Duke Leto

Yeah, you've stated again and again and again how financially important the event was. You keep ignoring all rational objections to the scale.

By the by, how was anyone more than 100 feet away supposed to have the slightest idea what he was doing or saying? Was he miced up?

How much were the pilgrims paying a head, a denarius? 1000 sestercii was something like the annual income of family in the 1st Century. So 100 sestercii or 25 denarii would be a tithe of that. What else would they spend stuff on while there? Let's say they're complete morons and all spend another 100 sestercii. You've got about 100,000 families dicking around giving away money. It totals out to 20 million sestercii. How much was Pilate sending home to Tiberius, 10% of the Temple's take? 2 million sestercii. A legionary was paid 900 sestercii a year in cash and supplies. Pilate's take would only pay for half a legion. 5 times that for 50% would be two and a half legions. Note though that even at that level it would take 20 years to equal the reported estate of Crassus. That's something like 10% of the Roman military. Why would Tiberius send an equestrian nobody like Pilate to oversee its collection instead of a senator?

Note however that Tiberius is supposed to have left Caligula a treasury of 5 billion sestercii, probably itself an exaggeration but it would indicate the scale of the revenues of the entire Empire. In that scenario Jerusalem's revenue from Passover was meaningless.

Duke Leto

You know outhouse, it would be slightly easier to endure the gratuitous insults to my intelligence and you vaunting of your own if you could manage college level spelling and grammar.

outhouse

why should I slop over known history, and spell it nice and purdy for you?


but you have the take wrong for romans and the temple.

poll tax
road taxes
temple tax
tax on all good and livestock sold
profit from all livestock, thats alot of food


why do you think jesus was so ticked off calling them thieves???



what part of this dont you understand??? this was like a modern day rock concert geared for one thing, to make dat money!!!!

outhouse

they didnt

that part is all fiction.



he was buried in a see of people with thousands of traveling teacher/healers.


he didnt live a popular moment in his life, only after death did the romans write the scripture that perverted his original jewish movement

outhouse

to hell it was


Pilate raped the temples cash once for the aquaduct. without passover.


the temple generated its money in these 3 yearly large pilgrimages, it was the jewish governement/treasury and the romans took it over and turned it into their cash cow

the whole jewish governement was corrupt under roman control, it was infected with romans


and romans did one thing perfectly, they oppressed people draining them of every resources taxing the culture just above teh point of stravation to keep the money coming in


dont tell me the romans didnt know how to extort money from oppressed victims

Horatio Parker

I'm not convinced either. The numbers seem too high.

Duke Leto

I'm not, I simply want to know why you think it was so important to Rome's treasury when it can't have been more than 20 million sestercii annually and Tiberius is supposed to have amassed 250 times that over 25 years out of the surplus of the total budget. By that number I'm letting your 400,000 hand Pilate 10% of their annual income in one day over and above their regular contributions.

Frankly, the fact that such a tax on a minor fraction of the Imperial population of 60 million would pay close to 10% of the state's military wages leads me to suspect that either the taxes weren't all that severe or the Imperial population under Claudius was even LESS that 60 million, and both seems the likeliest option.

You still haven't explained how Judea, Samaria and Galilee, which had a mixed population could even have 400,000 Jewish inhabitants given their size and the total population of 700,000 the Ottomans supported in the same area with better agricultural tech.

If 400,000 aren't there to start with they can't aggregate.

I've shown again and again and again that pre-modern armies of much more than 50,000 could not concentrate in a small area for long without constant food supplies by road or by ship. Even since 1900 troop concentrations of 500,000 plus in a condensed area only occur if a fairly big city is being contested street by street.

I've given multiple examples of gatherings of civilians on the scale you cite in the last 50 years shattering the ability of modern technology merely to get them into the destination in a timely manner.

Still you go back and refer to E.P. Sanders as an authority in spite of the mountain of evidence that his figure is logistically impossible.

There's not much further that the conversation can go.

Honestly, you are being obtuse. If I start a poll in another thread giving a range of figures and ask people to read this thread and choose the most reasonable numbers, consensus is going to fall on a number between Sarpedon's estimates and my own.

Sarpedon

Thank you for providing your numbers.

The link provided in post #93 takes on the estimate of 8,000,000 and thouroughly demolishes it. I will point out that the 8,000,000 estimate is based on Josephus's and Tacitus' inflated numbers which can be dismissed out of hand as being entirely made up, as I have been saying. I concur with chapter 9 of Magen Moshi's book, that estimates the total carrying capacity of the province to be just under 1 million. His method is quite sound and takes into account agricultural production, rather than the wild guesses of 'historians' who have an axe to grind.

8 million is a rather absurd estimation, considering that the total of the Roman Empire is estimated to be 55 million. Palestine was not considered to be a terribly important province in the Roman Empire, and the idea that it would contain 15% of the total population is simply absurd. For comparison, California contains only 12% of the population of the United States. Again, the figure of 8 million does NOT come from the Claudian census, as claimed. The Claudian census was not preserved. The figure of 8 million comes from extrapolating from the number of fighting men reported by Josephus and Tacitus, which I have dealt extensively with. Numbers of fighting men are ALWAYS overestimated by their opponents, often grotesquely. The estimate of 1 million, would make palestine slightly less than 2% of the total, far more in keeping with its perception as a backwater.

So outhouse has seriously misrepresented the facts, falsely claiming his figures come from a non-existant census, when in fact they come from politically-motivated estimates based on grossly exaggerated claims.

The method of comparing carrying capacity based on agricultural production produces a result that is confirmed by actual historical censuses of the same region.

Furthermore, I dispute the total population estimate of 80,000 for Jerusalem, based on city acreage. While I agree that the numbers per acre presented are acceptable in general, I dispute that it would apply to Jerusalem, which has always been depicted as having large tracts of undeveloped land in its walls. The truly urban portions of the city are the districts called the 'old city' and the 'new city' while the area called 'Bezetha' is always depicted as undevepoped. This constitutes as much as half or more of the total. As I pointed out, the actual area of urban development of Jerusalem is similar to the area of Pompeii, population 20,000. Given the higher population density that would be likely in Jerusalem, I think 30,000 to 40,000 would be a reasonable upper limit.

Horatio Parker

Most of the Jewish population lived outside of Palestine. 1st century Alexandria is said to contain 1 million Jews.

The book I linked to goes into detail, the chapter on Jerusalem's population is viewable. I only skimmed it, but it appears that issues such as where the walls ran at various times are contentious. YMMV.

Sarpedon

Irrelevant. Nobody disputes that jews lived all over the roman empire. What I am disputing is the claim that the population of Palestine was over 1 million.

Jews living in Alexandria aren't going to pack up and go to Jerusalem every single year. They may go a few times in their life, if they have the means, but if one actually believed that one must visit Jerusalem every year, one wouldn't live in Alexandria. As I said before, I don't care whether its a religious requirement or not. People don't fulfill their religious requirements unless it suits them. Bollocks to religious requirements!

And one million in Alexandria alone? What do you suppose the total population of Alexandria was? I am in complete agreement that Alexandria, not Jerusalem was the main center of jewish population in the Roman world, but these absurd exaggerations are just plain embarrassing. Even 8 million jews in the entire roman empire is absurd. Again, that means 15% of the total population. Some people seem to believe whatever is written.