Does 3.14 in any sense mean 3?

"Also a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass: it was five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about."
[2 Paralipomenon (2 Chronicles) 4:2]

"He made also a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round all about; the height of it was five cubits, and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about."
[3 Kings (1 Kings) 7:23]

Sounds like someone rounded off 3 point 14 to 3, right?

Now, I was told early on by my mother that "pi" is "tre komma 14" (3,14 as per non-English for instance Swedish notation of decimals) and that area of a circle was "radius times radius times pi" and circumference was "radius times two times pi".

But here the circumference seems to be only 3 times the diameter, as if pi had shrunk?

The mathematical solution is arguably hidden in plain sight a few verses further down:

Now the thickness of it was a handbreadth, and the brim of it was like the brim of a cup, or of a crisped lily: and it held three thousand measures.

And the laver was a handbreadth thick: and the brim thereof was like the brim of a cup, or the leaf of a crisped lily: it contained two thousand bates.

When measuring the diameter from brim to brim, you measure across the top. And you hold the measure strings on the outside of the brim.

When measuring the circumference compassing it round about, you hold the measure string, the "line" as it was called, end to end with all around the "molten sea" at its cylinder below the rim, a handbreadth further in. They are diameter and circumference of two different but concentric (and vertically somewhat displaced) circles. Pi is still pi. Hat tip to Jonathan Sarfati for this solution!

King Solomon would have known a fairly exact value of pi from Egypt. He would also have known Babylonians round it off to three (Mesopotamians had made two incursions into the Holy Land, see Genesis 14 and Judges 3. He would have enjoyed the mathematical pun.

But there is another thing. As all patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings, he was aware of the Holy Trinity. He was also aware - by prophecy - that a certain passage in Exodus would be numbered as part of chapter 3 (not yet in existance) and even later than that as verse 14. Here God gives His name, which is pronounced Adonai.

So, by "making pi equal 3" he was stating "the Trinity is Adonai" or "the Father is Adonai, the Son is Adonai, the Holy Spirit is Adonai, yet not three Adonaim, but one Adonai" as St. Athanasius was going to write later on.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Boniface of Frisia
5.VI.2021