Ratel

Please turn in your Bibles to Judges chapter 20 for today's sermon. Thank you.

I was reading Judges the other day, the part where Benjamin gets into a civil war with the other tribes of Israel, and I realized how huge the puported army of the Israelites was supposed to be, and I wondered if it was at all plausible that they could have mustered so huge an army in such a small territory sustained by subsistence farming and herding?

The Israelite army was supposed 400,000 fighting men strong, and the text specifies that these were combatants.

Worse yet, if I'm reading this confusing passage correctly, these apparently represent 10% of the available men, so this wasn't just a general militia muster that pressed everyone in the country to service. (verse 10)

In the first two days of fighting, they take 40,000 casualties, again, all swordsmen, no camp followers or supply units.

The Romans took something like 50,000 men lost at Cannae, 30,000 at Teutoburg, supposedly 80,000 in some battle with the Cimbri, and these were absolute total disasters. They recovered to fight again, of course, but they could draw recruits from the entire Italian Peninsula, Illyria, Gaul, etc. They certainly did not brush themselves off the next day and go back to kick Carthaginian/Germanic butt.

Some checking on the net suggests the size of the Roman army at the time of the Jewish insurrection was 154,000 soldiers plus auxillary units. http://members.aol.com/FlJosephus2/romanArmy.htm

Is there any way that these numbers of combatants are remotely possible for a bronze age nation the size of Israel to field? What do you inerrantists say?

The only way I can see it is if this number represented a militia, in which case every man capable of wielding a spear and shield would be called, not just 10%.

Roger Pearse

Think of the English word 'myriad'. Technically it means 10,000 men; but if I told you that I had a myriad of customers today, you would be unwise to suppose that I meant 10,000. So numbers can have dual meanings, and this is more so in pre-literate cultures.

If the numerals are not corrupt -- always a possibility in ancient texts -- then something of this kind would seem to be happening. It's always a mistake to presume that an ancient text is being written to a modern set of conventions on such matters; we need to know, before we can make this kind of query. Otherwise won't we just achieve is anachronism?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Huon

Usually, an invasion army cannot be much more than 5 % of the population of the invaders. The soldiers must be able young men, a horseman needs at least one manservant, agriculturers must not be called up, etc...

Ben C Smith

The analogy is not perfect, because in English we would not use that word myriads mathematically like some of the old Hebrew battle counts do; that is, we would not expect the myriads we were counting to all add up nicely. Judges 20.44-46, for example, says that 18,000 men fell in a ruse, then 5,000 more fell on the highways, then 2,000 more at Gidom. Then the text adds these figures up and concludes that 25,000 men fell. The math works, and that implies that a real (albeit rounded off) count is being taken of the casualties.

Another hypothesis on the OT numbers takes off from the fact that the Hebrew word for thousands was also the word for chieftains. In this case, a number like 25,100 in Judges 20.35 would mean 25 chieftains and 100 ordinary fighting men. This hypothesis would work for quite a few of the numerical anomalies in the Hebrew scriptures, but does not appear to work for the incredible figure of 600,000 for the exodus from Egypt because of the precise mathematical calculations in Exodus 38.25-26. 603,550 men at half a shekel each would make 301,775 shekels. At 3,000 shekels per talent we have 100 talents and 1,775 shekels, just as the text says. Without a real figure of 603,550 men the math no longer works.

If the numbers are corrupt, then the math equations above have been forced to work nonetheless.

I absolutely agree.

Ben.

Ratel

Interesting hypothesis, it certainly makes more sense. Another guess I had was that there is some esoteric meaning to the numbers, in that 40,000 men had to fall before victory was achieved, like the 40 days of rain in the flood or the 40 days of temptation of Jesus. Non-literal interpretation.

Roger Pearse

You're right, and remind me of something which I thought about and had in mind but failed to mention!

A myriad was also a Persian army unit. So if "1000 men" is some analogous formation, then all we have is that 18 bunches were duffed up here, 5 there, and 2 more at Gidom. Even in WW2 people talked in these terms about enemy units. I do not say that this is the right interpretation. I merely highlight the necessity of finding out what the writer meant and his audience understood, rather than us just presuming we know what the statements mean. It's a trap for all who read old books, of course.

All the best,

Roger Pearse