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Biblical Math by AJ Jacobs
Hallelujah! Thank you to my creative friends for all these great Biblical math problems.
They'll really help the Oklahoma school superintendent's goal of inserting biblical
content into math and science! I've collected a multitude of the problems into one
post for ease of reading:
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Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If he lay with one wife
or concubine every night, but took off one day per week for rest, how many days
would it take him to lay with all of his wives and concubines?
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David captured the foreskins of 200 Philistines (1 Samuel 18:27). If David
split those foreskins into baskets of 40 foreskins each, how many baskets
would he need?
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If it took David two minutes to remove a Philistine foreskin, calculate the
hours and minutes it took David to remove all 200 foreskins.
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The prophet Elisha summoned two she-bears to kill 42 children after they mocked him
for being bald (2 Kings 2:24) One she-bear mauled twice as many children as the other
she-bear. How many kids did each she-bear maul? (Use fractions) (Courtesy of Margo Evans )
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Jael killed General Sisera by driving a tent peg into his skull. (Judges 4:21)
If Jael could hammer 1.5 inch per blow and the peg was 9 inches long, how many blows
would she need to drive the peg all the way in? (Courtesy of Julie Brady Murdoch )
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There are 8.7 million animal species on Earth. If Noah took two of each of them onto
the ark, how many square cubits of space were required to accommodate all 17.4
million passengers? (Courtesy of Todd Kreisman)
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If the Exodus involved moving
(600,000 + families) two million
people, each row contains 10 people and there is a twenty foot gap between rows,
how long would the line out of Egypt be? ( Courtesy of Harold J. Wolfe )
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Given the length computed above, and the line of people moved out at
three miles per hour (MPH), how long would Moses have to hold back the Red Sea
waters so that all Israelites could make the crossing safely?
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Moses parted the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21). If he moved the water in the Red Sea at
1,000 cubic liters per second, how long would it take him to part the Hudson
River? (Courtesy of Lynn Nesmith)
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Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40). If it took him one minute to kill
each pagan prophet, how long would it take him expressed in hours (Courtesy of James Frese )
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Adam and Eve had two sons. One killed the other. So where did all the people come
from? ( Courtesy of Hilary Dumitrescu )
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Jezebel was thrown from a window and died (2 Kings 9:33). If the window
was 30 feet high, and she fell at a rate of 16 feet per second squared due to
gravity, how many seconds did it take for her to reach the ground?
(Use the formula ( s = frac{1}{2}gt^2 ), where ( s ) is the distance, ( g ) is
the acceleration due to gravity, and ( t ) is the time in seconds). (Courtesy of Dana Kienzle)
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In the Exodus, how many gallons of lambs blood are needed
to paint over 500,000 homes in the Passover?
How many lambs were killed before the Passover
ALSO I have started to craft an introduction to the Biblical Math book.
Something like: The Bible and mathematics make a perfect match. Just consider
the name of the Bible's fourth book: Numbers. So students of Oklahoma, go forth
and multiply (and add, and subtract, and divide). Once again, thank you all for your
help in this project for the students of Oklahoma!
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hjw2001@gmail.com
