162

THEMATHEMATICAL GAZETTE

The Bible and Pi

MICHAELA. B. DEAKIN and HANS LAUSCH It is widely, almost universally,believed thatthe HebrewBible gives the value of 7r as the crude approximation3, a value much less accuratethan those adopted by other ancient civilisations, such as the Babylonian, the Egyptian and the Chinese. In the English of the Authorised Version, the biblical source goes: 'And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from one brim to the other:it was roundall about, and his [i.e. its] height was five cubits: and a line of thirtycubits did compass it roundabout.' This is from I Kings 7:23, but it is repeatedin a laterverse (II Chronicles 4:2). 'Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, roundin compass and five cubits the height thereof;and a line of thirtycubits did compass it roundabout.' A few observationsare in orderbefore we proceed.*First,there are some apparentdifferences of wording between the two versions. These arise because the English translation here employed was produced by a committee;they are not to be found in the Hebrew original. (We shall see later on that there are subtle differences in the Hebrew versions, but the principalone is not, nor could it be, reflectedin the English.) is Second, the obvious interpretation thatthe biblical authorused a value of 7i. The underlinedword line is quite often renderedas 'circumference', or 'cord' (more precisely it means 'tape measure' or else the measurement producedby means of a tape measure)and so the ratio of the circumference (30 cubits, about 15m) to the diameter(10 cubits 'from brim to brim', about 5m) is clearly 3. It is thus widely held that the Hebrewsof this era (around950 BCE, the time of King Solomon) used the valuet = 3. This belief has however : been queried,and we now turnto the rationalefor an alternativeview. This
is also presented in [1].

Belaga [1] gives some background. The molten sea was a large, bronze reservoiror tank set on the backs of twelve bronze oxen and placed in the court of the first temple. It was cast in metal which was molten duringthe actual casting. However, once it was cast, it held water (not molten metal). With the dimensions as given, its capacity would have been about 45000
* Quite puzzling is the fact that in the Septuagint(the earliest Greek renderingof the Hebrew Scriptures) the Kings (but not the Chronicles) passage has the circumferenceas 33 cubits! Christiansclaiming that the value 3 must There are even cases of fundamentalist be correct as it has been divinely revealed! House Bill No. 246 (1897) of the IndianaState Legislaturehas been so interpreted some (althoughthe full truth by is considerablymore complicated). It narrowlyfailed to pass.

THE BIBLE AND PI

163

litres. It was 'one of the greatestengineeringworks ever undertaken the by Hebrew nation' [1] and its size compares with that of 'some of the largest church bells cast in modem times' (as quoted in [1]). It is certainly very dubious that an engineering work on this scale could have been carriedout by a people who genuinely believed that n = 3 (although it is quite possible that no specific value was used, but rather scale drawings, mechanicalinstrumentsand the like). However, the suggestion is that they did have a very accuratevalue for and one that is encoded in the original Hebrew of the very passages :n, quoted above. Posamentierand Gordan[2] state that this proposal was first put forwardabout 200 years ago by Rabbi Elijah of Vilna,* i.e. Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the Gaon of Vilna (1720-1797), one of the great modem Jewish biblical authorities, whose writings also addressed geometric and trigonometrictopics. However, Belaga [1] tends to attributeit to Rabbi MatityahuHakohen Munk, either from independentresearch or else as an to agent in the transmissionof tradition.(Belaga was awareof the attribution the Gaon of Vilna, but was unable to find any relevant passage in his writings.) The key to the suggestion is the Hebrew word for line, occurringin the text of both the passages given above. In the original Hebrew, the two passages are almost identical, the principal difference being in this word. (Thereis just one other,minor, differencein the originalwording. As far as we know, no significance has been attributed this.) The first passage is to traditionallyattributedto the prophet Jeremiah(c 600 BCE). The second was copied from it by the scribe Ezra following the end of the Babylonian exile. In Figure 1, the left-hand illustration gives the Hebrew word as it appearsin 1 Kings 7:23; on the right is the form in II Chronicles4:2. We see thatthe later version omits the final letter. The earlierversion is spelt as Qof, Vav, He, that is to say QVH. (Vowels are not normally written in Hebrew. The letter Q is a rough equivalentto the English K.) In the second version, the final He (H) is omitted. This accords with a traditionunder which, the earlier,written,QVH would actually be read as QV. Ezra wrote the word as it was meantto be read.

FIGURE1: Two different renderingsof the Hebrew word for line (circumference). To the left, the literaryform as used in I Kings 7:23; to the right, the 'readingform' renderedexplicitly in II Chronicles4:2. (Illustration takenfrom [2].) * Vilna is now known as Vilnius and is the capitalof modem Lithuania.

164

THEMATHEMATICAL GAZETTE

We thus have two differentversions of the wordfor circumference,* and this leads on to the interesting part of the story. In Hebrew there is a technique for writing numbers as words; it goes by the name 'gematria'. (The ancient Greeks used a similar convention in number representation.) According to this, the letter Qof has the numericalequivalent 100, Vav the value 6 and He the value 5. Thus the word we have renderedin English transliteration QVH has the numericalmeaning 100 + 6 + 5, i.e. 111. The as other version, lacking the H, reads as 106. If we now form the ratio lI and multiply it by 3, the 'surface' or 'apparent'value of jr, as given explicitly in the text, the result is r-, a value of ;r accurateto about I of a percentagepoint! Thus far we have followed essentially the account by Posamentierand Gordan [2] (but embellishing it from Belaga's fuller version [1]). What follows uses Belaga's furtherand more detailedexplorationof the matter. In the notationof [3] the simple continuedfractionexpansionfor 7 is [3, 7, 15, 1, 292, 1, ... ] and its convergentsare:
22 to{ = 3, zl = --,

7'

333 355 -, =3 = 106 , 3t = 113 16 T

104348 103993 74 - 33102 7 = 33215 etc. The Rabbinicalvalue for z is thus 72.- The surface meaning of the text gives the value Jz0, but this is deceptive; those in the know (so the story goes) see hiddenin the text the much more accuratevalue zJr. Now either the Rabbinicaltraditionis responsiblefor 2),and the author of 1 Kings surreptitiously coded into his text an extremely accuratevalue of numericalcoincidence. Which is it? zr, or else we have a most remarkable The question is not one susceptibleof being decided absolutelyone way or the other. We incline to the view that there is a most remarkable coincidence at work here and that it has no significance beyond this. Of course not everyone will agree with us. Here are our reasons. First,thereis the questionof how we are to know thata cipher exists and method of decoding. There are many why we are to choose this particular instancesof spuriousciphersbeing 'decoded'; see [4, pp. 748-751]. Perhaps the most extended such is a use of numerical equivalents of alphabetical charactersand other similar techniquesto 'prove' that Queen Victoria was the true authorof Tennyson's In Memoriam[5]. (This latter was produced as a satiricalattackon the Baconiantheory and played a considerablepartin discreditingit.) Next up, the relative error in Jr2 is, as we have seen, about ? of a is percentage point. That of mr3 much, much smaller, being less than one
* Note thatthe Septuaginthowever uses two distinct words in the two versions.

THE BIBLE AND PI

165

hundred-thousandth one percentage point! However, the denominators of are very close to one another.So if we want a good approximation nT,we to might as well not botherwith z2, but insteadgo immediatelyto r3. Now there is a most remarkablenumericalcoincidence in the value of 7r3,i.e. 355. If we startat the bottom left of this fractionand follow the digits round in the pattern of the letter S, we find the simple and memorable pattern (pointed out to us by Dr Russell Smith of Australia's CSIRO): 113355. This patternclearly holds no great significance, althoughit makes for a highly accurate and easily memorable approximationto st, one that deserves to be more widely known. We incline to the view that we should of see the appearance 7r2in a similarlight. If more need be said, then it could perhapsbe found in other places in the Hebrew Bible. The word here representedas 'line' is to be found in its QVH form at Jeremiah31:39 and at Zechariah 1:16, and in its QV form in many other places. In all these cases, however, there is no ready reference to circularmeasure, the 'line' or 'tape measure' is stretchedout straightor else is more complicated than simply circular (probably two conjoined straightline segments). The type of analysis Belaga applies to I Kings 7:23 could also be appliedto Jeremiah31:39 or to Zechariah1:16, but it is a little hard to see how the ratio I1I could be given any significance in these differentcontexts.* However, there will be those who see the biblical patternas significant, and certainly they have a case, even a strong case. Nonetheless, we should remember the words of Aharon ben Zalman Emmerich Gumpertz (17231769) who, having been secretary to Pierre Moreau de Maupertuis, the Presidentof the Berlin Academy, observed: 'Mathematicsand the sciences have no business with the divine religion'.t Acknowledgements For making Reference [1] available to us, we thank M. Closs (for the publishedversion) and M. McKinzie (for an electronic update). B. Rechter provideda copy of the relevantpage of a concordanceto the HebrewBible. References 1. S. E. G. Belaga, On the rabbinical exegesis of an enhanced biblical value of zr, Proc. XVIIthCan. Cong. Hist. Phil. Math., (1991) pp. 93101. * The Authorised Versiontranslates thesetexts:'Andthe measuring shallyet line and go forthover againstit uponthe hill Gareb, shallcompassaboutto Goath.' to and 'Therefore saiththe LORD;I am returned Jerusalem thus with mercies: my houseshallbe builtin it saiththeLORDof hosts,anda line shallbe stretched forthuponJerusalem.'In the case of the former, RevisedVersionis more the line onward untothe hill explicit:'Andthe measuring shallyet go out straight and untoGoah.' Gareb, shallturnabout " t From"Ma'amar in hamada' ["Thesciencetreatise"] Megalesod (Hamburg, 1765).

166 2. 3. 4. 5.

GAZElTT'E THE MATHEMATICAL A. S. Posamentier and N. Gordan, An astounding revelation on the history of r, Math. Teacher 77(1) (1984) pp. 52, 47. C. D. Olds, Continued fractions Yale University Press, New Haven (1963). D. Kahn, The codebreakers Weidenfeld and Nicolson (1967). R. A. Knox, The authorship of 'In Memoriam'. In Essays in Satire (2nd edition), Kennikat, Port Washington, NY (1968). MICHAEL A. B. DEAKIN HANS LAUSCH

Departmentof Mathematics,Monash University,Clayton,Vic. 3168,

Australia

edu. e-mail: Michael.Deakin@sci.monash. au edu. e-mail: Hans.Lausch@sci.monash. au

Um, er, pass the dictionary Can you rememberthe sine and cosine rules, or what Pythagorastheorumis? Written for the general reader, this dictionary contains the essential facts about to mathematics,alphabeticallyarranged put the facts at your fingertips. Seen by Frank Tapson on the dust-jacket of the Hutchinson Dictionary of Mathematics.The dictionaryentrydoes not repeatthe spelling error. Keep death off the roads, drive on the pavement The facts about speeding are clear. At 20 mph, one in 20 pedestriansare killed, at 30 mph half are killed and at 40 mph only one in ten will survive. Driving more slowly can reducethe severity of a casualtyin thatawful situation. This reportin the Mid Devon Advertiser, 19 September 1997, carrieda serious message, but failed to make it clear to Frank Tapson that the figures refer to pedestriansinvoved in accidents,ratherthanall pedestrians. Frustrating mathematicsteachers too for The RAF fighter pilot Andy Green drove his Thrust SSC car on the fastest officially timed run in land speed racing history, but missed breaking the sound 0.003 per cent of the speed of sound. ... Timing officials gave barrier a frustrating by the run a provisionalMach 0.997. Yet more confusion over percentages,this time in The Times, 14 October 1997, spottedby FrankTapson. Law of diminishingreturns? Beware of special offers. Not all two for the price of three deals are as good value as they seem. Prima magazine'sadvice on how to cut down on impulse buys (November 1997) did not impressChristineBrooks.