[SOLVED] Cubit

[Jug]

Question regarding length of the cubit keeps popping up. The Bible gives its length as 18 inches. I have a kyak to scale of Noah's ark -18.75 feet long, 3.125 feet broad, 1.6666 feet deep. Slickest thing afloat!

[HallsofIvy]

Actually the Bible doesn't mention inches! Inches were not "invented" until long after the bible was written. There were several different "cubits" used in the ancient near east and different references to cubits in the bible probably meant different things.

[Jug]

HallsofIvy, of course the Bible doesn't mention inches (or metres).Some things we have to figure out and apply for ourselves. Yhe Bible does give two different measures for the cubit - one is Beauty, which I believe describes the cubit of the arc; the other is Bands, which I believe describes David's giant. "Beauty" truly is!

[enigma]

A cubit is the length of a grown man's arm with fingers outstretched from the tip of his fingers to his elbow.

Or just about a foot and a half.

[Jug]

No, Enigma, "exactly" a foot and a halph - by application.

[HallsofIvy]

Jug, you were the one who said "The Bible gives its length as 18 inches." Then you say "Some things we have to figure out and apply for ourselves." In other words, you knew what you said wasn't true.
Taking the definition of cubit as "the length of a grown man's arm with fingers outstretched from the tip of his fingers to his elbow." as enigma said, then 18 inches is "about", not "exactly". Surely you understand that not all grown men have arms the same length!

In any case, that definition is not given in the Bible: it gives no definition of cubit, just uses the cubit without definition. There were, in fact, several different cubits in use, one of which was about 18 inches, one of the others about twice that.

[Jug]

HallsofIvy, I know what I said is true because I applied the known parameters given for the cubit, which in the case of the Bible is Noah's arc. Every authoritive concordance gives the cubit of Noah's arc as 18 inches. Yhe said kyak built to scale has been put through the most severe tests and found to be untippable in the roughest of waters. We don't know any more of any science than what passes empirical proving.

[HallsofIvy]

But that is not what you said: You said "Question regarding length of the cubit keeps popping up. The Bible gives its length as 18 inches." Now you are saying that " Every authoritive concordance gives the cubit of Noah's arc as 18 inches". That's a completely different thing.

[Jug]

Yes, but the question is still open....perhaps because I stated it clumsily. I have applied one of the measures given for the cubit by the Bible and found it to have significant implications by application to a specific purpose. The cubit appears to be a "system" of measure (a geometry), the Bible alluding to one other measure to the cubit. One interest here is in determining the ratio between the two measures. I suspect it to be the ratio of 2:3.