outhouse

you can accept he knowledge that is given, or you cant. If you cannot accept the report I just posted which is at a scholars level, it is a personal problem.

they are the teachers, you are not


fact-- the temple overflowed with people, a minimum 35 acres site

fact-- the whole walled city overflowed

Duke Leto

Well that earns a big fat DUH. That wouldn't take much. How much housing do you think there was in Post-Agrippa Jerusalem? About 450 acres total space within the walls, remember? I had the misfortune of working in an office that was converted from the ground floor of a 2nd Street South Philadelphia row house when I was younger. (The space was originally a Mummer's meeting house of all things.) 13 people worked in an area that's about quarter the size of my apartment, maybe 600 square feet. You could maybe get 150 people in there if you took out all the furniture. 30's about the max you get in, so that's 3 of your haburahs. That part of 2nd street is unusually densely packed in terms of housing and business for an area where the buildings don't get above 4 stories. The building's external footprint was probably 800 square feet. If we generously pretend every house in Jerusalem had 2 floors and six rooms and an 800 square foot footprint and could fit 6 habarahs and there are no such things as roads or businesses, then the 400 or so acres with 50 houses each would allow 20,000 haburahs. But roads. shops and big houses for Sadducees did exist, so only a third to a quarter of that number is reasonable, more like a sixth since most houses were single floor. That brings us down around 3,400 haburahs, in line with the estimates I've been plugging from the start.

outhouse

quit making up completely useless comparisons while ignoring the valid and credible data we have to determine populations from 2000 years ago during a holiday with witnesses that were historians.

You are throwing out all data, not some

35 acres with 10,000 a acre on average flies.


up to 20,000 a acre could fit in tight areas




data shows the temple mount had overflowed. as well as the walled city

Duke Leto

If we sit on our asses accepting knowledge that has given then we're Christian Fundamentalists.

The paper you posted is probably sound for ritual practices and procedures, but isn't worth a bucket of warm piss when it comes to population estimates. The author does nothing but quote the written sources, say they are obviously exaggerated, but then take an arbitrary factor of exaggeration and turn around and state that because this was the minimum we could allow that the writers exaggerated the city and Temple MUST have been overflowing.

Real socio-economic history doesn't work like that. You have to work entirely from primary sources like the size of buildings and the population the acres under cultivation would support with the farming technology then available.

The fact is I'm wasting my breath. It's obvious you don't even read most of my posts, just survey for something you can take out of context and claim you've already refuted. And if all else fails you just throw out an insult and claim I'm not qualified to criticize the "real scholarship" of authors who don't specialize in ancient population measurement.

I'll ask again, because I don't want to bother these men if you are just going to turn around and ignore what relevant specialists have to say, I'll ask: If I email Lawrence Stager, Harvard Professor and excavator of Ashkelon, Israel Finkelstein, who performed the authoritative pottery shard survey of Israel and is the expert on Ancient Judah's population, and Amihai Mazar, who is a distinguished excavator and nephew of Benjamin Mazar, who actually excavated one of the gates of the Temple Mount; if I email these scholars and ask them what the more reasonable estimate would be, is there any chance you might RECONSIDER your position? You've already shown once you'll ignore the body of an email and focus on just the initial disclaimer.

Duke Leto

You have no data showing that, you have the authority of the ancient historians and we've shown you time and again that ancient authors numerical estimates are generally utterly worthless. Even their qualitative reports have to be taken with extreme skepticism.

Making logical comparisons with similar events is exactly what historians are supposed to do in these cases. It's pretty irritating to be lectured in historical method by someone who obviously has no idea how it works.

outhouse

you can accept he knowledge that is given, or you cant. If you cannot accept the report I just posted which is at a scholars level, it is a personal problem.

they are the teachers, you are not


fact-- the temple overflowed with people, a minimum 35 acres site

fact-- the whole walled city overflowed

Iskander

The war in Palestine must have been one of gory butchery, but I won’t play the number game.

The roman army in the east was truly a formidable one, but I won’t play the number game

The Passover was celebrated in style by the Jewish population, but I won’t play the number game


The Flavian invasion of Italy

Extracted from, civil war and rebellion

The battle of Bedriacum was fought on April 15 AD 69 and Otho slew himself next morning. The news of the victory reached his rival Vitellius.

Flavius Vespasianus, the general then busy with the Jewish war, was at this time nearly sixty years old. Tiberius Alexander, prefect of Egypt, proclaimed Vespasian Emperor to his troops in Alexandria in July 1.

Flavian plans of war (pg 141)
A The muster of the Eastern Army

Vespasian army in the East was truly a formidable one.

In Syria were four legions—Scythica, Ferrata, Fulminata, and Gallica
In Judea were three legions---Macedonica, Fretensis, and Apollinaris.These had borne with him the burden of the ferocious Jewish war, a struggle stained by every horror that the savagery and brutality of religious fanatics could devise.
In Egypt were two legions—Cyrenaica and Deiotariana, brought the number of legions on Vespasian’s Army to eight

But in addition to the legionaries there were to be counted the auxiliary forces of the Roman provinces and subject Princes of the Roman Empire.
Sohaemus Prince of Sophene
Antiochus King of Commagene
Herod Agrippa II ruler of Peraea
New troops were levied.
The Mint at Antioch poured out new gold and silver


Extracted from
Civil war and rebellion in the Roman Empire, AD 69-70
Bernard W. Henderson
MacMillan 1908

Duke Leto

[facepalm]

Sigh.

Duke Leto

If you don't want to play the numbers game then why participate in the thread at all?

I have not disputed a single sentence in the source you provide. I have merely pointed out, several times, that the stated strength of a legion is 5,300 men. Even if the local kings mustered forces equal to Rome, that would mean there were no more than 45,000 besiegers at Jerusalem. I don't think that most of the legions Nero sent east to deal with the revolt were sent to suppress the Jews. I think they were sent to give Parthia the message not to interfere on the Jews' side. (I assure you the possibility of this had occurred to the Jews.)

You don't hear of any pitched battles after Vespasian got there, just sieges. Cestius Gallus was ambushed with only one legion and messed up pretty badly at Beth Horon. Wiki states he had 30,000 but I'd say 10,000 was a bit more likely, and put the opposing force at no more than 15,000 Jews, possibly as little as 8,000 because you can do some serious damage to Roman infantry when you caught them in a pass in column formation. Hannibal pulled off a proportionately major victory at lake Trasimene with a similar numerical disadvantage in roughly the same conditions.

In any case, the Jews didn't even try to fight the Romans on open ground once Vespasian arrived. 3:1 are OK odds fighting the Romans in the open, so the clear implication is that they didn't have at least 120,000 men to try it with. They didn't even try another ambush, which implies a manpower a lot less than 40,000. 15,000-20,000 total effectives is reasonable. If that's all the men of military age who are willing to serve in the rebellion... 5% sounds like a good guess, which puts us around 300-400,000 Jews total, but that's for an area the size of Israel plus part of Jordan, my 200,000-300,000 number of Jews, Samarians and Greeks was for Israel alone.

Toto

I don't think "all sides" are fairly represented here.

I'd just like to point out that this is not from a secular scholar. It consists of class notes for an introductory course in religion at an evangelical college.

www.abu.nb.ca leads you to Crandall U.

This doesn't mean that there is anything wrong here, but if you are going to rely on authority, you need to examine the credentials of that authority.