Cege

Fascinating discussion. I am entranced but not convinced as yet by outhouse.

The numbers outhouse wants me to believe are not yet supported by reliable sources. Or even logical guesses.

Please, carry on...

outhouse

I dont want you to believe anything, im only reporting the known history, not guesses by posters not educated on the subject



EP Sanders is not reliable? the wiki links and other links posted are not enough.?

Cege

outhouse, from your own citations (all emphasis mine):
"In the first century CE, although some diasporan Jews might have chosen to celebrate the festival where they were, generally it was assumed that those who could would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. " We all know where "assumed" can get us. The same assumption might have applied that disaporan Jews would return to their homeland when they were able. They did not.

"Not all Jews appeared in Jerusalem for every feast, but enough appeared in fulfilment of their religious duty to swell the population of the city." Swell? yes, that is not disputed. To the degree that you claim? For all the reasons already cited, no. No, not just highly unlikely, but mathematically impossible.

Perhaps you are not reading/resourcing ALL the links provided, but only those you rely upon. If you ignore ALL the researched information, you are left ignorant.

If you consider all the researched information, including your own references, you can make a realistic conclusion. (yeah, your conclusion might not match the majority conclusion, but please don't ignore all the available historical information as well as the logic and mathemathics.)

outhouse

dont take it up with me, stand up with facts, oh wait like the others your wishing your opinion was valid or credible. BECAUSE you have no sources


Take it up and change wiki if your so smart, while your at it talk to the scholars who all follow the amount listed. start with E.P. Sanders one of the better scholars out there.

outhouse

you jumped in with a big mouth and no evidence or sources either


what part is mathmatically impossible?

size ? acres outside the city that DID work as overflow camping
water ? plenty of water
sewer ? hell the sheep had porta poties
jewish population? polls showed jews in the millions



what exactly is impossible? your historical knowledge?

Duke Leto

That "average" human being is 18 inches wide and 9 inches thick then?

18 inches actually is a slightly below average shoulder width for modern males (including Deltoids) and 9 inches is an average shoe size.

To test this thesis I performed the following experiment:

I'm 76 inches tall and have a size 13 (inch) shoe and 19 shirt. Even if my Deltoids are pathetically underdeveloped, I don't think 23-24 inches is an unreasonable shoulder spread. Let's call it 26 inches.

I placed two pairs of shoes heel to heel, the toes forming the left and right sides of a rectangle. The width of the shoes is something like 5 inches, so it was a bit short of 26 by 13 inches.

I stood in this measured area, as expected, my toes dangled over the edge where the last 3 inches of area should have been. But if I were in decent shape instead of a late model Henry VIII body with a 54 inch waistline, I would just barely fit into an area as long as my shoe and twice as wide.

So if you assume the average human is 18" by 9" for 1.125 square feet, 30,000 people can stand in an acre.

But that's ALL they can do. They can't move their arms, they can't step forwards or backwards. If they're small and smashed up between a larger person in front and behind, they may not be able to breathe.

If you want to get 30,000 people into an acre it had better be walled in because simple pressure will force your crowd to expand outward if it isn't, and you are going to have to use force to get the last 10,000 or so in, in both senses.

So the number is then technically correct, but wrong in every meaningful sense.

The question should be: what's maximum density a crowd can have per acre without coercion?

Look at this photo from the Stewart/Colbert rally mentioned earlier in the thread:



That is a very big and very dense crowd gathered for an event lasting several hours. Do you see what many of the people are doing? They're sitting down, and that takes a lot more floor space than standing. Many are standing with plenty of extra room to move their arms. Realistically I'd say the average is something like 8-10 square feet per person.

So the criticism of the 30,000 may be invalid in that it is physically possible, it's just a practical impossibility.

outhouse

I dont think they packed them in 30,000 a acre either.

37 acres, they could have done 10,000, and that number is high because I doubt they were all inside at once.


but the place and outside was packed full.



glad you posted the pic, because imagine those were jews and the romans and saducees were robbing them blind, it was big big money, and all Pilate and Caiaphas wanted was peace because tensions were high when jesus was supposed to have started his stink in the temple. the literal sea of people is the only reason he escaped if he did what is claimed, and the possibility that Pilate didnt want to send tropps in that would have started a full blown riot screwing up their big payday.

better to let a rebel rouser out and catch him in the peace and quiet of nightfall, then to risk loss of revenue

Duke Leto

You know, I haven't failed on any of these points. When I asserted Jerusalem had no sewers, I was talking about MODERN sewers with pressurized water flow. The one tunnel you've linked to was drained by gravitational potential.

Roman aqueducts and sanitation are like modern plumbing and sewage in the same sense that ox drawn carts are like long haul trucks.

I was aware of the Davidic/Jebusite Tsinnor and Hezekiah's tunnel. I was aware of the mikveh and the cisterns. Pilate's aqueduct was a surprise although it likely should not have been.

I looked at the Temple Mount wiki briefly. Looks like the Temple's cisterns had a volume in the millions of gallons. Fine. It doesn't solve the water problem because you still have to get the stuff out of the cisterns and distributed to your 400,000 pilgrims.

Let's say you have 100 gravitationally fed fountains from the cisterns and let's say 10 people can each get the water needed for themselves and 4 others from each fountain in the space of 5 minutes. That means every fountain in Jerusalem will be mobbed six and half hours out of every day with 400,000 campers needing cistern water. Did Jerusalem have 100 small fountains? How about 10 that could serve 100 at a go? If the cisterns were accessed by wells the problem gets even more ridiculous.

Then there's the problem of your "plenty of acres" for a tent city. How many people do you think can live in an acre of tent city?

I've already brought up Woodstock Farm having 600 acres for 400,000 people (not 100,000, my bad), although a many surely squatted off the farm property proper since Magen Broshi gives the 160 people per acre as the population density inside the walls of Jerusalem (too many) and Manhattan in 2012 has a population density of 109 per acre, as compared to the 600 per acre needed for everyone to fit in Woodstock proper. (I begin to wonder if Woodstock is not also highly exaggerated...)

The Boy Scouts of America has recently purchased a ~10,000 acre property for its annual National Jamboree, which generally draws 40,000-50,000 scouts and another 250,000 visitors, but not all the latter camp or stay for the duration. While not all the land will be given over to campground, it's my experience (from my years as a boy scout) that about 5% probably will be given over to campground space. That's 500 acres for maybe 200,000 campers, giving 400 an acre. (Since there is a 70,000 acre wilderness are next to the property, perhaps a larger area is given over to camps. To say nothing of parking. Hard to tell anything from the damned maps.)

In 1932, 45,000 or so people involved with the Bonus Army occupied an area near Washington DC that is now called Section C of Anacostia Park, which is 1,200 acres. Since there are at least 3 sections but probably not more than 6, (website doesn't say), section C is between 400 and 200 acres. The men in the Bonus Army brought their families and were military veterans who knew how to set up a long term camp and did so. 100 to 200 per acre here is not unreasonable, since the math more or less requires it.

This link calculates the size of an 8 legion Roman Army camp at 320 acres for 45,000 soldiers, which is 140 per acre.

So OK, just MAYBE 200 per acre inside Jerusalem isn't that outrageous after all (then and again the campers have no need for commercial spaces), but since the Bonus army and the Roman Army look like the better matches for our Jewish pilgrim campers, we're still looking at 2,000 acres for the tent camp, a little more than 3 square miles... more than 3 times the size of the city.

I don't think I misunderstand the Jewish people, I think you grossly overestimate how many of them there were.

Can you cite your source on 6 million Jewish citizens in the Claudian census? I have 60 million people in the whole Empire and a 10% population of Jews circa 50 CE, especially given the fraction of the population they comprised throughout the Middle Ages. If you have a higher number for the population of the Empire... uh... really? The population of Europe less Russia, Ireland and Iceland was 350 million in 1938, of whom 10 million were Jewish at most. (Probably less since many of the 6 million were in Russia.) That's two or three times the size of the Empire with the advantage of industrial agriculture in much of its area. Frankly 60 million is stretching credulity.

And Herod Agrippa counting 6 million pilgrims in one census? That's the entire modern population of southeast Pennsylvania, one 50th the population of the United States. In a tent city? Outside Jerusalem? To be honest I'd sooner believe JC went for a stroll across the Sea of Galilee?

stephan huller

Yes I have not been following this debate but I am sure that even the stupidest person at this forum was not arguing over the presence of modern sewers in ancient Judea. The idea that they had heated toilet seats was not a point of contention either nor whether you could watch the Price is Right or play Angry Birds on your Iphone.

outhouse

Look at the map I posted that has the pond, and springs all outside the city for the pilgram's, they could also access the aquaduct. they are spread out pretty well.

unlike people today, they were filling water skins then getting a drink, so fewer trips were made.

Now I know the israel pool was for washing the livestock, so no drinking there.


im also sure the unused water also served as the sewer drainage.


they set up camp outside of the 37 acre temple mount, space wasnt limited.


from my research, the city was used to it and built for it.

You do know the temple was the jewish treasury/bank?


really the only thing debatable is the exact population size that made it that year.

remember this was one of the wonders of the world in its time before its destruction. It was gods house to them and a sight like none other in the world the jews would have known about.



I dont count that as reliable.


not even really a tent city

more like a week long rough and harsh camping trip

most were peasants that had no tent, and only had what they wore or could carry.




Now the Claudian census didnt state they all made the trip, just that it was the total jewish population.

its been said many didnt make the trip despite its requirement.




where there is will there is a way, this was their god and this was quite the yearly event, that romans and Saducees and some Pharisees capitolized on