Celsus

Heh interesting ninja-edit.

Have you read your Bible, really? Really? Perhaps you can tell us how a system of tents can have a permanent sewage system. And how 2 million people can leave no trace at a permanent location, especially given a town-like sewage system (btw, you tried calculating what 45 square metres per person would mean for 2 million people? It would in fact be the biggest settlement of the entire Iron Age Levant...). And if you'll concede it's less, how much less (beware you may want to check how many times other numbers are cited elsewhere in the Pentateuch and Joshua because several thousands of Israelites are often killed in a fell swoop. Be sure to check what the Hebrew says, especially )

Celsus

So you're saying the Bible's lying when it said the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness?
Tell me, how big do you think such a settlement would be?
Say what? You're talking about a bunch of Bronze Age farmers being better than modern refugees who, even the ones in Africa, have tractors and heavy lifting/drilling equipment (provided by the UN) and modern medicine and no prohibitions from erecting permanent structures?

renassault

It was my fault about that, I edited while you were responding to it I guess, but I'm not sure why taking a crap is such a big problem, especially how the water sources which are so scarce, could easily be avoided. The smell? Maybe there was one, maybe not.

I don't think it would be 45 square meters per person, more like a big tent per family, which would be like 100 square meters per family of 5 (on average, who knows how many kids they each had), maybe. 2 million people gives it about 40 million square meters which is 40 square kilometers, so rounding up we could get a 50 square kilometer settlement (for food, etc): 7 kilometers by 7 is the largest settlement in the levant? Not to mention if the tent was used only for sleeping, then it would probably be half that size. It wouldn't have sewage systems that's for sure, nothing would be traceable.

renassault

I think the ancients had better skills at starting and keeping up settlements than do modern refugees.

Celsus

For the Bronze Age, yes it would be, being packed from end to end. Jericho was something like 3-5 ha in the Bronze Age. You wanna know how big that is? About 0.05 square km. The biggest city was Hazor, about 50-100 ha. IIRC, depending on when. Yet we've found that but no 50 sq km settlement (that's 5,000 ha. btw) floating in the middle of the desert.
So they miraculously managed to deal with the 2 tons of shit their camp would have generated every day for 38 years? Or they walked 10+ km every day to take a shit? (Remember someone in the centre of their 50 square km camp would have had to walk 4 km just to get out, since you assume there's no permanent sewage system which we'd have discovered by now if there'd been one, especially for a settlement nearly 100 times bigger than the largest city we've found so far). It's not a matter of who's better, it's simple logistics.

gdeering

If so, then there should be more evidence on the ground, but there is none. Not a trace.

You might as well try to find the Garden of Eden or Noah's ark, wait don't tell me.....

Clivedurdle

And it is random that this well known number - which was believed to be spiritually very significant because of its allegedly magical properties, appears in the gospels?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/153_(number)

renassault

You can find a ton of such numbers between 10 and 200:

1. 152 - 152 is the sum of four consecutive primes (31 + 37 + 41 + 43). It is a nontotient since there is no integer with 152 coprimes below it.

152 is a refactorable number since it is divisible by the total number of divisors it has, and in base 10 it is divisible by the sum of its digits, making it a Harshad number. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/152_(number))

2. 151 - 151 is the 36th prime number, the previous is 149, with which it comprises a twin prime. 151 is also a palindromic prime. 151 is a centered decagonal number. 151 is also a lucky number.

151 appears in the Padovan sequence, preceded by the terms 65, 86, 114 (it is the sum of the first two of these).

3. 150 - One hundred [and] fifty is the sum of eight consecutive primes (7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31). Given 150, the Mertens function returns 0.

The sum of Euler's totient function φ(x) over the first twenty-two integers is 150.

150 is a Harshad number and an abundant number.

Your examples are a bad analogy because the ancients didn't have calculus or limits, so half of your citations were unknown mathematics in John's time. Show that it was a well known number (one more well known than 6? Which was considered the perfect number) in Hellenistic culture back then.

Not as impressive as 152 and 150.

Absolutely nothing special about that.

Not very supportive of it being a special number.

This was well known in the 1st century?

Unknown mathematics in the 1st century.

Not nearly as impressive as 152, 150, or 6.

between 1 and 200, there are a ton for anyone who knows simple math= 36 (1^3+2^3+3^3), 92 (1^3+3^3+4^3), etc.

renassault

What do you expect to remain? The poles from the tents? Noah's watch?

renassault

Exodus 19:2 'After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.' Clearly they weren't in an area of 50 sq. km, they lived in tents (Num. 1:53), and I don't know enough to say whether 1.5 (it's not more than that: 600,000 men 20 or older=600,000 women 20 or older + 100,000-200,000 children at most, Numbers 3:43) million people could not have formed a small enough camp. Refugee camps are not with tents, and so the spaces to travel are much larger. It's not much different than military camps/fortresses which had a comparable number of people (100,000 Moab), armies of 300,000 etc. How do you think for example Sennacherib's army of 185,000 marched? Same principle. It's not the same as with a refugee camp.