The circumference of thirty
cubits (LXX: “thirty-three” may be a dittography) is an approximation, pi (3.14+) being unknown. (Mordechai
Cogan, I Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB
10; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 264)
The following is from James R. White’s Answers to
Catholic Claims (1990). While reading this, I realized that White (and
other Protestant apologists for inerrancy) would use one set of standards for
the accuracy of the Bible and that of the Book of Mormon (this would be a “go-to”
proof of the Book of Mormon being false if such appeared in that text and not
the Bible):
We see, then, that the Scriptures
themselves claim a divine origin. We can also give an answer to the question,
does the claim of inspiration necessarily carry with it the conclusion of an
"inerrant" text? When one recognizes that Paul teaches that the
Scriptures themselves have their origin in God, then the inerrancy of the text
is as certain as the inerrancy of God Himself. A "God- breathed" text
must be an inerrant text if God is God at all. Scripture, if it finds its
origin and basis in God, must partake of those attributes of God that would be
relevant to it- in this case, the consistency of God demands the consistency of
Scripture, the truth of God demands the truth (and hence the accuracy) of
Scripture. Yet, we must be careful to define what we mean by
"inerrant." Acceptance of the Biblical claim to inerrancy (as seen in
the Biblical claim of inspiration) does not entail as a result a system of
interpretation that is characterized by absurd literality. The most common
tactic used to ridicule and deride inerrancy is to apply some unreasonable
standard of literality to a particular text of Scripture and say, "see, if
you read that literally, it is in error! Therefore, no inerrancy ... "
Inerrancy exists right alongside of the recognition of the style of the writer,
the kind of writing (whether didactic, poetic, apocalyptic, etc.), the
historical context, and all those elements that go into solid
historical-grammatical interpretation of Scripture. Scholars who accept the
Word of God's claims for itself are well aware of the proper limits placed upon
"inerrancy" by the text itself. One example should suffice.
In 1 Kings 7:23 we read of the
making of the "cast metal sea" for the temple in Jerusalem. This
large circular bowl is described as follows in Scripture: "Now he made the
cast sea ten cubits from edge to edge, round in form, and its height was five
cubits, and it was thirty cubits around." Hence, the Bible says the object
was ten cubits across, and 30 cubits around. A quick check of the math
indicates one of two things: either it was not perfectly round (which is a
possibility) or, much more likely, the writer was not attempting modem
mathematical precision, for if it were exactly ten cubits across, it would be
31.41592654 cubits in circumference. Or, if it were exactly 30 cubits in
circumference, it would be 9.549296585 cubits in diameter. Either way, the
description given in the text would not be exactly correct. In fact, one could
even say that the figures just given are not exactly correct, because the value
of pi was only taken out to a certain point: pi is a non-repeating number.
Hence, theoretically, one could say that it is impossible to say exactly what
the circumference of anything really is. Of course, this level of literality is
absurd on the face of it. The text is not in error, for it is not attempting to
define with mathematical precision the exact value of pi, nor the exact
measurements of the metal sea in the Temple. The text is accurate in what it is
attempting to communicate, and we are given the proper bounds of
"correctness" by the language and style of the text itself. To attempt
to disprove inerrancy with passages such as this is a useless task, as the
doctrine itself does not indicate that, given the divine origin of the text,
every statement is going to adhere to some external definition of
"accuracy". The text will define its own limitations and parameters.
(James R. White, Answers to Catholic Claims: A Discussion of Biblical
Authority [Southbridge, Mass.: Crowne Publications, 1990], 26-27)
