1st Century Jerusalem comes alive

The Ancient population

What was the population of Jerusalem in the first century? According to some historians, Jerusalem in the early first century had a population of no more than thirty thousand (Jeremias, 1969). Israeli archeologist Magen Broshi, estimated the city’s population at the end of King Herod the Great’s rule as 40,000, and before the destruction of the Second Temple as 80,000. However, more recent studies on this subject show that Jerusalem’s first century population was 100,000-120,000. 
 

The real Messianic numbers

We can conclude that the word “myriads” is hyperbolic – it’s not used literally to denote “tens of thousands”, but means just “many” – still, we can speak, if not of tens of thousands, probably of thousands of Jewish believers. Five thousand believers mentioned in Acts 4:4 would seem a reasonable and real number. Just for comparison: from Josephus we know that there were around 6,000 Pharisees and around 4,000 Essenes in the country during Herod’s reign.
 

Understand the Jewish Background of the New Testament

If this was the case, Messianic believers presented a significant number in the city. What proportion of Jews in Jerusalem were messianic? If we take 100,000 as an estimation of Jerusalem’s population, 5,000 believers would mean that at least 5% of this population were Messianic. Enroll in our live online course, Jewish Background of the New Testament Course, and Jerusalem of the first century will come alive for you.