Missler's Solomon's Sea, or THE VALUE OF PI
bwme...@toast.net
Reproduced by permission, with some of my own comments to help, where
charts and Hebrew characters cannot be reproduced:
Dr. Missler:
************************
The Value of Pi=20
I have often been challenged by a skeptic concerning the view that
the Bible is inerrant =97 free from errors (in the original). One of
the alleged discrepancies in the Old Testament deals with an item
being built for Solomon's Temple by Hiram the Bronzeworker: And he
made a molten sea [brazen laver], ten cubits from the one brim to
the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits:
and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 1 Kings 7:
23 34
The huge cast bronze basin was 10 cubits" in diameter and its
circumference is said to be 30 cubits, which is mathematically
inaccurate. Any schoolboy knows that the circumference of a circle
is not the diameter times 3, but rather, the diameter times the
well-known constant called ("Pi").=20
BWM:
***********************
What any schoolboy should also know is that the given measurements
were rounded to whole cubits, not fractions or decimals (and
therefore "30 cubits" for the alleged "exact" 31.4159... cubits) is
absolutely expected and proper; the important and significant
thickness of the walls is not stated, nor was where the line was
routed along the walls; the perimeter was not a perfect circle (no
such thing exists); if it was elliptical, the perimeter would be
piXaXb, where the smaller radius might be considerably less than 10
cubits without being noticeable); and that in general, the entire
jab made by the idiots who have nothing better to do than to
desperately seek everything they can find to discredit the Word of
God is utterly pointless and senseless.
***********************
Dr. Missler:
**********************
The real value of pi is [approximately] 3.14159265358979, but is
commonly approximated by 3 1/7. This is assumed, by many [the above
mentioned idiots --- bwm], to be an error in the Old Testament record,
and so it is often presented by skeptics [the above mentioned idiots
--- bwm] as a rebuttal to the "inerrancy" of the Scripture. How can we
say that the Bible is inerrant when it contains such an obvious
geometrically incorrect statement [the above mentioned idiocy]? How
do we deal with this? In this case, the Lord ultimately brought to
our attention some subtleties usually overlooked in the Hebrew text.
Spelling Lesson: [In the Hebrew, in this passage, the common word
for "circumference" is deliberately miss-spelled!] Yet, even
misspellings can prove deliberate and revealing! The spelling of
the word for circumference, adds a heh. (In the text above each
word also has a leading character as a conjunction for the
masculine singular noun.=20
In the Hebrew Bible, the scribes never altered any text which they
felt had been previously copied incorrectly. Rather, they noted in
the margin what they thought the written text should be. The
written variation is called a kethiv; and the marginal annotation
is called the qere.
To the ancient scribes, this was also regarded as a remez, a hint of
something deeper. This appears to be a clue to treat the word as a
mathematical correction.=20
Alphanumeric Reckoning The use of
alphanumerics (using the alphabet for numbers)=20
[similar to "roman numerals," which we are familiar with, the Heb.
and Grk had the equivalent --- this, for example, is significant as
to counting the number of the name of the beast =3D 666 --- bwm]
was employed by both the Hebrews and the Greeks.=20
Since the Hebrew alphabet is alphanumeric, each Hebrew letter also
has a numerical value assigned and can be used as a number. The
normal spelling of this word would yield a numerical value of 106.
But the addition of the heh character, with a value of 5, increases
the numerical value to 111.=20
This suggests the adjustment to the ratio of 111/106 , which results
in 31.41509433962 cubits.=20
[with an implied value of pi =3D 3.141509... --- bwm]
This error is 15 times better than the 3 1/7 estimate that we were
accustomed to using in school!=20
How would they even know this? This accuracy would seem to vastly
exceed the precision of their instrumentation. Beyond these
engineering insights from Solomon's day, there are more far
reaching implications of this passage.=20
1) The Bible is reliable. The "errors" pointed out by skeptics
usually derive from misunderstandings or trivial quibbles.=20
2) The numerical values of the letters are legitimate and apparently
can carry hidden significance. There are some who maintain that the
numerical assignments in the Hebrew alphabet were borrowed from the
Greek alphabet in a later period, perhaps from the influence of
Pythagoras, and others (580 -500 BC), but this has all been refuted.
The Hebrew use of the alphanumeric alphabet clearly predates these
assumptions.' Even misspellings can have profound significance.=20
***********************
Bob
Christ Died to Save You
((( s.r.c.b-s is a moderated group. All posts are approved by a moderator. )))
((( Read http://srcbs.org for details about this group BEFORE you post. )))
Bart Goddard
bwme...@toast.net wrote in news:A81447A5-1150-C70C-0235-
6C721F...@art.srcbs.org:
> This suggests the adjustment to the ratio of 111/106 , which results
> in 31.41509433962 cubits.=20
>
> [with an implied value of pi =3D 3.141509... --- bwm]
>
> This error is 15 times better than the 3 1/7 estimate that we were
> accustomed to using in school!=20
>
> How would they even know this? This accuracy would seem to vastly
> exceed the precision of their instrumentation. Beyond these
> engineering insights from Solomon's day, there are more far
> reaching implications of this passage.=20
Pi is calculable from a purely theoretical direction. You
don't need to measure it. The ancients were trying to do
astronomy, so they _couldn't_ measure it. But they were
good at geometry.
B.
--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
bwme...@toast.net
>Pi is calculable from a purely theoretical direction. You
>don't need to measure it. The ancients were trying to do
>astronomy, so they _couldn't_ measure it. But they were
>good at geometry.
I know.
It was one of my hobbies in my early years to dabble in calculating
pi, e, roots, logarithms, etc with my new fascination with infinite
series in college and beyond. Using a slide rule!
(I remember when my fellow chemistry teacher came in one morning, and
proudly showed us his new calculator that displayed with leds,
batteries would last a few hours, it would multiply, add, subtract,
divide to 8 digits, and he had just bought it for $400+. He wouldn't
let anyone else even touch it. And that wasn't a real long time ago.)
But I don't think pi was thus calculable to anyone of Solomon's day
any more than it was measurable to them with their primitive
mathematics as well as their primitive instrumentation.
Thus, Missler's fascinating point remains in full, and thank you for
indirectly affirming it.
Infinite series, OTOMH, was even after Newton's day.
Bob
George the Guy Who Watches Terrapene carolina triungus
On Jul 30, 11:29=A0am, bwmey...@toast.net wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:23:34 -0500 (CDT), Bart Goddard
>
> >Pi is calculable from a purely theoretical direction. =A0You
> >don't need to measure it. =A0The ancients were trying to do
> >astronomy, so they _couldn't_ measure it. =A0But they were
> >good at geometry.
>
> I know.
>
> It was one of my hobbies in my early years to dabble in calculating
> pi, e, roots, logarithms, etc with my new fascination with infinite
> series in college and beyond. Using a slide rule!
>
> (I remember when my fellow chemistry teacher came in one morning, and
> proudly showed us his new calculator that displayed with leds,
> batteries would last a few hours, it would multiply, add, subtract,
> let anyone else even touch it. =A0And that wasn't a real long time ago.)
>
> But I don't think pi was thus calculable to anyone of Solomon's day
> any more than it was measurable to them with their primitive
> mathematics as well as their primitive instrumentation.
>
> Thus, Missler's fascinating point remains in full, and thank you for
> indirectly affirming it.
>
> Infinite series, OTOMH, was even after Newton's day.
Three is OK for pi, even if it is an error, as all scripture is
inspired, even the errors.
bwme...@toast.net
On Thu, 6 Aug 2009 06:10:46 -0500 (CDT), George the Guy Who Watches
Terrapene carolina triungus <GMPatt...@aol.com> wrote:
>Three is OK for pi, even if it is an error, as all scripture is
>inspired, even the errors.
Why do you ignore the whole blessing that's there??
The POINT is that this is no "error" at all: it's EXACTLY THE
OPPOSITE.
Bob
Bart Goddard
bwme...@toast.net wrote in news:C2D2B3B7-9EA2-062D-1564-331B159D6D89
@art.srcbs.org:
> But I don't think pi was thus calculable to anyone of Solomon's day
> any more than it was measurable to them with their primitive
> mathematics as well as their primitive instrumentation.
You're wrong. The mathematics for calculating pi aren't that
sophisticated. (And the ancient Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics
was actually pretty sophisticated. Astronomy drove it, and you
can't measure the distance to a planet. You have to calculate
it.)
Archimedes developed his "method of exhaustion" around 250 B.C.,
which was a technique that would give as many decimal places
of pi as you had the energy to compute.
We know for sure that the value of pi was known to 6 decimal
places in the year 480 A.D. And in 1706 (well before your
calculator) John Machin computed 100 digits of pi.
The point is: no measurement is needed. For instance:
pi = 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + ...
So all you have to do is start calculating. Quit when your
hand is tired of pushing the abacus beads about.
(This infinite sum is not efficient, but there
are others which converge to pi much more quickly. I chose
simplicity over utility here.)
I suppose most folks have seen this paper by now, but it asserts
that the real "biblical" value of pi is not 3, but 333/106,
which is accurate to 4 decimal places.
The paper is here: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel/bpi/bpi.html
B.
--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
Bart Goddard
George the Guy Who Watches Terrapene carolina triungus <GMPatton42030
@aol.com> wrote in news:07D384DF-700F-CAE7...@art.srcbs.org:
>> Infinite series, OTOMH, was even after Newton's day.
>
And also before Newton's day. We've had infinite processes
in mathematics since the ancient Greeks and even before.
Treating a series formally, as a mathematical object
which you can manipulate, is a Newton era thing, but
even Zeno was into adding up infinitely many things.
B.
--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
bwme...@toast.net
>I suppose most folks have seen this paper by now, but it asserts
>that the real "biblical" value of pi is not 3, but 333/106,
This is too fascinating! That value, 333/106, could have come from
nowhere else in the Bible other than Missler's study (my opening post
on the thread), or maybe a source of Missler's. (?)
Missler's study arrives at that number by simple application of the
Distributive Law:
(3 X 111/106 = 333/106)
where 111/106 results from the deliberate "misspelling" of the Hebrew
word for circumference in 1 Kings 7:23.
>which is accurate to 4 decimal places.
>
>The paper is here: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel/bpi/bpi.html
Thank you for that reference. Ahh --- another distraction . . .
You have taken me completely by surprise, here; you obviously did some
special research on it. BRAVO!
Bob
Helmut Richter
On Sat, 8 Aug 2009, Bart Goddard wrote:
> I suppose most folks have seen this paper by now, but it asserts
> that the real "biblical" value of pi is not 3, but 333/106,
> which is accurate to 4 decimal places.
>
> The paper is here: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel/bpi/bpi.html
The most surprising statement in that paper is that gematria was known and
used well before the time these texts were written. Up to now, it was
state of my knowledge that the mere usage of Hebrew letters as numbers
(which is *not* gematria) dates from the 1st or 2nd c. AD, and gematria
(that is, exegesis based on the spelling of words that were not primarily
meant as numbers) is again later.
The problem with this kind of exegesis is that the result is known prior
to the method: We know which fractions are particularly good
approximations of pi, we are given the text, and now we have to find one
of the approximations by trickily combining several of the numbers in the
text -- and, gee, it works! Wouldn't it be a much sounder way to proceed
to solve a question before knowing the answer instead of rephrasing the
question until the answer is what was known in advance?
It reminds me of those letter sequences where the methodology is similar.
--
Helmut Richter
Bart Goddard
bwme...@toast.net wrote in news:4E31C8E2-08C0-BD26-9B90-
95E12A...@art.srcbs.org:
> You have taken me completely by surprise, here; you obviously did some
> special research on it. BRAVO!
Not really, or at least not on this particular topic. I've published
a couple papers on continued fractions, so the mathematics involved
here is at my fingertips.
If you're interested in the mathematics here, google "continued
fractions". Or any book on elementary number theory would have
an exposition, so you could pick up a used on for a buck. The
more you understand how special the convergents of a continued
fraction are, the more you'll appreciate the topic of this thread.
B.
--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
Bart Goddard
Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote in
news:F94044EE-B5EF-754F...@art.srcbs.org:
> The problem with this kind of exegesis is that the result is known
> prior to the method: We know which fractions are particularly good
> approximations of pi, we are given the text, and now we have to find
> one of the approximations by trickily combining several of the numbers
> in the text -- and, gee, it works!
I agree, and when I first ran across this paper, I asked for
another example of a number being coded in the text this way.
I never got one. But the paper itself asserts a chronology
different than yours. So the first point of contention
would be first clear that up (if possible.)
Nevertheless, the first few convergents of pi are:
3, 22/7, 333/106, 355/113, 103993/33102,...
The last one listed is accurate to 9 decimal places (I think)
and I can't think of any ancient world applications that would
require 9 digits of pi.
So it's a little surprising that one of two 4-digit approximations
appears this way. 3 and 22/7 aren't really accurate enough for
building anything bigger than your hand. So there are just
two fractions out of about 3 billion with denominator less
than 30,000, which hit the required accuracy, and somehow they hit
one.
B.
--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
bwme...@toast.net
>
>The most surprising statement in that paper is that gematria was known and
>used well before the time these texts were written. Up to now, it was
>state of my knowledge that the mere usage of Hebrew letters as numbers
>(which is *not* gematria) dates from the 1st or 2nd c. AD, and gematria
>(that is, exegesis based on the spelling of words that were not primarily
>meant as numbers) is again later.
>
I'm having some trouble following: both the article, and you.
For example, the word "exegesis," to me, means "teaching from the
source referred to. And you say, which my understanding agrees with,
that "gematria" (another questionable word, in this whole context),
refers to "spelling of words" (with numerical implications) that were
not intended as such.
To me, the Bible is the Word of God, not of It's human authors.
Accepting that thought, among many other things, throws out as
meaningless a lot of the substance of this discussion, which focusses
on the human authors and the times in which the texts were written. I
don't see this is as any "exegesis" by man, at all. The value of pi
was totally unimportant to both the human authors, and to God, at the
time the text was written.
But God had "something more in mind" when He directed the strange
spelling that occurred, and its LATER significance --- "the thoughts
of His heart to ALL GENERATIONS?!"
In Peter, and elsewhere we are told that the human authors of Prophecy
(more than just "foretelling the future") didn't have the foggiest
notion of what it was that they were writing about. The real points
of the famous Isaiah 7:14 and Hosea 11:1 were of course completely
obscure until revealed by Matthew's Gospel. The amazing coincidences
of the occurrences of SEVEN in Scripture were certainly completely
unknown to John as he wrote the Apocalypse, and Matthew as he wrote
about the "weeping and the gnashing," etc. These authors certainly
didn't design their writings that way; they "just came out that way."
When "the Church at Thyratira" was referred to by John, in the
Apocalypse, he probably well knew that no such Church ever existed. So
did later critics of Revelation as Canonical, and they based their
attacks on Revelation partly because of this "discrepancy." Nor,
evidently, did any people known as the "Nicolaitanes."
I know that I can point to dozens of these phenomena hidden throughout
the Scriptures. I might mention the NT use of "Iesous," where it
refers to the Lord, which counts to "888," occurs in the original Grk
(which I can't PROVE, since we don't have the original, but can show
it to be EXTREMELY PROBABLE) exactly 888 times! If the NT as we have
it was not precision Canonical, this wouldn't work! --- (from Dr.
Henry Morris)
Again, it's not "coincidence" that they "came out that way;" but the
Real Author directed them, thus. That is why the Lord Jesus referred
to "every jot and tittle."
And this is how I see 1 Kings 7:23. God foresaw the many attacks
coming on Scripture based on "discrepancies" such as this, and threw
this beautiful reply in when HE wrote the text. It was "for us,
today!" "The thoughts of His heart to all generations!"
Similarly (although this is slightly different point) Paul tells us
that all that happened to His People in the OT was "for our
instruction."
>The problem with this kind of exegesis is that the result is known prior
>to the method: We know which fractions are particularly good
>approximations of pi, we are given the text, and now we have to find one
>of the approximations by trickily combining several of the numbers in the
>text -- and, gee, it works!
Again, I'm not sure what you're saying, but it seems to remind me of
how modern ideas like Quantum Mechanics and Evolution are supported.
When I was taking it, I could never get over the idea that Quantum
Mechanics was purely mathematics, not physics. That is, mathematics
was being invented (curve fitting) to work, and of course, when it did
("accurate to 22 decimal places," one Prof told me in one case), that
was proof of the strength of "the theory."
The same with Evolution. "All dating methods agree!" I still find it
hard to believe that lying crap like this was thrown at me once. Those
that DO agree do so because they were "made to agree."
It's sort of like, have you ever noticed the interesting phenomenon
that when duck season opens, all projectiles converge on Daffy's lilly
pad?
>Wouldn't it be a much sounder way to proceed
>to solve a question before knowing the answer instead of rephrasing the
>question until the answer is what was known in advance?
>
But that is EXACTLY what I am saying WAS NOT DONE, if I understand
you.
There are two views of Scripture:(1) that it is the product of men
(which is foundational to the "science" of "textual criticism," and
(2) that it is GOD's Work (Psa. 138:2 --- how it must anger Him, in
view of this fact, when men think (1)).
I claim, again, that this was put in by GOD, not by man, and it was
not for any immediate "exegesis" about pi. No writer of the text had
any such thought, when he wrote, as above. Just as Isaiah had no
thought whatever of the Virgin Mary, nor Hosea of Christ, nor did John
or Matthew have any thoughts about the sevens, etc.
Did you notice that although Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece are
prophesied by name, in Daniel, the latter hundreds of years before
they existed, Rome is not once named in Daniel, nor in Revelation? And
the immediate recipients of Revelation certainly knew that Rome was
being referred to there!
As the temple guards returned with the complaint, "never man spoke as
THIS Man speaks!," so we have "never man wrote as our God writes."
He's the same One the temple guards heard speaking, after all!
1 Kings 7:23 is clearly Supernatural! Believers see this immediately,
when it is pointed out to them, and it is so more solid, and simple,
then all the learned papers on the subject.
>It reminds me of those letter sequences where the methodology is similar.
>
Another fascinating subject! --- Structural phenomena in Scripture.
(Which is a great aid to "exegesis" in cases)
>--
>Helmut Richter
Bob
Christ Died to Save You
Helmut Richter
On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Bart Goddard wrote:
> Nevertheless, the first few convergents of pi are:
>
> 3, 22/7, 333/106, 355/113, 103993/33102,...
An off-topic mathematical remark (at the mercy of the moderator):
All convergents are optimal approximations, but not all optimal
approximations are convergents. For example, already 52163/16604 (the CF
[3, 7, 15, 1, 146] where 146=292/2) is better than 355/113. For more
detail see my contribution
<slrnds833t...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>
And 355/113 is much better (7 digits) than 333/106 (4.5 digits). It would
thus have been more impressive as a miracle.
The question whether the value of pi may be derived from the spelling in
the text of this verse is, of course, not affected by this remark.
--
Helmut Richter
bwme...@toast.net
>And 355/113 is much better (7 digits) than 333/106 (4.5 digits). It would
>thus have been more impressive as a miracle.
>
What IS the point, here?
Was not an accuracy of "4.5 digits" good enough for any Divine
purpose, here? This accuracy certainly exceeded any of man's ability
to measure with their instrumentation of the time, did it not? And
that is all that is required to show that this was authored by God,
and could not have been authored by man, as was my point, before.
If you want to discredit the 4.5 digits as not "impressive as a
miracle," then why should 7 digits be any more so "impressive?"
And as to the comment below, "the question of whether the value of pi
may be derived from the spelling in the text," obviously it cannot ---
since pi is irrational, which means, by definition, that it cannot be
expressed as a quotient of any two integers.
I'd sure like to see the "text" you would come up with to arrive at
355/113 from the spelling of a correct word for pointing to a
circumference!!
You can give up right at the start, since the numerator MUST BE
DIVISIBLE BY 3, as was the 333 that God used (3 X 111/106). 355 WILL
NOT WORK! NOR WILL ANY OTHER INTEGER YOU CAN FIND WITHIN GOD'S ENTIRE
UNIVERSE.
>The question whether the value of pi may be derived from the spelling in
>the text of this verse is, of course, not affected by this remark.
What is even more impressive than God's miracle in 1 Kings 7:23 is
man's attempts to discredit it.
Bob
Christ Died to Save You
Helmut Richter
An additional remark on the allegation that 1.Kg.7:23 (direct,=20
non-gematric reading) asserts a value of pi=3D3: There are at least two=20
simple explanations why the text is consistent as it is written:
1. Nowhere in the text is a hint that the reporter intended a higher=20
accuracy than integer cubits. If the real measures were 9.60 cubits=20
and 30.16 cubits, the nearest integer values are 10 and 30 cubits.
2. Nowhere in the text is it stated that the measurements of diameter and =
circumference were done at the same distance from the upper rim. On=20
the contrary, one would typically measure the diameter at the rim, and =
the diameter at a local minimum. The values can be both exact if the=20
shape is not strictly a cylinder but is like the rim of a cup, like a=20
lily blossom. This is exaclty what v.26 says.
All these people who are searching for inaccuracies where there are none=20
had better explain the volume of the thing: if it is cylindrical, it has a =
volume of about 400 cubic cubits or 57 m=B3 (taking the largest known cubit=
=20
with 52.5 cm), and yet it is capable to hold a volume of 2000 bat, which=20
is at least 80 m=B3.
--=20
Helmut Richter
Helmut Richter
On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, bwme...@toast.net wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 08:10:30 -0500 (CDT), Helmut Richter
> <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
> >
> >The most surprising statement in that paper is that gematria was known and
> >used well before the time these texts were written. Up to now, it was
> >state of my knowledge that the mere usage of Hebrew letters as numbers
> >(which is *not* gematria) dates from the 1st or 2nd c. AD, and gematria
> >(that is, exegesis based on the spelling of words that were not primarily
> >meant as numbers) is again later.
> >
>
> I'm having some trouble following: both the article, and you.
>
> For example, the word "exegesis," to me, means "teaching from the
> source referred to. And you say, which my understanding agrees with,
> that "gematria" (another questionable word, in this whole context),
> refers to "spelling of words" (with numerical implications) that were
> not intended as such.
"exegesis" has had here a very broad meaning of "extracting information
from the source", irrespective of whether the information is indeed
contained or else laid into ("eisegesis"), or whether the information was
deliberately included by the author, both the divine inspirer and the
human writer-up. Which of these is the case here, is the matter of this
discussion, and it was not my intention to anticipate the outcome.
"gematria" is the right term here, though. In the traditional exegesis of
Bible texts in the Christian Church, focus has always been on the meaning
of the words, and not on their spelling. Focussing on the sum of the
numerical values that the letters have when using letters to note down
numbers is not traditionally a means of exegesis of Bible texts, at least
not outside some Jewish (Kabbalistically influenced) traditions. This is
why I chose the term "gematria" which is the right term for extracting
information out of such sums of letter values.
And this is indeed my main point of objection: for the sake of one single
verse allegedly containing an inaccuracy, we introduce a new source of
insight: no longer the words of Scripture and their meaning in their
context, but in addition their spelling -- in this case even spelling
variants. Why not chapter and verse numbers or peculiarities of
translations as well?
> To me, the Bible is the Word of God, not of It's human authors.
... if this is mutually exclusive (see below).
[ about the time letters were used as numbers ... ]
> Accepting that thought, among many other things, throws out as
> meaningless a lot of the substance of this discussion, which focusses
> on the human authors and the times in which the texts were written.
Accepted. For the divine authorship of this numerological punchline, it is
not necessary that the human author was able to create or understand it.
My remark about the timing in the article was more aimed at the emphasis
the article puts on gematria by assigning a much higher age to it than is
usually done.
> In Peter, and elsewhere we are told that the human authors of Prophecy
> (more than just "foretelling the future") didn't have the foggiest
> notion of what it was that they were writing about. [...]
> These authors certainly
> didn't design their writings that way; they "just came out that way."
Often the earlier writings have a first straightforward meaning in their
own right: the passover lamb had a real function besides being a typos for
Christ (1Cor.5:7), the serpent in the desert had a real function besides
being a typos for Christ (Jo.3:14) and so on. In the same spirit, it is
written: "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming --
not the realities themselves." (Hebr.10:1). Yet the law was very real and
effective, unlike a shadow, when it was given to Israel.
The above examples are directly endorsed by the Scripture, and some others are
at least analogous to examples that are Scriptural. I do not know a single
example where the usage of letter values for extracting information from the
Scripture is backed up by Scripture.
> >The problem with this kind of exegesis is that the result is known prior
> >to the method: We know which fractions are particularly good
> >approximations of pi, we are given the text, and now we have to find one
> >of the approximations by trickily combining several of the numbers in the
> >text -- and, gee, it works!
>
> Again, I'm not sure what you're saying, but it seems to remind me of
> how modern ideas like Quantum Mechanics and Evolution are supported.
>
> When I was taking it, I could never get over the idea that Quantum
> Mechanics was purely mathematics, not physics. That is, mathematics
> was being invented (curve fitting) to work, and of course, when it did
> ("accurate to 22 decimal places," one Prof told me in one case), that
> was proof of the strength of "the theory."
I cannot say how much this characterisation as "curve fitting" is adequate
for quantum mechanics, but it is certainly for the method in the article.
Why is the word used that comes in two versions (Ketiv: Waw-Qof-Waw-He
(117); Qere: Waw-Qof-Waw (112))? Why is this word not used entirely but
after stripping off the common prefix Waw, so that only Qof-Waw-He (111)
and Qof-Waw (106) enter the calculation? Why is the result only used after
multiplying with 3? None of the question has the answer "because otherwise
it would not make sense" but rather the answer to each of them is "because
otherwise we would not get the desired result". Curve fitting at its best.
> There are two views of Scripture:(1) that it is the product of men
> (which is foundational to the "science" of "textual criticism," and
> (2) that it is GOD's Work (Psa. 138:2 --- how it must anger Him, in
> view of this fact, when men think (1)).
(1) and (2) are not mutually exclusive. Of the ultimate Word of God,
Jesus, the faith of the Church holds fast to *both* a fully divine *and* a
fully human nature. Trying to prove that something is divine by showing
that it is non-human is as much flawed as in physics trying to show that
light is a wave by showing that has no corpuscular structure. Rather, each
nature must be understood independent of the other. The Scripture is not
recognised as divine because it lacks features of human work (which?); it
is divine because it will accomplish what God desires and achieve the
purpose for which he sent it (Js.55:11).
It is simply a fact that each portion of the Bible exists in many textual
variants, none of which carries a golden stamp "approved original version
by God". Whoever chooses to use one version or several versions in
combination, has selected it for some reason over the other versions. This
selection is called "text critics". It is inevitable. Some people prefer
very straightforward criteria ("if God used this variant for the KJV, it
must be the one true variant because God makes no mistakes"), others
prefer scientific criteria ("one should judge the variants by similar
criteria as one would use for secular writings"). Given that everyone has
criteria, your polemics is not against "text critics" as such but only to
scientific methods in text critics.
I am quite sure that the Holy Spirit is able to speak by every variant, be
it scientifically justified or not. Were it not so, he might well have
taken care that not so many variants are around ... Nonetheless, I hold
the people in high esteem that show enough reverence for the Scripture
that they devote hard labour to find out what variants might be closer to
the original than others, with all potential of errors. Without a proven
original, one can hardly do better, though.
> 1 Kings 7:23 is clearly Supernatural!
This is well possible, but I do not at all consider it obvious.
That it would be great if it were is *not* alone a reason to believe it.
It is not my job to argue the case for God (Job 13:8).
> Believers see this immediately, when it is pointed out to them, and it
> is so more solid, and simple, then all the learned papers on the
> subject.
My unbelief starts much earlier: I do not even believe there is any
discrepancy in the verse regarding the value of pi (see another
contribution of mine in this thread), nor that, if there were one, God
would be obliged to correct it by coding a different value into the
letters of the text.
--
Helmut Richter