changes that had occurred in the course of nine months among those who were fit for war were not taken any further into consideration, on account of their being so inconsiderable in relation to the total result. A fresh census was taken 38 years later in the steppes of Moab (Num 26), ), for the division of the land of Canaan among the tribes according to the number of their families (Num 33:54). The number which this gave was 601,730 men of twenty years old and upwards, not a single one of whom, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, was included among those that were mustered at Sinai, because the whole of that generation had died in the wilderness (Num 26:63.). In the historical account, instead of these exact numbers, the number of adult males is given in a round sum of 600,000 (Num 11:21; Exo 12:37). To this the Levites had to be added, of whom there were 22,000 males at the first numbering and 23,000 at the second, reckoning the whole from a month old and upwards (Num 3:39; Num 26:62). Accordingly, on the precarious supposition that the results obtained from the official registration of births and deaths in our own day furnish any approximative standard for the people of Israel, who had grown up under essentially different territorial and historical circumstances, the whole number of the Israelites in the time of Moses would have been about two millions.[1]. This is the case in Belgium, where, out of 1000 inhabitants, 421 are under twenty years of age. According to the Danish census of 1840, out of 1000 inhabitants there were -
Place
Under 20 yrs. of age
Above 20 yrs. of age
Denmark 432 568
Schleswig 436 56
Holstein 460 540
Lauenburg 458 542
According to this standard, if there were 600,000 males in Israel above twenty years of age, there would be in all 1,000,000 or 1,100,000 males, and therefore, including the females, more than two millions.)
Modern critics have taken offence at these numbers, though without sufficient reason.[2]
- ↑ Statistics show that, out of 10,000 inhabitants in any country, about 5580 are over twenty years of age (cf. Chr. Bernoulli, Hdb. der Populationistik, 1841
- ↑ Knobel has raised the following objections to the historical truth or validity of the numbers given above: (1.) So large a number could not possibly have lived for any considerable time in the peninsula of Sinai, as modern travellers estimate the present population at not more than from four to seven thousand, and state that the land could never have been capable of sustaining a population of 50,000. But the books of Moses do not affirm that the Israelites lived for forty years upon the natural produce of the desert, but that they were fed miraculously with manna by God (see at Exo 16:31). Moreover, the peninsula of Sinai yielded much more subsistence in ancient times than is to be found there at present, as is generally admitted, and only denied by Knobel in the interests of rationalism. The following are Ritter's remarks in his Erdkunde, 14 pp. 926-7: “We have repeatedly referred above to the earlier state of the country, which must have been vastly different from that of the present time. The abundant vegetation, for example; the larger number of trees, and their superiority in size, the destruction of which would be followed by a decrease in the quantity of smaller shrubs, etc.; also the greater abundance of the various kinds of food of which the children of Israel could avail themselves in their season; the more general cultivation of the land, as seen in the monumental period of the earliest Egyptians, viz., the period of their mines and cities, as well as in Christian times in the wide-spread remains of monasteries, hermitages, walls, gardens, fields, and wells; and, lastly, the possibility of a better employment of the temporary flow of water in the wadys, and of the rain, which falls by no means unfrequently, but which would need to be kept with diligence and by artificial means for the unfruitful periods of the year, as is the case in other districts of the same latitude. These circumstances, which are supported by the numerous inscriptions of Sinai and Serbal, together with those in the Wady Mokatteb and a hundred other valleys, as well as upon rocky and mountainous heights, which are now found scattered in wild solitude and utter neglect throughout the whole of the central group of mountains, prove that at one time a more numerous population both could and did exist there.” (2.) “If the Israelites had been a nation of several millions in the Mosaic age, with their bravery at that time, they would have conquered the small land more easily and more rapidly than they seem to have done according to the accounts in the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, which show that they were obliged to tolerate the Canaanites for a long time, that they were frequently oppressed by them, and that it was not till the time of David and Solomon that their supremacy was completely established,” This objection of Knobe's is founded upon the supposition that the tribes of Canaan were very small and weak. But where has he learned that? As they had no less than 31 kings, according to Josh 12, and dwelt in many hundreds of towns, they can hardly have been numerically weaker than the Israelites with their 600,000 men, but in all probability were considerably stronger in numbers, and by no means inferior in bravery; to say nothing of the fact that the Israelites neither conquered Canaan under Joshua by the strength of their hands, nor failed to exterminate them afterwards from want of physical strength. (3.) Of the remaining objections, viz., that so large a number could not have gone through the Arabian Gulf in a single night, or crossed the Jordan in a day, that Joshua could not have circumcised the whole of the males, etc., the first has been answered on pp. 350, 351, by a proof that it was possible for the Red Sea to be crossed in a given time, and the others will be answered when we come to the particular events referred to.
