant digits?

2 Hints: The answer involves construction and I’m currently reading the The Daily Bible in Chronological Order NIV.

See if you can be the first to post the correct answer and win the title of Chief Construction Knowledge Poo-bah.

UPDATE: I asked my son if he had figured out the answer to the Puzzler and he responded, “That’s not a Puzzler, that’s just some random Bible verse you read.” As I thought about it, I had to reluctantly agree with him. So here’s the answer.

In 2nd Chronicles 4:2 Hiram the Artisan makes a large makes a large, fountain-type bowl located just off the altar. This bowl is called “The Sea” and is described as follows: “He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring 10 cubits from rim to rim and 5 cubits high. It took a line of 30 cubits to measure around it.”

To consider this bowl in math terms, it’s half a sphere with a diameter of 10 cubits. Since we know the circumference is diameter x Pi (or 3.1416), we know the diameter should be 31.416 cubits. Since the verse provides the measured diameter of 30 cubits, something is off. Was Pi in Biblical times 3.0 or was this a bit of inaccurate reporting? I developed a theory about this.

Years ago, when reading the NIV Study Bible, I came across a few notes that indicated some of the numbers didn’t jive with similar numbers from other Bible locations and suggested those numbers seem likely to be copyist errors. Attending a seminar on genetics at Princeton, given by the now Princeton President Shirley Tilgman, she discussed the copying errors that happen when cells reproduce. The errors don’t occur often, just occasionally and enough to muck up the calculations and make everything much more difficult to understand.

I theorized that Biblical copying errors, like DNA copying errors, are not random but intentional and lead to the concept of how much more complicated the universe is than we generally suppose. I’m comfortable with that complexity, but still work to understand my little bits truth that hover around me.