Duke Leto

The modern population of Israel with modern agriculture, infrastructure and sanitation is ~7 million. The population of Rome probably could never have gotten to half a Million. Jerusalem was an inland city with limited water.

The historical account would have you believe 400,000 were on the Temple Mount, which is probably more than lived in the city of Rome. That would be as large as Woodstock, which crippled the infrastructure of its environs days in advance.

If 400,000 people got onto the Temple Mount at one time, they'd likely have been standing on one another's heads a couple layers deep.

In other words, the received numbers are slightly exaggerated. 4000 on the Temple Mount is much more likely.

outhouse

sorry you need to learn your history bud. I know your trying to help but your wrong.


the temple would hold 400,000. yes it would be crowded, and it probably was. with that said not all 400,000 were probably in the temple, you had them camping all over the place.

also estimates are between 300,000 and 400,000 by most scholars today.



sheep flocks were brought in advance by the Saducees and the logistics are amazing on what they pulled off.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus



Jesus and his followers left Galilee and traveled to Jerusalem in Judea. They may have traveled through Samaria as reported in John, or around the border of Samaria as reported in Luke, as was common practice for Jews avoiding hostile Samaritans. Jerusalem was packed with Jews who had come for Passover, perhaps comprising 300,000 to 400,000 pilgrims

Duke Leto

400,000 people in Roman Jerusalem is logistically impossible. Please stop quoting that number. It actually is ridiculous.

Duke Leto

Then the scholars need to learn mathematics.

Xerxes allegedly multi-million man army (which no military historian will allow was greater than 300,000) is supposed to have drunk rivers dry in the comparatively fertile area of Thessaly.

Julius Caesar's force of ~25,000 in Thessaly was in danger of starvation when it was cut off from supply before Pharsalus. That's even with all the farm animals they could kill. He was constantly in supply trouble in Gaul with larger armies. Granted they couldn't forage effectively but the problem of moving large bodies of troops in the ancient world ought to give you pause.

By comparison the Nazis hurled a mere 3 million men into the Soviet Union in 1941 from a front line that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. That stretched their logistics to the breaking point as the campaign went on.

The total footprint of the Temple Mount is 150,000 m². That would include the footprint of the Antonia fortress. Even if all 150,000 m² were free to stand in, there'd need to be about 2.5 people per square meter. I'm a big guy and would be a giant by 1st Century standards, and I'm a full meter wide and sadly about 2/3rds of a meter deep. You can't fit two of me in a square meter. A normal 1st Century Jew would probably be between two thirds and three quarters of a meter wide and a third deep. No way you can jam more than two 1st Century Jews in a square meter.

Even if you have the Temple Mount packed to the gills, you won't be able to keep it that way comfortably for much more than an hour. Somebody will need to go to the bathroom.

Then there's the problem of how to get the crowd onto the Temple Mount in the first place, the stairwells would be backed up for hours.

Compare the John Stewart/Steven Colbert rally from 2010. A mere 215,000 attended, myself included. I arrived at the Fairfax Virginia Metro station after being lost for about two hours around 10:00. The line for the train was several thousand people long and I was unable to embark for the National Mall for another two and a half hours. This is America's flagship municipal train system we're talking about, completely overloaded. NO passengers could comfortably board at the stations between Fairfax and the Mall. A handful literally forced their way in.

On arrival the crowd was not packed to the gills, although I did not venture close to the podium and the Mall is considerably larger than the Temple Mount.

One more thing to consider: Most of the pilgrims would have to have come from Judea itself. Only a fraction of the population could go to Jerusalem at Passover and not everyone in Judea was Jewish. That would give JUST Judea several million inhabitants, which would be about 50 times more military men than the 6th Legion could fight on its own if things got hairy, and nearly as many people as live in the region today, who are so many that they actually have drunk the river Jordan dry.

Realistically, 50,000 is the MAXIMUM Roman Jerusalem could absorb for Passover and 10,000 or less is really a more reasonable number.

If historians are honestly saying 400,000 they need to have their heads examined.

outhouse

bud what is ridiculous, is your lack of sources explaining differently.


is your failure to understand cultural anthropology and known history


300,000 to 400,000 are the known numbers of those in attendance.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus

Jesus and his followers left Galilee and traveled to Jerusalem in Judea. They may have traveled through Samaria as reported in John, or around the border of Samaria as reported in Luke, as was common practice for Jews avoiding hostile Samaritans. Jerusalem was packed with Jews who had come for Passover, perhaps comprising 300,000 to 400,000 pilgrims

Sanders, E. P. The historical figure of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk). Penguin, 1993. p. 249




so if you have a problem, you take it up with Sanders, or show where his mistakes were made, but your false opinion doesnt cut it

Duke Leto

Sanders is a fool then. See the other thread.

I was going to try and take it up with Sanders but he retired in 2006 and Duke doesn't give a faculty email for him as Emeritus.

He was a Professor of RELIGION though, not History. He almost certainly has no qualifications in the kinds of archaeology needed to estimate populations and absolutely no concept of logistics if he believes you could "easily" get 400,000 people into Roman Jerusalem.

If I were to give this figure to a classical historian like Adrian Goldsworthy or an Israeli archaeologist like Amihai Mazar or Israel Finkelstein they would find it hilarious.

The only reason it hasn't been laughed out of court is that the book is about a historical Jesus and the historical Jesus (as opposed to his movement) is of no interest to the political and sociological historians actually qualified to make such judgements.

outhouse

well take it up with Sanders, his work is pretty complete.

your math is flawed, 20,000 - 30,000 people per acre and it is about 36 acres, there was plenty of room lol didnt say id want to be packed in there.



agaian maybe you missed the part where they all may not have been inside at once, ive been told before they would fit by people that have been there.

you have made a few mistake's though


you better check some jewish sources because this was a required event, and had a poll tax. temple tax, road taxes, and goods/property brought on the road could be taxed by many of the crooked tax farmers.

tensions were high on both sides


Pilate and Caiaphas were on pins and needles, they wanted this payday to go off without a hitch


Now the roman army didnt want a riot, but they would have mowed through peasants. Even the many zealots were poorly armed and would not have slowed down the highly trained army

outhouse

you do understand that the site is 36 acres

and you can get 20,000 to 30,000 on a acre


again you missed the point that that is the population in the city surrounding the temple, no one said they were all in at the same time.


I think you underestimate the situation due to lack of historical knowledge of the religious and first century judaism

Duke Leto

To make life confusing I edited my reply in the other thread. See that before replying.

20,000-30,000 people per acre? I'm sorry there are 43,560 square feet in an acre, to get 30,000 people into an acre means fitting each person into two thirds of a square foot. I'm a size 13 shoe. If I take both my shoes off and put them next to each other they'll cover about two thirds of a square foot. Are you thinking of Leprechauns or Hobbits instead of humans or do you plan on crushing them to death before slotting them in?

You still have to explain where the food and water for these people is coming from.

Woodstock fit 100,000 people for a couple of days, but they had 600 acres and plastic coolers.

Maybe Pilate wanted things to off well, but he'd have to be nuts to allow a crowd of hundreds of thousands to assemble on the Temple Mount. A crowd that size wouldn't need weapons to kill a full strength legion. All they'd have to do was push their own dead forward until the Romans fell off the edge of the platform.

The basic problems are twofold. There wasn't enough water in Jerusalem and there weren't enough people in Judea. Claudius' census put the total number of Roman Citizens at 7 Million. People estimate that the total population of the empire was something like 60 million. The empire had an area of 1.6 million square miles. Modern Israel, roughly on par in size with respect to Judea is 8000 square miles. That's half of one percent of the empire. Judea is semi desert so it will not have had the population density of Italy. The maximum it could have been was one half of percent of the empire's population, which is 300,000. A small but not insignificant percentage of these people would live in Jerusalem already, maybe 50,000 tops. Of the remaining 250,000 I'd say a fair number were Samaritans, Greeks or in any case just not Jews. Thus I'd say that placing the entire non-Jerusalem Jewish population of Judea was about 150,000, and maybe a third of them making the pilgrimage every year is about all that is reasonable.

steve_bnk

One jug of wine at a time.