Vinnie

Now that we have looked at potential church communities and population statistics I want to turn to life expectancy in antiquity. This is going to be, like the last subject discussed, an exercise in projection. I often hear, especially on the Internet, that the life expectancy in antiquity was 30 or so. If that was the case, apparently the Romans didn’t actually end Jesus’ life too early since he was probably already a few years overdue! The number 30 is probably close to the actual number but that includes infant and child mortality. If you made it to 5 in antiquity, which Jesus and his original followers most certainly did, then your average life expectancy goes up significantly! We do not have any reliable statistics for determining exact numbers in antiquity so in order to understand what this means we are going to look at life-model statistics for males as obtained from the CDC for the United States in 1901, 1966 and 2004.

Male Life-Table US 2004

AGE Survivors Years Left
0 100,000 75.2
1 99, 253 74.7
5 99,124 70.8
10 99,043 65.9
20 98,486 56.2
30 97, 148 46.9
50 92,078 28.8
60 85,067 20.8
70 71,168 13.7
80 46,461 8.2
90 15,948 4.4
100 1,261 2.3

When you are just born you can expect to live to 75.2, when you are 1 to 75.7, at 5 to 75.8, at 10 to 75.9, at 20 to 76.2, at 30 to 76.9, at 50 to 78.8, at 70 to 83.7 and at 100 to 102.3. Notice that the older you get, the longer you can expect to live, overall! In antiquity, when the life expectancy is hypothesized to be 30 that usually includes a very high infant mortality rate. Therefore, the life expectancy of an adult is likely to be more than 30 and Rome did Jesus no favor! Notice that the survivor’s column tells us how likely someone is to survive to a certain age. Out of every 100 random males, almost 16% would make it to 90 years of age even though at birth their average life expectancy is 75.2. It will help to go back to Life Tables in the States to an earlier time. Here is the 1996 data:

Male Life-Table US 1966

AGE Survivors Years Left
0 100,000 66.7
1 97, 348 67.5
5 96,954 63.8
10 96,708 58.9
20 95,759 49.4
30 93,922 40.3
50 86,026 22.9
60 73,471 15.8
70 51,342 10.3
80 24,415 6.2
85 13,071 4.5

When you are just born you can expect to live 66.7 years, at 1 to 68.5, at 5 to 68.8 at 20 to 69.5 and so on. Here we see that in 1996, 24.4% of the male population reaches 80 whereas in 2004 46.5% did. Now we are going to go back to 1901. Obviously the further back we go the less reliable the data is but we still seem to be in a well enough documented period for these tables to work. This next one actually lists data for the first 12 months of life, which gives a good indication of how high infant mortality rates can skew the overall life expectation. Unlike the other two, this one includes both sexes.

Male-Female Life-Table US 1901

AGE Survivors Years Left
0 100,000 49.24
1 m 95,894 51.26
2 m 94,768 51.79
3 m 93,733 52.28
4 m 92,779 52.73
5 m 91,901 53.15
6 m 91,094 53.54
7 m 90,356 53.89
8 m 89,686 54.21
9 m 89,078 54.50
10 m 88,526 54.75
11 m 88,023 54.98
1 y 87,552 55.20
2 84,617 56.10
3 83,292 55.98
4 82,446 55.55
5 81,804 54.98
10 80,052 51.14
20 77,239 42.79
30 72,043 35.51
40 65,890 28.34
50 58,514 21.26
60 47,946 14.76
70 32,390 9.3
80 13,529 5.3
90 1,867 2.95
100 31 1.58
105 1 1.11

Notice that over 12% of all infants would die in the first year and 18% of those born would never see the age of 10. The rate slows down around here though because on 2% of the population pool dies between 10 and 20. But this shows how high infant mortality rates throw off the average life expectancy. At birth you are expected to live 49.24 years. If you are so lucky to make it to 6 months you should make it until 54.04 years. Should you make it through a whole calendar you will live to be 56.20; should you make it to 5 you are expected to die around 60; should you make it to 20 you can expect to just fall short of 63 and if you are fortunate enough to be part of the two-thirds of the population that makes it until 40, you will see 28 more birthdays before dying at 68. So at birth you cannot expect to see 50 but if you make it to 10 you’ll probably see 61 and if you make it to 30 you’ll see 65. Therefore, in 1901, 10 year olds could expect to live 11 years longer than the average life expectancy at birth and 30 year olds could expect to live 15.5 years longer.

Though we cannot extrapolate this to antiquity they do give us an idea about evaluating some traditions. It is at least possible John lived to an old age and had acquaintances with Polycarp who is reported to have lived to 86. Could John have lived to 100 as many Christians suppose? It is not impossible. In 1901 in America, almost 2 percent of the population made it to 90. Though if we could construct a Life Table for the fist century the results would probably be far more grim than this and it would be statistically unlikely that any one of Jesus’ original followers lived that long.

For example, the CDC has Life Tables for India stemming from 1901 to 1909 and 50% of the population never made it to the age 10. The probability of a person making 93 years of age was 0.00001 or 100,000 to 1. It might seem tempting to ascribe the life table of a place similar to ancient Rome or Palestine that is well documented to them but there are several difficulties with this notion. Without belaboring the point, there are a host of variables that will largely be unquantifiable. In addition, life expectancy rates would change from place to place and city to city and probably differ between classes. Different diets, disease outbreaks, climate, poverty level, religious practices, ecological conditions, altitude, nursing practices, wars, life-style differences and so on and so on and so forth all have an impact. The article referenced [(fn#65 See Walter Scheidel, Roman Age Structure: Evidence and Models, The Jornal of Roman Studies, Vol. 91 (2001), pp. 1-26)] provides an excellent treatment of some of these issues.

Despite all that I am going to offer a bit of conjecture. As far as life expectancy for the followers of Jesus goes we need to account for Christian persecution, the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem during the ware in 70 C.E. and a number of other factors. The point of these life tables is that we should not be so naïve to think the vast majority of Jesus’ followers died in the forties and fifties. Many of them most certainly did but a fair number of them must have lived on into the 60s and for those who survived the Roman-Jewish war a few of them could have made it into the 70s or 80s. I say this granting an initial starting population pool of 100 or so followers. This number is of course speculative and there may have been more or even less original followers of Jesus during his ministry. If Jesus’ followers were roughly 30 years old, close to his own age, I would add an average additional life expectancy of 20 years on to their existence. This means some will live longer and some will die earlier than that number. I think that is a fair estimate though it is pure hypothesis/conjecture on my part. It does confirm with some tradition such as Peter’s death in the 60’s and Paul’s as well but this is obviously a very limited sample size. According to tradition they were both murdered and this means they would have lived longer, otherwise. Also a statement about “some standing here in Mark” might also indicate a few disciples are still alive when it was composed. Then of course we have the traditions relaying the antiquity of Polycarp and the apostle John. So while many of Jesus’ initial followers probably did die by 50 or 60 C.E. it is certainly probable that a few would have lived on past this time period.

This information, while not being conclusive, at least helps us place very general limits on any oral-eyewitness-era we might imagine. The early 60s C.E. is probably the latest we should suppose for such an era and this should mark the close of our first stratum material about Jesus. It will turn out that we have precious little first stratum material but what we do have does allow us to learn far more about Jesus than many other names from antiquity. Take, for example, some of the followers of Jesus. What do we actually know about Thomas or Mary Magdalene besides that they followed Jesus before and after his death? Not much at all. Jesus, though difficult to reconstruct, will turn out to be more than a name on a list. I am getting ahead of myself, however.

Vinnie

show_no_mercy

The major flaw in this is using the richest 1st world democracy's mortality rates to try to model peasant life in ancient Rome. Maybe among the Roman elite it might be more equivalent, but poor fishermen in the 1st century weren't among the Roman elite. I would suggest modeling a country who's people live in conditions that were equivalent to your average illiterate Jew in the 1st century, not some New Yorker.

rlogan

I think the major flaw is in the research strategy.

You look for literature discussing age of death data in the period. By demographic class, if possible. That is what you do. I imagine there is some literature on this in the pertinent acedemic literature. Peer reviewed stuff.

That is my suggestion instead of running off with obviously irrelevant stuff.

Petergdi

While the US life tables from 1901 are certainly over-optimistic for anywhere in antiquity, and I would suggest the data from London 1728-1750 (the oldest good data we have) would be more appropriate, I think the idea that there was a big difference in life expectancy between rich and poor in the pre-industrial world is mistaken.

When the modern system of life insurance and annuities was first used in mid 18th century London, policies were sold exclusively (or at least almost so) to the well off, but the data came from the population as a whole. If rich people had been living much longer than the average, insurance companies would have lost serious money on annuities. This did not happen: they made about the same amount of money as was predicted on the expectation of the rich having the same life expectancy as the average.

The disparity in life expectancy between the rich and the average which certainly happens in many poor countires today was not a feature of 18th century London, and probably was not a feature of antiquity either.



My summary of the 1728-1750 London data follows:

Out of 602747 deaths recorded in London between 1728-1750
- 218810 were under age 2.
- 270353 were under age 5
- 291653 were under age 10
- 310154 deaths were under age 20
- 474179 deaths were under age 50

-43268 deaths were over age 70
-16277 deaths were over age 80
- 2513 deaths were over age 90
- 200 deaths were over age 100

Life expectancy at birth was about 16 (infant mortality was really horrible)
At age 2 one could expect to live to about 39 on average
At age 5 one could expect to live to about 44 on average
At age 20 one could expect to live to about 47 on average
At age 50 one could expect to live to about 64 on average

A 20 year old had a 14.8% chance of seeing age 70
A 20 year old had a 5.6% chance of seeing age 80
A 20 year old had a 0.85% chance of seeing age 90

calculated from: http://www.kabele.org/papers/dodsonms2.pdf

Peter,

Vinnie

Apparently you did not read what I wrote.

Vinnie

There is no flaw because all I did with the US references is show how high infant mortaility rates skew the average age of life at birth. That is factual. That the average life expectancy was 30 in antiquity is routinely tossed around on this forum and others. 1) it is not grounded in any solid facts an 2) the ignorant promoters of this tradition have no idea that even if accurate it includes high rates infant mortality and death during child birth.

I cited a scholarly journal pointing out the problems of using any modern life table and projecting it back on ROme, in addition I pointed out class differences and a host of others. Don't fault what I wrote on the basis of you not reading it.

Vinnie

Vinnie

How were the statistics obtained for that study? I used the modern one from india because it was from the cdc and the further back we go the more unreliable the numbers get, in general. Also see the article referenced and the reasons I summarized on why we cannot apply modern parallels to ancient Rome. They can be suggestive but will yield no conclusive facts.

On what grounds do you argue this?

I agree as plainly stated in what I wrote:

In 1901 in America, almost 2 percent of the population made it to 90. Though if we could construct a Life Table for the fist century the results would probably be far more grim than this and it would be statistically unlikely that any one of Jesus’ original followers lived that long.

For example, the CDC has Life Tables for India stemming from 1901 to 1909 and 50% of the population never made it to the age 10. The probability of a person making 93 years of age was 0.00001 or 100,000 to 1.

Both of the previous two posters missed this in their haste to discredit something they pretended to read.

Vinnie

Petergdi

In 1602 a law was made that required that anyone who died in London had to have their cause of death recorded for the government. The original reason for this was to keep track of plague outbreaks. In 1728 they added the refinement of recording the age of each person at death. The totals by age from 1728-1750 were published in an article by Corbis Morris in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society vol 47 p.333 in 1751. James Dodson then used these figures in his foundational work on actuarial science, "First Lecture on Insurances" in 1756. (This paper available at: http://www.kabele.org/papers/dodsonms2.pdf) . This work was first used by an insurance company in 1762.

Probably a good general rule, but I think the figures in James Dodson's paper are probably trustworthy.

I agree, though I think probably that London in the first half of the 18th century is probably not bad as something to look at for a pre-industrial society.



I wasn't arguing with you. My purpose was to disagree with show_no_mercy about the idea of a large disparity between the life expectancy of rich and poor in a pre-industrial society. I sometimes use the form "I agree about X but not Y" because I have found that people are often more likely to pay attention to someone who partly agrees with them. I'm sorry if you thought I was arguing with you. I should have been more careful.

Another interesting thing in that regard is Sir Isaac Newton's observation in his work on chronology that the monarchs of England and France appeared to have had a shorter life on average than the average of their subjects. The disparity in life expectancy between rich and poor that exists in poor countries in the modern world is not some kind of timeless truth, but does not appear to have been much of a factor in the pre-industrial world.

Peter,

PhilosopherJay

Hi Petergdi,

I think that this is a excellent data to use in the question of the probability/possibility of Eusebius reporting accurate historical facts regarding Polycarp and the two Apostles who appointed him Bishop.

Pre-industrial 18th Century England probably had a life expectancy relatively close to ancient Rome. However, the literacy rate was 45% in 1714 and 60% in 1750 in England (from Women peasant poets in eighteenth-century England, Scotland, and Germany, by Susanne Kord) As I recall, the literacy rate was around 10% in Ancient Rome. That would indicate a substantially more advanced society, which may suggest a higher life expectancy in England.

In any event, taking the key statistic of "A 20 year old had a 0.85% chance of seeing age 90", we may take it that if all 12 of the Apostles were 20 years old when Jesus died, that would mean there was a .0085 X .0085 or .00007225 chance of two of them living to 90, as Eusebius suggests. That they would then appoint someone at age 30 who lived to be 90 would be quite unusual. Let us say the odds of living till 90 from age 30 was slightly better then age 20, .01 instead of 0085. That would give us odds of 00007225 X .01 or .0000007225.

We can say that it would happen at best about 7 times in a million times. Put another way, we can suppose the chances of Eusebius telling a lie or making a mistake about the ages of the apostles and Polycarp are more than 999,993 out of a million, or that we can be more than 99.9993% sure that Eusebius is lying or making a mistake about this fact.

Still, this may not be the best reason for disbelieving the bishop's list in Eusebius. More interesting is the fascinating division of labor between Eusebius and Ireneaus. Bishop Eusebius supplies only the dates, while Bishop Irenaeus is the source that supplies only the names. It is a wonderful working relationship. It is as if they made an arrangement to work together in this manner. If we assume that Eusebius was 20 when he made this agreement in 180 with Irenaeus, and Irenaeus wrote the names, that would make Eusebius 155 in 315 when he did the chronology. That is off all actuarial tables.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spamandham

1700's London is post plague. Sanitation - though abysmal by modern standards - was well beyond what would be found in any part of the Roman empire 2000 years ago.

The modern 3rd world is closer. However, the odds that at least 3 of Jesus' 12 disciples would live to the age of 80 and that polycarp would as well, are still quite small, no matter which nonmodern life table you pick.