Abstract
The available evidence from antiquity converges on the lower levels of Model Life Table West (see table 1), whose particular age distribution and life expectancy mirror the detailed census data from tax rolls in medieval Tuscany and parish registers in Tudor/Stuart England.12 This evidence includes the following: (1) some three hundred census papyri from Roman Egypt that document age distributions and household relations, from which birth and death rates can be extrapolated; (2) Christian catacomb inscriptions from Rome and Coptic burials in Egypt that offer the deceased's date of death, from which the seasonality of mortality is established; (3) literary accounts revealing the natural life expectancy of Roman imperial family members; and (4) Ulpian's third-century c.e. life table, which calculates tax rates on annuities based on the supposed life expectancy of Roman legates at any given age (see table 2).13 Used with caution, osteoarchaeological evidence fills out the picture.14 Life Tables are based on biological determinants such as reproduction, birth, and death that must have occurred in particular configurations for populations to reach a steady growth rate.\n Even if such internal mobility was not out of line with other areas of the Mediterranean, descriptions of life under Antipas as stable miss the mark. [...] for a young man like Jesus to move from a small village like Nazareth, atop a hill, to a larger town like Capernaum, on the lake, was a common pattern of migration for young men (this pattern seems to be the case with Nathaniel moving from Cana to the lake, John 1:45; 21:2).