Population of Israel under Joshua

Answer 1

According to The Bible, there were 600,000 fighting men, a figure which excluded the tribe of Levi. Scholars have estimated that this would be equivalent to at least two and a half million people in total. The archaeological evidence indicates that the total population did not really reach this figure for many centuries.

Answer 2

A:According to the biblical chronology, Joshua attacked the great Canaanite cities approximately 1400 BCE. However, archaeologists find no evoidence of this military conquest, and say that cities such as Jericho and Ai had been abandoned centuries earlier.

Wayne T. Pitard (The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Before Israel) says that during the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BCE), Canaan proper was divided into more than a dozen small, weak city-states, none of which had any political influence. Carol A. Redmount (ibid, Bitter lives) says that the central hill country was sparsely populated and the few major cities in these areas, such as Shechem and Jerusalem, lay much farther apart than did lowland cities.

Since Israel, including Judah, would be established in the central hill country, we can say that the total population numbered in the low thousands at the time attributed to Joshua. The population of the hill country began to increase with the arrival of the Israelites around 1200 BCE, but was still only in the tens of thousands by 1000 BCE.

Answer 3

The exact number of people that were in the Nation of Israel under Joshua is unknown. It is estimated that were millions of people, when you take into consideration the people of all twelve tribes of Israel.