He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.
// Today’s post may be funny only to mathematicians. King Solomon sent word to Tyre and brought back Huram to help with the construction of his palace, which included the above-mentioned basin, a big circle ten cubits in diameter and thirty cubits in circumference.
Except Huram’s circle wasn’t very circular. The ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle is not 1:3, it’s 1:3.1415926 ad infinitum … the value of pi. Huram should have measured closer to thirty one and a half cubits around the basin.
Perhaps Solomon should have contracted with someone from Egypt or Babylon. Both of these nations had calculated the value of pi to several decimal places before the oldest books of the Bible were written.