Duke Leto

Oh no no no. The water was sufficient. They had oceans of freshwater torrenting all over the place so profusely they had to build an aqueduct to Petra just to rid themselves of the extra stuff. Jerusalem had sewers, special Roman sewers too.

Outhouse tells us that scholars say there was plenty of water in Jerusalem and anyone who thinks otherwise is ignorant. Ergo Jerusalem has so much water they use it instead of electricity!

spin

Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk), SCM 1969, says of the figures supplied by Josephus and Tacitus: "These four sources (3 from Josephus) give, without exception, such fantastic figures that we cannot regard them as historically accurate." (p.78)

He then spends several pages working from a reference in M.Pes. v.5, which talks about three groups of sacrifices at the passover, calculating the area of the courts of the temple and from there the population that could fit reasonably. He arrives at ~180,000 minus the Jerusalem population of circa 55,000 to finish with 125,000, adding "We shall probably not have to increase or decrease that number by more than half". (p.83)

Toto

There is a Plumbing Supply Company with a History of Plumbing in Jerusalem on its site.

Duke Leto

That's a... strange place to find that sort of information...

125,000 is still to big. The available space in the courtyards isn't the limiting factor, food, water and sanitation is. The fact that the Sadducees were bath crazy is something I'd forgotten and it doesn't help the water supply problem, it makes it much worse. I don't think how many people could fit on the Temple Mount is the valid metric, because the Temple Mount was not designed to be filled to capacity, it's there to make a visitor feel tiny in comparison to the majesty of God.

Sarpedon

I have sources. The Ottoman Censuses. Actual records of inhabitants created by a government for taxation purposes, not big round numbers that some guy obviously made up. I also alluded to known populations for Rome and Pompeii, and compared their area to that of Jerusalem. These are my sources, and they are better than yours.

Tell me, how would Josephus know how many were killed? Did he take the time to go out to count a million corpses from his busy schedule of selling out his country? How long does it take to count a million corpses in an area of 8,500 square miles? Did he have access to records? If so, please cite them. The same goes for Tacitus, who wasn't even there. Any intelligent person, with a few moments of thought, would realize that they made up the numbers.

The tendency of soldiers to overestimate the numbers of their opponents is well documented. Try Sam Adam's book "War of Numbers" which details the attempts made during the Vietnam War to estimate the number of casualties inflicted. The fact that you unquestionably accept an estimate given by a non-eyewitness based on accounts of soldiers in action shows that you know nothing of military history. Anyone who has read any book of military history would have encountered this problem, because every single such book I've ever read on military history (and there have been hundreds) has at least alluded to this problem. Another good example was comparing the verbal reports of pilots in World War 2 to the evidence of their gun cameras, and the records of losses from the other side. The tendency of soldiers to exaggerate, even when no deception is intended, is so well documented that anyone with the slightest bit of reading under his belt will doubtless have found references to it.

There's a joke from America's Civil War: Lincoln was asked one day 'how many soldiers do you think the Rebels have?' and Lincoln replied 'Three Million.' The visitor was surprised at that number, and asked Lincoln how he arrived at it. Lincoln replied 'every time one of my generals loses a battle, he says he was outnumbered three to one. I've got a million soldiers.' This humorous anecdote illustrates some of the problems involved in correctly estimating the numbers of combatants.

And thank you spin, for that source. I think 55,000 permanent inhabitants of Jerusalem is still too much, given that large areas inside the city walls were undeveloped, but to think that 200,000 people lived in the capital and its environs is not unreasonable.

Iskander

Why should be the ottoman census be of any relevance?


I admit I don’t know what the population of Jerusalem might have been during Passover at the time of Tiberius, but how the ottoman census could help to answer that question is not apparent to me.

Sarpedon

Because they record the actual population of the same region under similar technological conditions. It gives a hint as to how many inhabitants the area in question can reasonably support. It provides a record of the range of population that the region could support under various lengths of peace and order.

I will without reservation assert that such a source, even removed from the time period in question by 1500 years, is better than non eyewitnesses of the same period making numbers up. I have said, at length, what my basis is for doubting Josephus and Tacitus. In the absence of documentation, there's no reason to prefer the guesses of someone of the same time period over someone of a different time period.

When there is a lack of documentation, the best thing to do is compare your problem to a similar situation that is documented. I use the Ottoman census to illuminate the population characteristics of the region, and Pompeii to illuminate the state of urban settlement in the same time period.

If you dispute this, please state your reasons.

Iskander

Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, its population dispersed; the Byzantine Empire was destroyed after centuries of warfare which caused depopulation, destruction of irrigation systems, and so forth.

The crusaders destroyed Jerusalem.

Climatic changes may have also affected the capacity of the region to support people: Rome imported all its grain from that region ,but the same land is arid and barren now.

The Technology of the first century supported during the emperor Augustus a population of 1250000 in Rome. Alexandria was then even wealthier and bigger than Rome.

It is difficult for me to accept the ottoman data. I consider Tacitus to be a more informative source once the obvious exaggeration is taken into account.

Sarpedon

Note: Rome imported all of its grain from Egypt, which technically could be called the same region, but that is not relevant for talking about the population of Palestine.

The population of Rome or Alexandria cannot be compared with places like Jerusalem. As pointed out, each had access to better transportation, better sources of water, food and most importantly more CAPITAL than Jerusalem, and therefore could sustain larger populations.

Jerusalem was the capital of a not-so wealthy roman province. It was certainly an important regional city, but there is no justification whatsoever to think it rivaled other cities in the region. The exaggeration of its significance is entirely due to its religious importance. Its history and importance have been exaggerated by later pious historians. The same is true of Mecca.

Duke Leto

Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians circa 600 BCE and the population was deported. The population around the time of Jeremiah can't have been several hundred thousand for a mass deportation to Babylon to be plausible. (See discussions again and again and again about the logistics of moving large bodies of people through desert and semi-desert terrain.) The Jewish population of Babylon sent back a colony under Ezra to rebuild Jerusalem, and it can't have numbered more than a few thousand. (Chronicles of course claims as conventionally read that David had a 3 million man army. The entire military of the United States of America, combatants and non-combatants was about 3 million in 1970.)

Irrigation systems can be rebuilt. The canard that the Mongols destroyed the irrigation systems of the Middle East so thoroughly they could never be rebuilt is itself a joke. (So are the casualties inflicted by Genghis Khan for that matter. See Jack Weatherford.) Positing that were extensive irrigation systems in Roman Judea (which there were not) is made silly by the fact there was not enough water!

Populations rebound to use all available resources in an area. If the area had a population that could support all these people under the Romans, it will have rebounded to at least a significant fraction of those reported by Tacitus and Josephus.

Look at the Demographics of Jerusalem page I linked to on Wikipedia above. Jerusalem had 15,000 inhabitants when the Crusaders got there.

Judea did NOT export grain to Rome, Egypt and Alexandria did. Egypt was then and is now an order of magnitude more fertile than Israel. It was also possible to cheaply export grain from Egypt in bulk quantities because no cultivated part of Egypt is far from the Nile and no part of the Nile isn't navigable.

The major ecological damage to the area of Judea was done by 800 BCE when all the trees were removed. It's not enough to say "the climate must have changed", you need to explain how and why.