The value of Pi is the value of the ratio
of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Divide
the length of the circumference of a circle to its
diameter, and Pi is the value you get.
In 1650 BCE, an Egyptian scribe named Ahmes wrote, "Cut
off 1/9 of a diameter and construct a square upon the
remainder; this has the same area as the circle."
(Blatner, 1997). This squaring of the circle implies a
value for Pi of 3.16049, which isn't too bad for an
estimate.
Archimedes (287-212 BCE) did better still, using a
brilliant new method. He even wrote a book about it called
The Measurement of the
Circle. In it he wrote that "the ratio of the
circumference of any circle to its diameter is less than 3
1/7 and more than 3 10/71." (Archimedes of Syracuse, 10th
Century). By averaging those two extremes one gets a value
for Pi of 3.1419, which is accurate to within three ten
thousandths of the true value. He, or perhaps a younger
colleague of his named Apollonius of Perga, later refined
the value to 3.1416, the value often still used today.
The Romans, the greatest engineers of the ancient world,
usually employed the easy to use value of 3 1/8 for Pi,
even though they knew perfectly well that 3 1/7 was
closer.
In 1593 Pi was calculated to 15 places; by the end of the
seventeenth century an Englishman named Abraham Sharp
calculated Pi to 72 places.
This was an astonishing feat of mathematics, but it had no
practical applications. Engineers rarely need more than
four decimal places (3.1416). Even physicists rarely need
more than seven places (3.1415927).
In 1770 Johann Lambert discovered that Pi is an irrational
number, a number that cannot be exactly expressed as a
ratio of two integers; a number, in other words, whose
actual value goes on and on, ad infinitum. In 1882
Ferdinand Lindemann found that Pi is a transcendental
number, that is, it is a number that is not a root of any
algebraic equation having integral coefficients.
I can remember the value of Pi to 15 decimal places
without any problem: 3.141592653589793... I guess I
remember it because it must be an important number.
However, in 2002 Yasumasa Kanada computed the most
accurate value of Pi up to 1.2411 trillion decimal places!
The calculation took more than 600 hours on the Hitachi
SR8000/MPP supercomputer (Yasumasa Kanada, 2007).
What does the Bible say the value of Pi is? The 1 Kings
7:23 verse states, "He made the molten sea of ten cubits
from brim to brim, round in compass, and its height was
five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits encircled it."
This verse implies that the ratio of the circumference of
a circle to its diameter is 30 cubits, divided by 10
cubits, or 3. The 2 Chronicles 4:2 verse seems to echo
these facts again: "Also he made the molten sea of ten
cubits from brim to brim, round in compass; and its height
was five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits encircled
it." Here too the verse implies that the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to its diameter is 3. Is Pi 3
exactly?
Most Christians claim that the word of God is their
'safeguard' against deception, and by 'word of God' they
mean the Bible, not the Word of Yeshua. In other words, a
book, and/or a Pope, not their God-given brain, will save
them!
Is a value of 3 for Pi, as stated in the Bible,
sufficiently accurate for all generations, and for most
purposes? Not if even some Egyptian scribe had figured out
a better value for it in 1650 BCE, long before the Bible
was ever written! If Yeshua were to tell you that Pi is
closer to 3.141592653589793 than it is to the Bible's
value of 3, who would you believe?
As if problems like these weren't enough, the Bible is
also full of deliberate and non-deliberate errors and
omissions of scribes introduced over the centuries. I find
it paradoxical that even today, in light of all that is
happening around the world, a Christian preacher can come
to me and state, with a straight face, that the 'children
of Abraham,' that is, the Arabs and the Jews, shall be a
blessing to the earth (Genesis 22:18). To me the children
of Abraham, any branch of the family you consider, are
more of a curse to the earth than a blessing! Is this your
safeguard against deception?
Not for a Cesidian. A Cesidian's theology is no longer
based on the Bible. A Cesidian's theology is based on The
Cross, which is the X- and Y-axis, the 'Field of
Everything' that Analytic Theology is based on. To some
the cross is the symbol of Christianity. To a Cesidian the
True Cross of Christ is actually located in the Cartesian
plane, and true Salvation is in fact within it!
Mention any field of human endeavour and a Cesidian will
most likely say: "It's in there, like a fine Italian
sauce!" It's in the plane of Salvation! What about the
fields of Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Communication,
or Economics? It's in there! What about Ethics, Geography,
History, Law, Linguistics, Management, or Medicine? It's
in there! What about Physics, Political Science,
Psychology, Religion, Sociology, or Theology? It's in
there! These are the least number of subjects that are in
the plane of Salvation!
However, a decent value of Pi is not in the Bible, or any
other brilliant explanation. Even the Cesidian calendar is
in fact more powerful than the Bible.
Dan Costian (2003a) sums up a great truth about the Bible
in the very forward to his 2-volume work by quoting the
book, Paradox of the Bible: "The Bible is the most read
and, also, the least understood book." The Bible is full
of enigmatic aspects, and the very same verses often have
different meanings to different sects. Other issues also
add to the Bible's ineffability.
During the Protestant Reformation, certain reformers
proposed different canonical lists of biblical books to
what was in use at the time. The Old Testament texts
present in the Septuagint, but not included in the Jewish
(Masoretic) canon, fell out of favour. Today in a Catholic
context these texts are referred to as Deuterocanonical
books, whereas in a Protestant context they are referred
to as apocryphal. To further add to the confusion, both
Catholics and Protestants describe certain other books,
such as the Acts of Peter as apocryphal (Bible, 2007).
Most people make no issue of the fact that every English
translation of the Bible in existence today utilises
standardised Medieval Hebrew or Masoretic Texts as its
foundation, and not the much older Septuagint, which was
widely used by Greek-speaking Jews, and later by
Christians. In fact, when Yeshua quotes a verse from the
Old Testament he uses the Septuagint. Even the apostles
used the Septuagint. Childs states, "Among Eastern
Orthodox Christians, the Septuagint has never ceased being
revered and respected. One wonders why their testimony to
the content of the Holy Scriptures has been so firmly
rejected." (Childs, 2004). Even Catholics relied more on
the authority of the Septuagint than on Masoretic texts
until they started following Protestant (and Jewish) usage
more closely for Catholic Bibles.
This would not be a problem in itself if there was an
English Bible version or two based on the Septuagint, but
this is simply not the case. In fact, besides Sir Lancelot
C. L. Brenton's 1851 English translation of the
Septuagint, there aren't any other complete — i.e.,
including all the apocryphal books — English translations
of the Septuagint. In addition to that, the only modern
English translation of the Septuagint in progress I'm
aware of is the New English Translation of the Septuagint
or NETS (NETS, 2007). It is possible that the NETS may be
used in the future to produce an ecumenical Bible based
entirely on the Septuagint, but it is clear that no such
modern English language Bible version exists today. When
one considers the fact that perfectly holy books like the
Gospel of Thomas were excluded from the New Testament, and
for seemingly arbitrary reasons, it is clear that Bible
editors, compilers, and copyists have not been very
forward about what is in your typical English Bible
version of today, and they have not been particularly
frank about what has been left out.
Then you have the issue of verses translated in an
entirely different manner depending on the sect. The
Jehovah's Witnesses' Bible, the New World Translation, translates the
very first verse of the Book of John as follows: "In [the]
beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the
word was a god." (New
World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 1984).
In the World English
Bible (WEB), that same verse goes: "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God." The latter version is pretty much the way
the Greek is, but the Bible version used by Jehovah's
Witnesses shows a substantial difference. In most Bibles,
the Word, or Jesus of Nazareth, is God or is equivalent to
God (in status, at least). Jehovah's Witnesses really
change that verse to suit their own controversial
theology, which really doesn't equate Jesus to God.
A number of doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses differ from
those of mainstream Christianity. The most controversial
doctrinal differences relate to the nature of God and of
Yeshua, particularly their rejection of the Trinity
doctrine. Many of these doctrines are considered heresy by
mainstream Christian denominations, and as a result, many
label Jehovah's Witnesses as a cult. Critics have also
attacked the New World
Translation by stating that the group has changed
the Bible to suit their doctrine, and that the translation
contains a number of errors and inaccuracies (Jehovah's
Witnesses, 2006).
Dan Costian (2003b) states, "In the Hindu culture also the
Creator is the original Verb." The Sanskrit word Shabda-Brahma is the
Hindu word for Creator; it should also be noted that shabda means "sound."
According to Gurbani, expressions such as Shabad, Divine Word, God, are virtually
synonymous.
In the Qur'an,
God's messenger Gabriel says to the Virgin Mary: "Mary,
God gives thee good tidings of a Word from Him whose name
is Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary." In the Hadith, Jesus is also
called "Allah's Word." (Costian, 2003c).
Reischauer relates a curious anecdote about the Word (Logos in Greek):
There was perhaps no passage of Scripture which caused the translators of the Bible into Japanese so much trouble as the opening verses of the Gospel according to John. The controversy was not over the meaning of the Logos, but rather over the oriental equivalent and the word to be chosen as best translation. The committee of translators divided into two camps: on the side were those familiar with the Chinese version which they seemed to regard as even more authoritative than the Greek, Latin, and other versions before them. On the other side was the thoroughgoing Japanese party which did not regard the Chinese version as a necessary medium for transmitting western thought. In the Chinese version the Logos had been translated by the word T'ao, Japanese Do or Michi, meaning "way," i.e., "way" both in a literal sense and "way" also in the sense of law of things, the divine principle of things. But the Japanese party felt that this content was inadequate, and rather than take a word with such a definite content it would be better to translate logos by the Japanese term for "word," kotoba, and then let usage and exegesis by-and-by fill the Japanese term for "word," kotoba, with the full Christian logos-content. The result of the controversy was a compromise, and it was a compromise rather striking. The Chinese character for do, michi, i.e., "way," was retained, but the pronunciation of it, as indicated by the kana-system of writing which is written alongside of the Chinese characters, was fixed as kotoba, "word." So when a Japanese reads his Bible his eye takes in the double idea of "way" and "word," though the ear would only catch the term for "word." (Reischauer, 1913)So according to Hindus, not just the majority of Christians, the Word itself is synonymous with divinity. Muslims too recognise Yeshua as the Word. To the Japanese, on the other hand, the Word is also the same as the very Buddha-like "way", in the sense of law of things, the divine principle of things!