This is the article that started it all. One day, I began musing about some of the mathematical impossibilities in the Bible. I mean, you can't argue against a miracle, because it's supposed to be impossible, but when they say 2+2=3, well, something is wrong. And when the Bible writers got wound up about the magnificent temple, they just didn't know when to stop. The temple was filled 1000 times over, and they just kept putting stuff in.
I submitted an earlier version of this article to Farrell Till's "Skeptical Review", and much to my surpise, he accepted and printed it. I even got paid - two year's free subscription - which has a cash value of $12.
By the way, for those of you who need a daily atheism fix, real life is intruding upon me once again, so after today, I won't be posting until next Wednesday.
THE NUMBERS OF THE BOOK
Every now and then, I run into someone who believes that every word in the Bible is literally true. If the Bible says that men lived for 900 years, and that 5 linear miles of water fell on the earth, then it must have happened. There is really no way to prove that these events did not happen, since by definition, a “miracle” is something extra-ordinary.
However, sometimes the Bible writers slipped up. When they told a story, nothing but superlatives would do. More than anything else, the numbers that are tossed around in the bible show this to be true. Apparently, mathematics was not their strong point, because on numerous occasions, the bible writers made statements that simply could not have happened.
So, basically, this chapter is sort of an accountants-eye view of the Bible.
SOLOMON, AND THE ISRAELITE ABATTOIR
King Solomon was a very devout man. He also liked to do things in big ways. Take, for example, the sacrifice that he offered up during a festival:
“Then the King and all the people offered sacrifice before the LORD. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep.” - 2 Chronicles 7:4,5
Now, let’s pause for a moment and let these numbers sink in. According to verse 9, this festival lasted seven days. That means that one animal was killed every 4.3 seconds, day and night, for a week.
Let’s look at it another way. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, an adult sheep would weigh between 80 and 400 pounds. Let’s take an average size of 200 pounds. Oxen come it at around 900 pounds. This means that Solomon slaughtered 43.8 million pounds of animals.
This would be a pretty big pile of animal. If the animal carcasses were stacked, with no wasted space, it would make a pile of 3.9 million cubic feet, or, a pile 5 feet high, covering 18 acres.
And what did he do with this meat? Well according to verse 7, he tried to put it on the alter, along with a cereal grain offering.
“For there he offered the burnt offering and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze alter Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the cereal offering and the fat.” - 2 Chronicles 7:7
Talk about an understatement. I could picture Solomon, looking at that mountain of meat, and saying to his attendant, “Gee, do you think that’s too much to put on the alter?”
The sheer volume of meat involved is enough to convince anyone that this passage is grossly exaggerated. I will not even attempt to calculate the economic impact of this slaughter on a relatively poor group of desert farmers.
THE MAGNIFICENT TEMPLE
Solomon’s temple was a lot smaller than most people picture it. 1 Kings 6:2 tells us that it was 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. In a rare example of biblical precision, 2 Chronicles 3:3 gives exactly the same measurements. A cubit is 17.5 inches, so the temple would have been 87.5’ x 29’, and about 4 stories high. It would total 2,552 square feet in area. To put this in perspective, it would be less than twice the size of my house, but four stories high. This number is very important, so keep it in mind.
The total temple area was larger than simply the “house of the LORD”. There was a courtyard, a palace, and other buildings. However, as we will soon see, the contents and value are out by at least a factor of a thousand, so, a few extra buildings are hardly significant.
The Gold and Silver
“With great pains I have provided for the house of the LORD, a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver, and bronze and iron without weighing, for there is so much of it; timber and stone, too, I have provided.” - 1 Chronicles 22:14
Since 1 talent = 75.5 pounds, this means that 7.55 million pounds of gold and 75.5 million pounds of silver went into the temple - a total of 83.05 million pounds of precious metal. Now, remember the size of the temple. To get this much gold and silver into the temple, there must have been 32,543 pounds of it per square foot. The priest must have had to crawl over the heaps of gold to get to the alter.
Here’s another interesting tidbit. One cubic foot of silver weighs 628.4 pounds. This means that the silver of the temple occupied 120,146 cubic feet. The total gross size of the temple was only 111,650 cubic feet. Therefore, if the silver of the temple was formed into a solid block, it would be bigger than the temple itself - never mind the gold, iron, bronze, timber, and stone.
In addition to the gold and silver, there was apparently so much bronze and iron that it could not even be weighed. Since the gold and silver weighed in at 83 million pounds, that means that the bronze and iron must have weighed considerably more (I will assume that it was double). We are now looking at somewhere in the range of 100,000 pounds of metal per square foot of the temple. That is the equivalent weight of 40 full size cars per square foot. And we haven’t even gotten to the rock and timber, yet.
The gold and silver equates to a dollar value of $54 Billion today. Even given the inflated population figures of that are recorded in the Bible, it still means that every man, woman, and child in the nation contributed almost $20,000, or 40 pounds of gold and silver. In all likelihood, the population of was only about 1/10 of the Biblical figures, so the contribution per person would have been approximately 10 times higher. And, of course, we have not costed the iron, bronze, rock, timber, and labour. Not bad for a group of poor desert farmers.
The Labour Force
“King Solomon raised a levy of forced labour out of all ; and the levy numbered thirty thousand men. And he sent them to , ten thousand a month in relays; they would be a month in and two months at home; Adoniram was in charge of the levy. Solomon also had seventy thousand burden bearers and eighty thousand hewers of stone in the hill country, besides Solomon’s three thousand three hundred chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work.” - 1 Kings 5:13-16
By my count, this comes to 183,300 persons who worked on this temple. To put this in perspective, it took 1,283,000 man-years to build the temple, or 503 man-years to build each square foot it.
If I apply this rate of construction to my living room, which is 20’ x 12’, it would take over 120,000 man years to build it. To put it yet another way, if a construction team of 100 persons (which is too big to function on such a small job) worked on building my living room, it would take them 1,200 years to build it.
If 183,000 people really worked for seven years to build a 2,552 square foot temple, they must have worked at a snail’s pace. Their progress could only be measured at the molecular level.
The lumber
According to the above quote, 10,000 labourers brought lumber from at a time. There were a total of 30,000 labourers rotating on three shifts. Assuming that each labourer brought back 100 pounds of lumber on each trip, that means that one million pounds of lumber arrived at the temple every month. Don’t forget that the temple was only 2,552 square feet, and it was already piled with gold, silver, bronze, and iron.
That’s almost 400 pounds of lumber per square foot, coming in every month. Every year, the equivalent of 240 semi-trailer loads would have arrived. Where did they put it all?
The staff
When the temple was finished and put into operation, staff was required. King David outlined the staffing requirements:
“’Twenty four thousand of these,’ David said, ‘shall have charge of the work in the house of the LORD, six thousand shall be officers and judges, four thousand gatekeepers, and four thousand shall offer praises to the LORD with the instruments which I have made for praise.” - 1 Chronicles 23:4,5
So, 24,000 persons were to work in the house of the Lord. This must have been a pretty slack job. Based on the size of the temple and courtyard, and considering that access to certain parts of the temple was restricted to the priests and high priest, there couldn’t possibly be room for more than about 100 people at a time. This means that each Levite would have worked for only about one day per year. Where can I apply?
The total contents
Wow, this must have been some building. Consider what was inside its walls:
Ÿ 6,260 cubic feet of gold
Ÿ 120,146 cubic feet of silver
Ÿ 338,000 cubic feet of iron (minimum estimate)
Ÿ 321,000 cubic feet of bronze (minimum estimate)
Ÿ 600,000 cubic feet of Lebanese Cedar arrived every year
Ÿ untold quantities of stone, brick, and local timbers
Ÿ 24,000 staff (not necessarily simultaneous)
Ÿ Assorted fixtures, the Ark of the Covenant, etc.
All of this was inside a building with a total volume of only 111,650 cubic feet. And, don’t forget that buildings are essentially hollow. Again, all I can say is, “Wow”.
HOLY QUAIL!
An unusual account is recorded in Numbers 11. It begins with the Israelites short of food, and looking for a little meat:
“Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall not eat one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you.” - Numbers 11:18-20
So, God sends them a little meat:
“And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and it brought quails from the sea, and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side, and a day’s journey on the other side, round about the camp, and about two cubits above the face of the earth.” - Numbers 11:31
Now, let’s calculate just how many quail are involved, here. Most bible dictionaries consider a day’s journey to be approximately 20 miles. So, a circle with a radius of 20 miles would have an area of 1,256 sq. miles. The quail filled this area to a depth of 2 cubits, or 35 inches.
This makes 102 billion cubic feet of quail. The quail is a fairly small bird, averaging one pound in weight, and 13 inches in height. Based on this size, each quail would occupy 0.72 cubit feet. Therefore, God must have blessed the Israelites with approximately 142 billion quail. That’s over 47,000 quail for every Israelite. It must have been like an early version of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Now, I’m not sure of the world population of quail, however, the current world population of chickens is only 30 Billion. Chickens likely outnumber quail by at least 100 to 1, since chickens are commonly raised in huge commercial quantities in our modern, crowded earth. So, when the Israelites asked God for a little meat, little did they suspect that he would respond with over 500 times the entire world population of quail.
Before I finish with the quail, I must point out the end result of the meat harvest.
“While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.” - Numbers 11:33
I thought God said that they would get to eat the quail for a whole month.
JUST HOW BIG WAS NINEVAH?
“So Jonah arose and went to Ninevah, according to the word of the LORD. Now, Ninevah was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey.” - Jonah 3:3,4
A day’s journey in ancient times was approximately 20 miles, so, Ninevah would have been 60 miles in diameter. It would have occupied 2,826 square miles. That’s one big city.
Let’s make a few comparisons. occupies only 304 square miles. In that area, 7,322,564 people are housed. This gives a population density of 24,000 people per square mile. By contrast, I live in a small city of 195,000, which occupies 42 square miles, for a density of 4,600.
Most ancient cities were fairly dense, due to the logistical difficulties in feeding, watering, and cleaning up after large numbers of people before the age of mass transportation systems, not to mention the cost of building the city walls. For example, ancient had a population of 20,000, inside walls with a circumference of 2 miles, for a density of 62,500 persons per square mile. If Ninevah had an average density of 50,000 people per square mile, it must have had a population of 141,300,000.
Since is considered to be a “great city” by most standards, Ninevah must have been stupendous. It was 9 times larger than in land area, and 19 times larger in population.
But wait, the bible gives us the population of Ninevah:
“And should not I pity Ninevah, that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” - Jonah 4:11
One hundred and twenty thousand persons, spread over 2,826 square miles is only 42 persons per square mile - that’s 15 acres per person, or 60 acres for a family of four. That’s not a city.
Realistically, we could expect Ninevah to have a walled circumference of approximately seven miles, assuming that the population figures are accurate. Interestingly, archeologists have found walls that likely were Ninevah, and they were about seven miles around.
So, Ninevah was not a three day journey in breadth, unless Jonah was a really slow walker. So slow, in fact, that he could have gotten a job working on the temple.
THE REALLY BIG WALL
“And the rest fled into the city of ; and the wall fell upon twenty-seven thousand men that were left.” 1 Kings 20:30
That must have been a pretty big wall. To calculate the precise way that this happened, we must first of all calculate the size of Aphek.
The above discussion outlined the sizes of various walled cities. Ninevah, a “great city”, had a circumference of about seven miles. ’s was about two miles. Aphek is barely mentioned in the Bible, and is never referred to as being great, so we can assume that it was likely much smaller than either of these two cities. That would give it a circumference of less than two miles. Let’s use 1.5 miles for this discussion. This size would be on the upper limit of what would be reasonable.
If these men were standing against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, they would each occupy about two linear feet. That means that there would need to be seven concentric circles of men, standing against the wall when it fell. The entire wall must have fallen simultaneously, with none of the men getting out of the way, or shielding themselves. As well, the wall must have fallen outward in all places, as if there had been a great explosion.
THE BUSY MIDWIVES
When the Israelites were in captivity in , Pharaoh made an unusual request. He called the Israelite midwives before him, and commanded them to kill all Hebrew male children as they were born.
Then the king of said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiph'rah and the other Pu'ah, "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live." But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of commanded them, but let the male children live. - Ex 1:15-17
Did you notice that there were only two midwives, and they are mentioned by name? They must have been pretty busy women.
How busy were they? Well, Exodus 12:37 numbers the Israelites who left at 600,000 men, plus women and children. According to the Bible, the total population of the group would have been around 1.8 million in total. If we assume that the Israelites lived for an average of 80 years, and that their birth rate was stable, that means that there would be an average of 22,500 births per year, or 61 per day. If these two women worked 12 hours per day, seven days per week, each one of them would deliver a baby every 23 minutes.
But, actually, the birth rate must have been much higher than this. It could not have been stable. According to the Exodus 12:40, the Israelites were in for 430 years. During this time, 70 immigrants multiplied to 1.8 million. So, the birthrate must have been accelerating. The number of births by the time that Pharaoh gave his command would be much higher than my original forecast.
There is yet another problem with this story. According to Exodus 6:16-20, Moses was the great grandson of Levi. Moses’ grandfather came to as a child with his father. So, this population of 1.8 million arose from a mere 70 immigrants over only three generations. Even if we ignore the fact that the combined ages of the generations listed only comes to 352 (1) , not 430, we are still faced by a huge problem. By my calculations (2) , each woman would need to have 320 babies, with zero mortality rate.
I don’t know who I pity more - the women, or the midwives.
CONCLUSION
So, when the Bible says that Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, can we really take it at face value? In fact, if it can be conclusively proven that the Bible is filled with exaggerations, what else is it lying about?
Footnotes:
(1) These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations: Gershon, Kohath, and Merar'i, the years of the life of Levi being a hundred and thirty-seven years. The sons of Gershon: Libni and Shim'e-i, by their families. The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, , and Uz'ziel, the years of the life of Kohath being a hundred and thirty-three years. The sons of Merar'i: Mahli and Mushi. These are the families of the Levites according to their generations. Amram took to wife Joch'ebed his father's sister and she bore him Aaron and Moses, the years of the life of Amram being one hundred and thirty-seven years. - Exodus 6:16-20
These are the names of the sons of who came to with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,... All the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons - Exodus 1:1,2,5
The time that the people of dwelt in was four hundred and thirty years . - Exodus 12:40
So, Levi came to with his son Kohath, among others. Kohath lived to be 133 years old. His son Amram, who lived to be 137 years old, became father to Moses. Moses was 80 years old when the events of the Exodus took place.
If we give the Bible the benefit of every doubt, and assume that Kohath was a newborn baby when he came to , and that each man fathered a child on the day of his death, we come to the following calculation:
Entered , Kohath is a baby Year 0
Amram is born Add 133 = Year 133
Moses is born Add 137 = Year 270
Exodus begins Add 80 = Year 350
Now, if we assume that Amram and Kohath fathered their children on the day of their death, and the children were born posthumously, then we can add another year and a half, giving an absolute maximum of 351.5 years in .
So, even if we accept the unbelievable life span of these men, and make ridiculous assumptions about their age when reproducing, the numbers still do not add up.
(2) Here is the calculation for the required birthrate.
Jacob’s generation (given) 12 persons
Kohath’s generation (given) 70 persons (35 females)
Amram’s generation 35 x 320 = 11,200 persons (5,600 females)
Moses generation 5,600 x 320 = 1,792,000 persons
So, in order for the population to grow from 70 persons to 1.8 million in only three generations, a birthrate of over 320 children per family, with zero mortality would be required. This is rather curious since Moses ancestor’s (see above) only averaged three male children per family, so some woman must have had to make up the slack.
THE NUMBERS OF THE BOOK
Every now and then, I run into someone who believes that every word in the Bible is literally true. If the Bible says that men lived for 900 years, and that 5 linear miles of water fell on the earth, then it must have happened. There is really no way to prove that these events did not happen, since by definition, a “miracle” is something extra-ordinary.
However, sometimes the Bible writers slipped up. When they told a story, nothing but superlatives would do. More than anything else, the numbers that are tossed around in the bible show this to be true. Apparently, mathematics was not their strong point, because on numerous occasions, the bible writers made statements that simply could not have happened.
So, basically, this chapter is sort of an accountants-eye view of the Bible.
SOLOMON, AND THE ISRAELITE ABATTOIR
King Solomon was a very devout man. He also liked to do things in big ways. Take, for example, the sacrifice that he offered up during a festival:
“Then the King and all the people offered sacrifice before the LORD. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep.” - 2 Chronicles 7:4,5
Now, let’s pause for a moment and let these numbers sink in. According to verse 9, this festival lasted seven days. That means that one animal was killed every 4.3 seconds, day and night, for a week.
Let’s look at it another way. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, an adult sheep would weigh between 80 and 400 pounds. Let’s take an average size of 200 pounds. Oxen come it at around 900 pounds. This means that Solomon slaughtered 43.8 million pounds of animals.
This would be a pretty big pile of animal. If the animal carcasses were stacked, with no wasted space, it would make a pile of 3.9 million cubic feet, or, a pile 5 feet high, covering 18 acres.
And what did he do with this meat? Well according to verse 7, he tried to put it on the alter, along with a cereal grain offering.
“For there he offered the burnt offering and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze alter Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the cereal offering and the fat.” - 2 Chronicles 7:7
Talk about an understatement. I could picture Solomon, looking at that mountain of meat, and saying to his attendant, “Gee, do you think that’s too much to put on the alter?”
The sheer volume of meat involved is enough to convince anyone that this passage is grossly exaggerated. I will not even attempt to calculate the economic impact of this slaughter on a relatively poor group of desert farmers.
THE MAGNIFICENT TEMPLE
Solomon’s temple was a lot smaller than most people picture it. 1 Kings 6:2 tells us that it was 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. In a rare example of biblical precision, 2 Chronicles 3:3 gives exactly the same measurements. A cubit is 17.5 inches, so the temple would have been 87.5’ x 29’, and about 4 stories high. It would total 2,552 square feet in area. To put this in perspective, it would be less than twice the size of my house, but four stories high. This number is very important, so keep it in mind.
The total temple area was larger than simply the “house of the LORD”. There was a courtyard, a palace, and other buildings. However, as we will soon see, the contents and value are out by at least a factor of a thousand, so, a few extra buildings are hardly significant.
The Gold and Silver
“With great pains I have provided for the house of the LORD, a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver, and bronze and iron without weighing, for there is so much of it; timber and stone, too, I have provided.” - 1 Chronicles 22:14
Since 1 talent = 75.5 pounds, this means that 7.55 million pounds of gold and 75.5 million pounds of silver went into the temple - a total of 83.05 million pounds of precious metal. Now, remember the size of the temple. To get this much gold and silver into the temple, there must have been 32,543 pounds of it per square foot. The priest must have had to crawl over the heaps of gold to get to the alter.
Here’s another interesting tidbit. One cubic foot of silver weighs 628.4 pounds. This means that the silver of the temple occupied 120,146 cubic feet. The total gross size of the temple was only 111,650 cubic feet. Therefore, if the silver of the temple was formed into a solid block, it would be bigger than the temple itself - never mind the gold, iron, bronze, timber, and stone.
In addition to the gold and silver, there was apparently so much bronze and iron that it could not even be weighed. Since the gold and silver weighed in at 83 million pounds, that means that the bronze and iron must have weighed considerably more (I will assume that it was double). We are now looking at somewhere in the range of 100,000 pounds of metal per square foot of the temple. That is the equivalent weight of 40 full size cars per square foot. And we haven’t even gotten to the rock and timber, yet.
The gold and silver equates to a dollar value of $54 Billion today. Even given the inflated population figures of that are recorded in the Bible, it still means that every man, woman, and child in the nation contributed almost $20,000, or 40 pounds of gold and silver. In all likelihood, the population of was only about 1/10 of the Biblical figures, so the contribution per person would have been approximately 10 times higher. And, of course, we have not costed the iron, bronze, rock, timber, and labour. Not bad for a group of poor desert farmers.
The Labour Force
“King Solomon raised a levy of forced labour out of all ; and the levy numbered thirty thousand men. And he sent them to , ten thousand a month in relays; they would be a month in and two months at home; Adoniram was in charge of the levy. Solomon also had seventy thousand burden bearers and eighty thousand hewers of stone in the hill country, besides Solomon’s three thousand three hundred chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work.” - 1 Kings 5:13-16
By my count, this comes to 183,300 persons who worked on this temple. To put this in perspective, it took 1,283,000 man-years to build the temple, or 503 man-years to build each square foot it.
If I apply this rate of construction to my living room, which is 20’ x 12’, it would take over 120,000 man years to build it. To put it yet another way, if a construction team of 100 persons (which is too big to function on such a small job) worked on building my living room, it would take them 1,200 years to build it.
If 183,000 people really worked for seven years to build a 2,552 square foot temple, they must have worked at a snail’s pace. Their progress could only be measured at the molecular level.
The lumber
According to the above quote, 10,000 labourers brought lumber from at a time. There were a total of 30,000 labourers rotating on three shifts. Assuming that each labourer brought back 100 pounds of lumber on each trip, that means that one million pounds of lumber arrived at the temple every month. Don’t forget that the temple was only 2,552 square feet, and it was already piled with gold, silver, bronze, and iron.
That’s almost 400 pounds of lumber per square foot, coming in every month. Every year, the equivalent of 240 semi-trailer loads would have arrived. Where did they put it all?
The staff
When the temple was finished and put into operation, staff was required. King David outlined the staffing requirements:
“’Twenty four thousand of these,’ David said, ‘shall have charge of the work in the house of the LORD, six thousand shall be officers and judges, four thousand gatekeepers, and four thousand shall offer praises to the LORD with the instruments which I have made for praise.” - 1 Chronicles 23:4,5
So, 24,000 persons were to work in the house of the Lord. This must have been a pretty slack job. Based on the size of the temple and courtyard, and considering that access to certain parts of the temple was restricted to the priests and high priest, there couldn’t possibly be room for more than about 100 people at a time. This means that each Levite would have worked for only about one day per year. Where can I apply?
The total contents
Wow, this must have been some building. Consider what was inside its walls:
Ÿ 6,260 cubic feet of gold
Ÿ 120,146 cubic feet of silver
Ÿ 338,000 cubic feet of iron (minimum estimate)
Ÿ 321,000 cubic feet of bronze (minimum estimate)
Ÿ 600,000 cubic feet of Lebanese Cedar arrived every year
Ÿ untold quantities of stone, brick, and local timbers
Ÿ 24,000 staff (not necessarily simultaneous)
Ÿ Assorted fixtures, the Ark of the Covenant, etc.
All of this was inside a building with a total volume of only 111,650 cubic feet. And, don’t forget that buildings are essentially hollow. Again, all I can say is, “Wow”.
HOLY QUAIL!
An unusual account is recorded in Numbers 11. It begins with the Israelites short of food, and looking for a little meat:
“Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall not eat one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you.” - Numbers 11:18-20
So, God sends them a little meat:
“And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and it brought quails from the sea, and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side, and a day’s journey on the other side, round about the camp, and about two cubits above the face of the earth.” - Numbers 11:31
Now, let’s calculate just how many quail are involved, here. Most bible dictionaries consider a day’s journey to be approximately 20 miles. So, a circle with a radius of 20 miles would have an area of 1,256 sq. miles. The quail filled this area to a depth of 2 cubits, or 35 inches.
This makes 102 billion cubic feet of quail. The quail is a fairly small bird, averaging one pound in weight, and 13 inches in height. Based on this size, each quail would occupy 0.72 cubit feet. Therefore, God must have blessed the Israelites with approximately 142 billion quail. That’s over 47,000 quail for every Israelite. It must have been like an early version of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Now, I’m not sure of the world population of quail, however, the current world population of chickens is only 30 Billion. Chickens likely outnumber quail by at least 100 to 1, since chickens are commonly raised in huge commercial quantities in our modern, crowded earth. So, when the Israelites asked God for a little meat, little did they suspect that he would respond with over 500 times the entire world population of quail.
Before I finish with the quail, I must point out the end result of the meat harvest.
“While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.” - Numbers 11:33
I thought God said that they would get to eat the quail for a whole month.
JUST HOW BIG WAS NINEVAH?
“So Jonah arose and went to Ninevah, according to the word of the LORD. Now, Ninevah was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey.” - Jonah 3:3,4
A day’s journey in ancient times was approximately 20 miles, so, Ninevah would have been 60 miles in diameter. It would have occupied 2,826 square miles. That’s one big city.
Let’s make a few comparisons. occupies only 304 square miles. In that area, 7,322,564 people are housed. This gives a population density of 24,000 people per square mile. By contrast, I live in a small city of 195,000, which occupies 42 square miles, for a density of 4,600.
Most ancient cities were fairly dense, due to the logistical difficulties in feeding, watering, and cleaning up after large numbers of people before the age of mass transportation systems, not to mention the cost of building the city walls. For example, ancient had a population of 20,000, inside walls with a circumference of 2 miles, for a density of 62,500 persons per square mile. If Ninevah had an average density of 50,000 people per square mile, it must have had a population of 141,300,000.
Since is considered to be a “great city” by most standards, Ninevah must have been stupendous. It was 9 times larger than in land area, and 19 times larger in population.
But wait, the bible gives us the population of Ninevah:
“And should not I pity Ninevah, that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” - Jonah 4:11
One hundred and twenty thousand persons, spread over 2,826 square miles is only 42 persons per square mile - that’s 15 acres per person, or 60 acres for a family of four. That’s not a city.
Realistically, we could expect Ninevah to have a walled circumference of approximately seven miles, assuming that the population figures are accurate. Interestingly, archeologists have found walls that likely were Ninevah, and they were about seven miles around.
So, Ninevah was not a three day journey in breadth, unless Jonah was a really slow walker. So slow, in fact, that he could have gotten a job working on the temple.
THE REALLY BIG WALL
“And the rest fled into the city of ; and the wall fell upon twenty-seven thousand men that were left.” 1 Kings 20:30
That must have been a pretty big wall. To calculate the precise way that this happened, we must first of all calculate the size of Aphek.
The above discussion outlined the sizes of various walled cities. Ninevah, a “great city”, had a circumference of about seven miles. ’s was about two miles. Aphek is barely mentioned in the Bible, and is never referred to as being great, so we can assume that it was likely much smaller than either of these two cities. That would give it a circumference of less than two miles. Let’s use 1.5 miles for this discussion. This size would be on the upper limit of what would be reasonable.
If these men were standing against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, they would each occupy about two linear feet. That means that there would need to be seven concentric circles of men, standing against the wall when it fell. The entire wall must have fallen simultaneously, with none of the men getting out of the way, or shielding themselves. As well, the wall must have fallen outward in all places, as if there had been a great explosion.
THE BUSY MIDWIVES
When the Israelites were in captivity in , Pharaoh made an unusual request. He called the Israelite midwives before him, and commanded them to kill all Hebrew male children as they were born.
Then the king of said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiph'rah and the other Pu'ah, "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live." But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of commanded them, but let the male children live. - Ex 1:15-17
Did you notice that there were only two midwives, and they are mentioned by name? They must have been pretty busy women.
How busy were they? Well, Exodus 12:37 numbers the Israelites who left at 600,000 men, plus women and children. According to the Bible, the total population of the group would have been around 1.8 million in total. If we assume that the Israelites lived for an average of 80 years, and that their birth rate was stable, that means that there would be an average of 22,500 births per year, or 61 per day. If these two women worked 12 hours per day, seven days per week, each one of them would deliver a baby every 23 minutes.
But, actually, the birth rate must have been much higher than this. It could not have been stable. According to the Exodus 12:40, the Israelites were in for 430 years. During this time, 70 immigrants multiplied to 1.8 million. So, the birthrate must have been accelerating. The number of births by the time that Pharaoh gave his command would be much higher than my original forecast.
There is yet another problem with this story. According to Exodus 6:16-20, Moses was the great grandson of Levi. Moses’ grandfather came to as a child with his father. So, this population of 1.8 million arose from a mere 70 immigrants over only three generations. Even if we ignore the fact that the combined ages of the generations listed only comes to 352 (1) , not 430, we are still faced by a huge problem. By my calculations (2) , each woman would need to have 320 babies, with zero mortality rate.
I don’t know who I pity more - the women, or the midwives.
CONCLUSION
So, when the Bible says that Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, can we really take it at face value? In fact, if it can be conclusively proven that the Bible is filled with exaggerations, what else is it lying about?
Footnotes:
(1) These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations: Gershon, Kohath, and Merar'i, the years of the life of Levi being a hundred and thirty-seven years. The sons of Gershon: Libni and Shim'e-i, by their families. The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, , and Uz'ziel, the years of the life of Kohath being a hundred and thirty-three years. The sons of Merar'i: Mahli and Mushi. These are the families of the Levites according to their generations. Amram took to wife Joch'ebed his father's sister and she bore him Aaron and Moses, the years of the life of Amram being one hundred and thirty-seven years. - Exodus 6:16-20
These are the names of the sons of who came to with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,... All the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons - Exodus 1:1,2,5
The time that the people of dwelt in was four hundred and thirty years . - Exodus 12:40
So, Levi came to with his son Kohath, among others. Kohath lived to be 133 years old. His son Amram, who lived to be 137 years old, became father to Moses. Moses was 80 years old when the events of the Exodus took place.
If we give the Bible the benefit of every doubt, and assume that Kohath was a newborn baby when he came to , and that each man fathered a child on the day of his death, we come to the following calculation:
Entered , Kohath is a baby Year 0
Amram is born Add 133 = Year 133
Moses is born Add 137 = Year 270
Exodus begins Add 80 = Year 350
Now, if we assume that Amram and Kohath fathered their children on the day of their death, and the children were born posthumously, then we can add another year and a half, giving an absolute maximum of 351.5 years in .
So, even if we accept the unbelievable life span of these men, and make ridiculous assumptions about their age when reproducing, the numbers still do not add up.
(2) Here is the calculation for the required birthrate.
Jacob’s generation (given) 12 persons
Kohath’s generation (given) 70 persons (35 females)
Amram’s generation 35 x 320 = 11,200 persons (5,600 females)
Moses generation 5,600 x 320 = 1,792,000 persons
So, in order for the population to grow from 70 persons to 1.8 million in only three generations, a birthrate of over 320 children per family, with zero mortality would be required. This is rather curious since Moses ancestor’s (see above) only averaged three male children per family, so some woman must have had to make up the slack.