For interest, the weights and measures commonly used in the Old Testament, as recorded in the Bible:

WEIGHTS:

A 'Gerah' weighed about 1/50 of an ounce
10 'Gerahs' = 1 'Beka'
2 'Bekas' = 1 'Shekel'
50 'Shekels' = 1 'Mina'
60 'Minas' = 1 'Talent'

Also: A 'Pim' was 2/3 of a 'Shekel'

LENGTH:

A 'Handbreadth' was around 3 inches
3 'Handbreadths' = 1 'Span'
2 'Spans' = 1 'Cubit'

DISTANCE:

A 'Furlong' was around the same distance as our furlong, and
8 'Furlongs' = 1 'Mile'.

(Note: I am not sure of what connection, if any, there was between lengths and distances)

CAPACITY - DRY MEASURE:

A 'Cab' was the equivalent of just under 2 pints
6 'Cabs' = 1 'Seah'
3 'Seahs' = 1 'Ephah'
5 'Ephahs' = 1 'Lethek'
2 'Letheks' = 1 'Cor' or 'Homer'

Also: 1/10 of an 'Ephah' was am 'Omer'

CAPACITY - LIQUID MEASURE:

A 'Log' was the equivalent of about half a pint
12 'Logs' = 1 'Hin'
6 'Hins' = 1 'Bath'

GOLIATH

Goliath's height (see separate threads on BMI and ARM Body Mass Indices) is recorded as 6 cubits and 1 span in 1 Samuel 17 v.4. This would be 9 feet 9 inches according to the above chart, though the cubit and span were probably a shade longer than 18" and 9" respectively, so he was probably over 10 feet tall.

His coat of mail weighed 5,000 shekels (1 Samuel 17 v.5) - just over a hundredweight, while his spear head weighed 600 shekels (just over a stone). No doubt these and other details about him were recorded soon after David had felled him with a stone fired from a sling, stil a common technique employed by Palestinians to this day


Tony Bennett

"Goliath's height is recorded as 6 cubits and 1 span in 1 Samuel 17 v.4."
-'He was nearly three metres tall'

"His coat of mail weighed 5,000 shekels (1 Samuel 17 v.5)"
-..'57 kilogrames...7 kilogrammes'[his mail and spear respectively]

Both with no reference to feet, or even, sadly (disgustingly), to the ancient biblical measures. Brought to you by me, from the greatest bible of them all- the Good news bible.

And now, for something completely different:

'Build a boat for yourself...Make it 133 metres long, 22 metres wide, and 13 metres high. Make a roof for the boat and leave a space of 44 centimetres between the roof and the sides...'

Oh dear...

-LINEAR -1. A finger Jer 52:21

-2. A handbreadth Ex 25:25; 37:12; 1Ki 7:26; 2Ch 4:5; Ps 39:5; Eze 40:5, 43; 43:13

-3. A span Ex 28:16; 1Sa 17:4; Isa 40:12; 48:13; La 2:20; Eze 43:13

-4. A cubit, the length of a man's forearm .See CUBIT

-5. A reed, probably six cubits Eze 40:5

-6. A fathom Ac 27:28

-7. A pace 2Sa 6:13

-8. A furlong Lu 24:13

-9. A mile, probably nine-tenths of an English mile Mt 5:41

-10. A Sabbath day's journey, two thousand paces Ac 1:12

THIS IS A SAMPLE SNIPPET OF "NAVES TOPICAL INDEX"
http://www.apostolic-churches.net/bible/naves/

All the passages are hyperlink! So if you go to naves
and do a search for "cubit" you get a bunch of
passages listed and you can click on the passage
and see what it actually said.
Then there is another hyperlink tool that lets you
click on a specific word in a passage and be told
what the original hebrew or greek word was.

No disrespect to anyone's religion but I do not
believe any religion myself however this website
is extremely cool. It does not simply tell you they
measured in fingerbreadths--it shows you the place
in Jeremiah where they DID state something in fingers--and then with this other tool you can click on the English word and it tells you the hebrew word
for fingerbreadth namely ETSBAH and has a little dictionary entry about it. This is awesome.

BTW they used cubit a lot. You can find many many
references.

Also try this: in naves search engine put in the
word Measure. You will get a big summary of all the
measures (weights and lengths included) with text
refs for each one.

The references to mile and furlong are all in
the new testament. Roman roads. Roman milestones.

MORE DETAIL ABOUT ETSBAH

The old testament Jews had a fingerbreadth
unit called etsbah.

It appears in Jeremiah 52:21. The word is ETSBAH.
The King James translates it as "finger".
Some bronze is described as "four fingers" thick.
That is, four etsbah thick.

Here is an URL for the King James text


http://www.apostolic-churches.net/bible/strongs/jeremiah_52.shtml

http://www.apostolic-churches.net/bible/strongs.html

Mr Strong is apparently the scholar who made the
dictionary that is the basis of the hyperlinks.

I just came across this so these are my first impressions.

The word mile occurs in Matthew 5:41 this URL
has the Greek orig. text as well as the king james
English:

http://www.sacrednamebible.com/kjvstrongs/B40C005.htm

if anyone compel thee to go a mile, then go with
him two

In the Greek text the word for mile is "milion"
and an on-line greek dictionary says this
word is of Latin origin.

Romans had "milia passuum" and called miles "milia"
and they brought the word into greek where it
became "milion" (n. sing.)

Should not confuse with our word "million"
the greek word "milion" is a Roman mile of a
thousand paces.

It does seem a pretty cool site.

Strong is one of the three standard concordances to the Bible:

Young for the young,
Strong for the strong,
Crudens for the crude!

Checking, I find that mine is Young's and my Dad's Crudens' (there's also a partial concordance at the end of his Scofield Reference Bible).

Mile (milion) and talent (talenton) are two measures that stand out in the New Testament.

Mathew something and 25 if I remember right.

Go the extra mile and don't just sit on your talent but invest it in some good use.

Talent comes from greek word talenton for balance and was a weight.


6000 drachmas (English "dram" derives from drachma)

Fathom and furlong also appear in New Testament
but not so memorably.

New Testament jews were living in Roman Empire and in a part of the world that spoke greek. New Testament was written in greek and the people it talks about spoke greek as one of their languages.

the talent was a general Mediterranean and Near East weight measure, not specifically biblical. but important in New Testament because of that parable.


Believe it should be redefined at exactly 48 pounds and used in today's world.


With existing pennyweight, if one takes 6 drachmas to equal 14 pennyweight
then since talent is 6000 drachmas it becomes 14 000 pennyweight.

Also 48 pounds. This re-integrates several classical and British units.

Question to Tony Bennett. Does ARM reject talent as a British unit?

Re: my other post in this thread:

I hope you are all aware that the Good news bible is the widely used and common bible for school children in both the states and Britain, thus, what I said is highly significant. No one wish to comment at all?

Leonard,
I'm sure the ARM will be happy to convert a sign that needs re-biblication ;)

Ralf

I've thought about your post about GoodNews translation
of bible.

You could provide more detail. Is GoodNews really that widely used? How recent is it? How many copies have been sold?

I use 2 English bibles, King James and the so-called "best-selling modern translation" a Harper paperback that had sold
15 million copies when I bought one. The Harper modern translation is called New International Version (NIV) and was commissioned by the International Bible Society
(IBS). the initial work was done 1965-1971 by roughly a hundred scolars.

I never thought I would like a modern translation--King James English being so fine and the KJ version being so rich in historical tradition. But NIV amazes me. It is straightforward and clear. I think it quite a good translation.

I know something about translation.
See the verse translations (with rhyme and scansion) of some 100 great european lyric poems at my site.
GoodNews sounds to me like a bad translation of the bible, but I would need more to go on.

Modern translations of bible tend to be bad, in my opinion. See what you think of NIV. You might like it.

Of course in NIV they say mile and talent. It is obvious: the main character of the new testament says
"milion" meaning mile and "talenton" meaning talent.
The new testament was written in greek and people were speaking greek pretty widely when it was written and those were the words and we still have those words. So as a translator you do not mess with that.

Check Matthew 5 and 25. If GoodNews changes mile to some metric language it is, in my view, unprofessional. I could see no justification. Besides, the ref. in Matthew 25 is to talent as money, not a unit of weight
(although the two were very closely related at the time I gather). I cannot suppose that even goodnews would change talent to something else.

For people who read latin (or an occas. word of greek) there are latin bibles and greek new testaments on line. ask me if you cannot immediately find them and want url.

Around thrity years old (first edition) in america, and quite common in schools (cant find the sales figures, presently)

Matthew 5.41:

"And if one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack one kilometre, carry it two kilometres."

Matthew 25.15:

"He gave to each one according to his ability: to one he gave five thousand gold coins, to another he gave two thousand, and to another he gave one thousand..."

If I remember correctly, the NIV is essentially a slightly updated KJV. I stick to the King James myself, or occasionally the RSV. The Good News Bible was used in my school too, but I never thought it much cop. Not only is the style lousy, but the translations are often politically slanted (the King James texts faithfully permit all the reasonable interpretations present in the original, but the Good News often shows its bias in arbitrarily hacking them down to just one).

I must buy another King James sometime soon. Of all the things in the world, the thing you'ld think that you *wouldn't* lose would be your bible, right?

Actually, translating "mile" into "kilometres" in the bible is too extreme even for me. It somehow gives you the feeling that the whole thing happened in the modern days.
An excerpt from the german "Standardübersetzung" (standard translation) bible:

"Und wenn dich jemand nötigt, eine Meile mitzugehen, so geh mit ihm zwei."

Of course it would have been nicer if they hadn't used "Meile" in the first place but rather "one thousand paces", which would have been *much* closer to what they meant.

Ralf

There are two key differences between the KJV and the NIV (and indeed all modern versions). These are:

1. The KJV uses a faithful 'word for word' translation, whilst the NIV uses the principle of 'dynamic equivalence'. In other words, it attempts to get at the *meaning* of the ancient words. In that context, why not substitute kilometres for miles, so goes the argument. This has now degenerated into, for example, translating 'man' as 'person' or 'man and woman', which it does *not* say in the original. The NIV I have on my shelves gives the dimension of Noah's ark [roughly the shape of a brick] as '450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high' - but this is *not* what it says in the original. The original text said: '300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high' (Genesis 6 v. 14). I should hate to look in the most recent edition. I wonder if Noah and his three sons used a yardstick which divided into two (cubits) when he was measuring the ark?

2. The KJV is based on the 'Received Text'. The NIV and all modern versions from the Revised Version onwards have used what may be known as the 'Westcott and Hort' text. This was substantially founded on two ancient texts which conveniently turned up in the mid-nineteenth century - one in a Roman Catholic monastery in the Sinai peninsula, and the other 'found' in a waste paper basket in the Pope's library in the Vatican. Both of these texts depart in many places from the 'Received Text' and are regarded by 'Received Text' supporters as corrupted to some degree. Westcott and Hort were mid-nineteenth century Oxbridge theologians.

As to where Christ would have stood in this debate, He once said: "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (KJV, Matthew 5 v 18).


Tony Bennett

Tony:


'Build a boat for yourself...Make it 133 metres long, 22 metres wide, and 13 metres high. Make a roof for the boat and leave a space of 44 centimetres between the roof and the sides...'

Tony: Thanks, I'll give the NIV a miss. It seems it's further from the King James Version than I thought. The RSV does leave out some bits (or includes them only as "other ancient authorities add ...") such as the woman taken in adultery, but it's quite good in some of the more poetical parts, like, oh dear, Micah? "Blow the trumpet in Zion, Sound the alarm in my holy mountain, For the day of the Lord is coming, it is near ..."

Bryan: Yes, I think we've got the idea. The Good News "translation" is ghastly. Chuck it away and get a real Bible. Which is of course the King James or Authorised Version ... which as we all know was directly dictated by God, who then had it translated into Greek and Hebrew and sent back in time ... possibly as much as a few million years if the X-Files can be believed!

Actually, may I ask something here ?
I guess it is obvious to everyone that you can't take Noah's story face value (cramming *all* species into a 133m x 22m boat, re-populating earth with just two of each species).
Still, people use it in quotes etc.
I guess you could say there's some deeper message, but what is the deeper message ?

Cheers,
Ralf

The fact that all the animals on earth could have entered the ark and lived on it or a year is well demonstrated in John Woodmorappe's "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study", Institute for Creation Research, 1995. The animals went in by twos or sevens (Genesis 7 v 2), and did not include sea creatures.

The following sentence appears in "True Science Agrees with the Bible", by Malcolm Bowden, Sovereign Publications, 1998 (p. 26):

"The ratio of length to breadth in the ark is 6:1 and it is only after years of trial and error and many experiments that ship designers have found this to be the most suitable ratio. The seaworthiness of the ark has been recently checked using sophisticated computer programmes. It was found to be as good as, if not better than, modern ships, and was able to withstand waves up to 100 feet high".

The folly of trying to convert the dimensions of the ark into metres is shown by the fact that in doing so, one of the Bible translations has thereby lost the exact 6:1 proportion referred to above.

Christ regarded the building of the ark as an historical event (as indeed He did the creation of Adam and Eve): "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered the ark" (Matthew 24 vv 37-38).

The after-effects of the flood can be seen in the layers of sedimentary rock which cover the globe, most of them laid down in precise horizontal layers, stretching up to dozens of miles in length in places (the Grand Canyon being a prime example). The flood entombed billions upon billions of animals as it progressed - leaving what are now known as fossils.

P.S. I am the joint author of "Evolution and Creation - Your Questions Answered". It answers 75 common questions on evolution and is written from a Biblical and 'recent creation' viewpoint. It's priced at £1.50 but I'm happy to send it free to anyone who asks.


Tony Bennett

I once wrote a piece on interstellar arks for J.Brit.interplan.Soc., 35, 142-3 (1982). Here's an excerpt:

Smith suggests that interstellar colonies will have few species with which to build a working ecology, and that Earth will have to provide them with extra life-forms over a long period of time...

There are ~350,000 species of plant, ~200,000 species of animal ... ~700,000 species of insects known (~3,000,000 estimated in all) and therefore ~4,000,000 species of multicellular life...

Breeding pairs of every animal make a total mass ~1000 tonne (smaller animals are commoner than larger ones); counting feed production etc., the menagerie mass would be ~10,000 tonne in all...

Designers of Interstellar Arks would do well to remember their well-known predecessor: Noah's Ark had a displacement ~30,000 tonne and we may guess that its payload was ~10,000 tonne. Noah did not have to carry whales or other sea-creatures (for obvious reasons) but he did carry seven pairs of some kinds of animal. Since the mission duration was approximately 382 days he would have needed to carry ~10 kg feed/kg animal. The animal mass was therefore ~1000 tonne, which agrees with the estimate above...

This is all getting a bit religeous!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total athiest or anything like that!

However, one wonders whether metric is "evil"?