Crucifiction

"And Joab gave up the sum of the number of the people unto the king: and there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the sword; and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men." (2 Sam. 24:9)

Just wondering, with the historical evidence we have today, is it even possible that Israel and Judah could have put together an army as large as America's army today?

I wasn't even aware that many people lived in the Palestinian region at the time.

Roland

The Bible writers do seem a bit fast and loose with their numbers. Exodus tells us that around 2,500,000 Hebrews left Egypt with Moses (600,000 adult males, not including women and boys, let alone livestock). What is that? Roughly the population of Chicago?

Celsus

At the turn of the first millenium BCE, there was about 50,000 people living in all of Palestine, according to Finkelstein's 1988 survey The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (for all of his idiosyncracies, this work is now a standard, and much of its findings axiomatic). By the Babylonian conquest, it would have reached about triple that.

Joel

Casper

I believe that the Roman Army of Gaul was only about 40,000.

If true, then it doesn't say much for Hebrew battle skills, does it?

Celsus

Nah, like all good patriotic wartime reporters, they understated their losses in the battle for 'Ai. Maybe the Aites had phasors. If not, then all the corpses must have got burned by a freak bushfire. Then it rained the next day and swept away all the evide...er, ash. And then they finally conquered 'Ai, and it rained and swept all that ash away yet again.

Joel

Crucifiction

That's exactly what I though. I debated a guy about this very same topic on a messageboard about a year ago; and he kept saying that the modern evidence that shows there weren't even a million people living in the area at the time must be ignored, because the Bible says otherwise. :banghead:

blt to go

Crucifiction--very minor, unimportant nit pick. According to 1 Chron. 21, the number was actually 1.57 Million, and that was only counting 10 of the 12 tribes! 2 Samuel's recording 1.3 Million with all tribes counted must be a "copyist error."