How big was Jerusalem at the time of Jesus?

[Zebra]

I checked it out. It was just a wee bit smaller than Los Angeles.

ok

 

[surada]

People also lived outside the walls, so the urban region itself would have been higher.

It was bandit territory. Not safe outside the walls.

 

[surada]

The 70 A.D. revolt probably did kill over a million Jews, but I doubt they were all in Jerusalem. The 67 B.C. siege killed around 12,000 defenders, so I would guess maybe 40,000 to 60,000 would be able to cram themselves in, up to 150,000 if you count the suburbs. Battles around the city could easily involve hundreds of thousands, of course. As a market town, the daytime population would be far larger than the nighttime population after the gates closed for the night.

The population of all of Palestine never exceeded 700,000 people.

Exaggeration is routine.

 

[surada]

Even today, Jerusalem is not that big geographically, but I suspect in the first century its population was more than a few hundred. The Great Revolt there claimed hundreds of thousand of lives. Tacitus estimated the casualties from this clash at 600,000 (Histories V, 13). Josephus estimated them at 1.1 million (Wars 6.9.3). Some current estimates determine the casualties to be at more than 1.3 million, an estimate that includes civilians such as moderate Jews visiting the city to celebrate Passover.

The casualties included Romans, too, but a couple hundred Jewish soldiers could not have killed a million Roman soldiers.

Don't you think the numbers are exaggeration? Even in1900 AD the whole population of Palestine was just 750,000.

 

[norwegen]

Don't you think the numbers are exaggeration? Even in1900 AD the whole population of Palestine was just 750,000.

The casualties? No. Thousands of Jews made pilgrimages to Jerusalem every year, and thousands of Roman soldiers were on site for the Jewish revolt.

The population? Yes. It didn't number in the hundreds of thousands, but surely it was more than a few hundred. It was the commercial, cultural, and political hub of Judaism.