Clivedurdle

Hang on, that is Chinese and Soviet army manpowers! i don't remember the Roman empire pulling that amount of troops together!

Could the Bible be being economic with the actualite? What do the archaeological records show the population of fighting age men - generously 10 - 60?

lpetrich

So Josephus was claiming that David did not pay his taxes? If so, that could have been a bit more explicit in the original, so that David will know what to do in his next census.

Also, the population figures seem suspiciously high:

2 Samuel 24:9
Israel: 800,000
Judah: 500,000

1 Chronicles 21:5
Israel: 1,100,000
Judah: 470,000

(men of military age, not total population)

I once did a then-and-now comparison of population figures for the Roman Empire at the time of Constantine; an estimated 56 million people then vs. 660 million people today, an increase by a factor of 12.

Modern Israel's population is 7,026,000
The Palestinian territories' population is: 3,702,000
(Wikipedia, 2005)

Extrapolating backward by a factor of 12 or so, we find that these figures for the number of men of military age are greater than the total population of that area.