JOSEPHUS' STATEMENT AS TO THE NUMBER OF TOWNS AND INHABITANTS PROBABLY CORRECT.

WE are fully justified in saying that the country at the time now under consideration was dotted with flourishing cities and villages, and densely settled with an industrious and enterprising people. Josephus' statement that Galilee contained two hundred and four cities and villages, the smallest of which numbered above fifteen thousand inhabitants¹, — which would raise the population to upwards of three millions, — has been often quoted; but the truth of it has been almost universally denied, or at least doubted. It ought not to be overlooked, however, that very many of those who have questioned or disputed his testimony have not always been scrupulous to quote his exact language; for instance, Dr. Schaff, in a note to Lange on Luke², says, 'four hundred and four cities and villages;' McClintock and Strong³ say, 'two hundred and forty cities and villages;' Graetz⁴ says, ' smallest city has fifteen thousand inhabitants' which is not the language of Josephus; and Keim says, ' according to Josephus' incredible statement' Jahn reads' two hundred and four cities and towns, the largest of which had one hundred and fifty thousand and the smallest fifteen thousand inhabitants,' as if from Josephus, but the statement is not in Josephus at all.

We propose to give several reasons, never before presented, why the statement of Josephus should be regarded as probably correct and reliable.

1. Josephus, as the military governor of Galilee, was intelligent, shrewd, and capable; and he would be likely to know thoroughly the resources of his own province. Besides, this was at a very critical period, when the national existence was at stake, and when it was necessary that the entire strength of the country should be rallied for defence.

2. This statement of his was made in a letter which he wrote to his enemies or rivals, who had been sent from Jerusalem to supersede him in his command, who were likewise familiar with the country, and who would have detected him in any misstatement of that kind.

This fact we regard as of great weight, in reference to which we may appropriately quote Josephus' own words, used on another occasion, that — 'to publish a falsehood among such as could at once detect it, would be to insure disgrace.'

3. Josephus raised without difficulty an army 'of above a hundred thousand young men.' It appears from the same passage that, in addition to these troops, there were garrisons in the various fortresses which the general had repaired and strengthened. Nineteen such places are mentioned as having been fortified by Josephus, or by his orders. Besides, he is particular to say 'young men,' showing that the supply of men was so great as to make it unnecessary, even in this extreme national emergency, to call upon boys or old men, or others still, who were unfit for military duty. Without doing any violence to the language of Josephus, we might conclude from it that, in addition to the men under arms, there was another body equal in number to these, who were 'detained at home to provide supplies ' for those in the field. Indeed, Jost, in his Geschichte der Israeliten, makes the number of men enrolled to be two hundred thousand, which the words of Josephus seem to justify, and which certainly cannot be disproved.

4. In the affair of the robbery of the steward of Agrippa and Berenice, when the people of the towns near Tarichsea were greatly incensed against Josephus for his part in the matter, 'one hundred thousand assembled in a single night to oppose him.'

5. When, after the conquest under Joshua, the four tribes settled in that country which afterwards became Galilee, they numbered within their limits sixty-nine cities ' with their villages.' Many of these cities were at that time fortified; a fact elsewhere noticed.

6. By a census of that date, the tribes occupying this territory mustered 223,600 fighting men⁵.

7. The slabs from Nineveh say that in the days of Hezekiah, King of Judah, Sennacherib ' took from him forty-six strong fenced cities, and of smaller towns a countless number,' besides carrying off ' more than two hundred thousand captives.'

8. In the year A.D. 39, when Herod Antipas was being tried at Rome, charged with preparing to levy war against the Romans, it was developed in the evidence that in a single armoury he had armour collected for seventy thousand men. This was in a time of comparative peace, and there is no contradiction of this important testimony. What might have been its resources in this respect when the whole province was rallying to defend the common country?

9. If we look forward a few years, we shall find a very significant hint. One would suppose that the Jewish nation in the terrible war of A. D. 66-70, so far as Palestine was concerned, had become almost entirely extinct, the towns destroyed, and the people slaughtered. Yet, only sixty-three years later, an army of two hundred thousand men rallied under the banner of Bar Cochab in rebellion against Rome. Julius Severus, the best general of the empire, was sent to crush this rebellion. He reported to the emperor that the rebels were in possession of fifty of the strongest castles and nine hundred and eighty-five villages. This struggle, which lasted probably three years, cost the Jews upwards of five hundred and eighty thousand lives. The loss on the part of the Romans was also terrible, insomuch that Hadrian, in his despatches to the Senate announcing the conclusion of the war, refrained from the usual congratulatory phrases. If the rebels had fifty strongholds and nine hundred and eighty-five villages in their possession in all Judaea, then in the prosperous years before A.D. 66 Galilee may well have had two hundred and four cities and villages⁶.

10. Captain Burton, in his Unexplored Syria, — a country which was full of life in Christ's time, but of which very little is known from history, — speaking of the abundance of ruins with which the region just north of Galilee is covered, says, that to one standing on a certain Lebanon peak which overlooks that section, 'the land must in many places have appeared to be one continuous town⁷.'

11. Still further north, in the 'Alah, i.e. the 'highland ' of Syria, north-east and south-east of Hamah, there are three hundred and sixty-five ruined towns. The Arabs declare 'that a man might formerly have travelled for a year in this district, and never have slept twice in the same village⁸.'

12. A remark similar to that of Captain Burton, just quoted, has been made in regard to the Phoenician coast, which lay west of Galilee, and with which Galilee was in such close connection, namely: 'It was so thickly covered with towns and villages that it must have given the appearance of being one unbroken city⁹.'

13. If we go east of the Jordan into Peraea and the Decapolis, we find a country that in former times was more thickly dotted with cities and towns than any other portion of Syria of equal size, or any other section of the globe. In the Hauran alone, corresponding to ancient Bashan, the Arabs claim that there are one thousand of these ruined places.

14. It should also be remembered that in those times the cities were usually packed with people. In our day we are hardly able to appreciate this fact, and certainly we do not make allowance enough for it in judging of the number of inhabitants of any given Eastern city or country as reported in the old histories. For instance, no modern city of the size of ancient Jerusalem would have held, much less accommodated, the number of people which often flocked there to attend the feasts. A few years before the siege under Titus an estimate was made, and the official return was 2,565,000 persons present at the Passover. Josephus says 2,700,000, which did not include many sick and defiled persons, and many foreigners who had come for religious worship. Some recent measurements of Dr. Thomas Chaplin, of Jerusalem, throw much light on this apparently remarkable statement of the Jewish historian.

15. Perhaps a hint may be obtained by noticing the number killed in the various battles and sieges of Galilee, so far as these were reported. We have made a careful estimate, and find the whole number to be about 155,630. This includes the prisoners, who, however, except in the case of Tarichaea, were a mere fraction. Several fights occurred where the number of killed is not given. Further, a large number of people would be destroyed in various ways in such a terrible war, and no record made of the number lost. If we put the whole number killed at one hundred and seventy-five or two hundred thousand, it cannot be regarded as an exaggeration.

In the face of such illustrative facts, the statement of Josephus in regard to the cities and villages of Galilee can no longer seem improbable.

1) Life, XLV.

2) Page 49, col. i.

3) Cyclopedia, vol. iii. p. 717, col. 2, art. 'Galilee.'

4) III. p. 392.

5) Josh. xix. 10-39.

6) Milman, History of the Jews, II. pp. 431-438; Jost, Judenthum, II. p. 79; Dion Cassius, Ixix. 15, 'Hadrian.'

7) I. p. 79.

8) Ibid. II. p. 1 60.

9) Schröder, Die Phönizische Sprache, 1869, Einleitung, p, 3.