It is always difficult to determine the number of Jews resident either in the Holy Land or in any other country of the world. The remark applies to ancient, even more than modern, times. It is not only that the information afforded by writers is scanty, but that the statements made by some historians differ greatly from those supplied by others; while a good deal must be rejected as wholly incredible. To take an instance, we are informed by the author of the Book of Samuel,[230] that the military population of David’s kingdom was 1,300,000. But in the parallel passage in the Book of Chronicles[231] the number is stated to be nearly 300,000 more. ‘To attempt reconciling these discrepancies,’ says an intelligent writer,[232] ‘would be wasted labour.’ During the reign of Rehoboam, B.C. 975, the number of the men of Judah who drew the sword is rated at 180,000.[233] But at the accession of his son, not twenty years afterwards, it is 400,000.[234] Whether we are to attribute these contradictions to corruptions of the text or to different modes of calculation, signifies little to us. The two statements are quite irreconcilable with one another. Josephus’s numbers, again, are wholly untrustworthy. He reckons the sum of those who returned with Zorobabel from Babylon, at the enormous figure of 4,628,000 and 47,000 women.[235] This is, of course, an absolute impossibility; and we know, from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, that the real amount was 42,000.[236] It has been suggested that Josephus’s text is corrupt in this passage. But if so, it may well be assumed to be corrupt in other similar places also. Thus he affirms that the numbers shut up in Jerusalem during the siege by Titus was 2,700,000,[237] while the estimate of Tacitus is 600,000.[238] Here again, though the reckoning of the Roman historian is probably below the mark, he having omitted to allow for the unusual number of residents at the time of the siege, yet that of Josephus must be rejected as incredible.[239] The circumference of the walls of Jerusalem is generally admitted to have been about four miles. The space thus enclosed within the walls would be about equal to that part of the area of London which extends from Tyburn Gate to the British Museum in one direction, and from the Regent’s Park to Whitehall in the other, drawing an imaginary circle, of which the Regent’s Circus would be the centre. The portion thus enclosed—hardly one tenth part of what lies within the bills of mortality—may contain half a million persons. Allowing for the narrow streets of old Jerusalem, we may reckon that the same area in that city would hold 100,000 more, thus very nearly verifying the statement of Tacitus. No doubt, at the time of the Passover, vast numbers came from foreign lands, and these found accommodation, as well as they could, in Jerusalem itself, or in the environs. Many probably were lodged in outlying villages, and many more, according to the common practice