outhouse

stop the nonsense based from ignorance, this is common knowledge


http://www.historian.net/step7.html

There were somewhere between 300,000 to 400,000 pilgrims in Jerusalem and surrounding areas for the temple services of Passover, each carrying a purse. Money changing, the selling of sacrificial animals, the money coming to the treasury from Jews all over the Roman world and hundreds of enterprises associated with the Temple were all being siphoned to enrich Sejanus, the prefect and the High Priest and his Sadducee cronies beyond the dreams of avarice. When Jesus entered the Temple early in the year 30 and condemned these practices, overturning money changers’ tables, it sealed his death warrant.

Duke Leto

Roman authors seem to have liked to inflate the size of the armies they had to fight. This tradition dates back to Herodotus and probably as far as Sargon.

If Vespasian/Titus had possessed 10 full strength Legions his army would have been no more than 75,000 tops. 75,000 soldiers, no matter how well armed and trained can not win a stand up battle against 600,000 combatants, no matter how poorly armed. The Jews would just have had to walk around the Romans and attack from all sides. There's no question of them being able to put up a cicumvulation around Jerusalem if the defenders outnumbered them 10 to 1.

The size of Jerusalem is discussed in another thread where I challenged to 400,000 number but I just Googled the area of Jesus' Jerusalem, which was about a square mile or 640 acres. I know Herod Agrippa reinforced the walls but I don't think he extended them. If 600,000 fighting men crammed into that space it would be packed in at a density of 900 per acre. That's nine times the population density of modern Manhattan.

Even if Jerusalem were one continuous three story building 900 per acre leaves virtually no space for food storage or waste disposal, especially if the siege is supposed to last for several months.

MODERN Jerusalem has 800,000 inhabitants and a much larger footprint. It and the rest of Israel strain the freshwater supply so badly that the Dead Sea is drying up since there's no river Jordan to fill it.

The site I got the footprint of Jerusalem from puts the population at 25,000, which is only half the population density of modern Hong Kong. I think 10,000 is a more reasonable upper limit, although another 40-60,000 living outside the walls is not unreasonable.

The Temple Mount was not built to contain a crowd, it was made to inspire awe and make individuals seem insignificant.

Jerusalem was NOT a major city like Alexandria or Antioch. Judea was not a wealthy and prosperous Kingdom/Province. The Emperors never bothered sending Senators to govern it, they sent no-name equestrians like Pilate or even Imperial Freedman like Antonius Felix.

There's probably no hope of keeping the discussion in this thread, but see the other damned one for reference.

Duke Leto

So? To deal with large quantities of solid waste you need running water to flush it, and Jerusalem didn't have that. 300 tons of shit a week into a drainage system without constant running water? Shit doesn't naturally flow downhill.

Look, I'm sorry that this offends you, I guess it ruins your argument, but Sanders and the other religious historians simply didn't (or chose not to) do their homework on this one. For Roman Jerusalem to have had anything approaching the kind of population he's asserting here would require modern technology. Full stop.

You can't support population densities greater than the most crowded modern cities before the modern period, even if the area in question is small and the duration is short.

Toto

Historian.net is Jack Kilmon's site. He is an amateur internet debater, like many on this forum.

tanya

Not really.

Duke Leto

What you are describing is not a sewer though, and I doubt, in the extreme, that it's scalable to a city with twice the population density of New York.

I was pointing out Jerusalem's sewers could not cope with the number of humans claimed.

tanya

Thanks for the link to Jack Kilmon's site, very interesting....

What surprised me the most is that one can see the Temple wall from the olive garden, ostensibly containing 3000 year old olive trees. I am surprised to learn that the Romans did not destroy the gardens, since they leveled the buildings...

The trees must be relatively hardy to withstand all those soldiers, with their horses, trampling the area.

jdboy

Jesus and the temple cleaning in 30AD is a fiction created to foresee the actual
cleansing by Rome in 70AD.
Mark 11:17 And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: "'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"
Notice Jesus says; WILL BE FOR ALL NATIONS, indicating a future event

The robbers were the zealots as recorded by Josephus. The zealots were all
forced to flee into Jerusalem around 70AD.

tanya

population density of NYC: 27k/mile^2; Singapore: 18k/mile^2; Jerusalem: 17k/mile^2

outhouse

correct

I posted it because of his content matching what is known, despite origination.