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Summary
- Jerusalem in Jesus’s time had a population of about 20,000 to 40,000: Magen Broshi (1978) reckoned almost 40,000 for Herod’s walled city at the maximum density, and Hillel Geva (2014) gives 20,000 for the larger city of AD 70; Ronny Reich (2014) gives about 30,000 for that larger city.
- Joachim Jeremias, whose figures New Testament scholars used for decades, first put the residents at about 55,000 and in 1969 lowered the figure to 25,000 to 30,000, the one estimate aimed at Jesus’s own day.
- The walls of Jesus’s day enclosed about 230 acres (93 hectares), close to the size of today’s Old City, and Herod’s Temple platform took up 36 acres of it.
- Passover crowds were far larger than the resident population; Jeremias allowed for up to 125,000 pilgrims, and many lodged outside the walls, as Jesus did at Bethany and on the Mount of Olives.
- Josephus reckoned 2.7 million people at one Passover in the AD 60s, but the city could not have held them, and his own figures do not add up.
- The Third Wall, begun by Herod Agrippa I in AD 41–44, enclosed a newer northern quarter; estimates of about 80,000 describe that larger city just before AD 70.
- Modern Jerusalem covers 126 square kilometres and had an estimated 1.063 million residents in 2026.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- The Holy Bible, King James Version (public domain), via BibleGateway: Exodus 12:37; Deuteronomy 16:16; Mark 11:11; Mark 13:1; Luke 2:41–44; Luke 21:37; John 2:20; John 5:2; John 9:7; John 11:55; John 18:1; John 19:20; Acts 2:5.
- Magen Broshi, “Estimating the Population of Ancient Jerusalem”, Biblical Archaeology Review 4:2 (June 1978), pp. 10–15. BAS Library.
- Magen Broshi, “The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 236 (Autumn 1979), pp. 1–10. JSTOR.
- Hillel Geva, “Jerusalem’s Population in Antiquity: A Minimalist View”, Tel Aviv 41 (2014), pp. 131–160. doi:10.1179/0334435514Z.00000000041.
- Hershel Shanks, “Ancient Jerusalem: The Village, the Town, the City”, Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2016, on Geva’s study and earlier estimates. Bible History Daily.
- Ronny Reich, “A note on the population size of Jerusalem in the second temple period”, Revue Biblique (2014), no. 2, pp. 298–305. University of Haifa abstract.
- Siegfried H. Horn, review of Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), Andrews University Seminary Studies 9:1 (January 1971), pp. 79–81. PDF.
- Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, trans. William Whiston: 2.14.3, 5.4.1–3 and 6.9.3. Project Gutenberg.
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish War 6.420–427, Greek text ed. Benedikt Niese, Flavii Iosephi Opera. Perseus Digital Library.
- Tacitus, Histories 5.13, trans. Clifford H. Moore, Loeb Classical Library. LacusCurtius.
- Israel Antiquities Authority, “The Conservation of the Jerusalem’s City Walls: Second Temple Period, the Herodian Dynasty and the Roman Procurators, 37 BCE–70 CE”. Archived copy.
- Gotthard Deutsch, Judah David Eisenstein and M. Franco, “Pilgrimage”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906). JewishEncyclopedia.com.
- “Jerusalem”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, updated 14 October 2026. Britannica.
- Omer Yaniv and others, Jerusalem: Facts and Trends 2023, Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research. PDF.
- TPS-IL, “Jerusalem has 1.063 million residents”, JNS, 15 May 2026, reporting Central Bureau of Statistics figures. JNS.
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