Robert M. Grant has noted that although Luke saw himself within the historical tradition, his work contains a number of statistical improbabilities, such as the sizable crowd addressed by Peter in Acts 4:4.
Now, what is the text:
But many of them who had heard the word, believed; and the number of the men was made five thousand.
We do not know how many had been converted between Pentecost day and this event, so we do not know how big the crowd was.
On the other hand, it was the number of the men, meaning women and children were also among the converts, but since the conversions happened while Peter was in prison overnight, we need not be sure that they all were present when St. Peter spoke.
Let's say the crowd adressed was 1000 people. 700 men, 300 women who told their men.
Now, let's suppose each person had room to 1 meter squared. This means, a circle of 1000 meters squared.
1000 / 3.14 = 318, sqrt of 318 = a radius of 17.846 meters.
I think that the crowd would have been able to hear what was said.
Is the statistic improbability supposed to be about the total of conversions early on?
There is a very much more improbable option, if you doubt that : namely that 4300 + 700 men, plus their women and children, were invented later on as converts first year, if only 500 men or so were. How do you convince a group that were 1500 - 2500 persons, that they were in fact 15 000 - 25 000? Even with decades of reworking memories, you can see a difference between a small and a big group you were part of./HGL
