Jesus’ Half Brother
A Christian preacher named Hong Xiuquan claiming to be Jesus’ half brother lead a religious movement in which at least 20 million died.
Self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ.
It is uncertain whether it should be considered the largest war of the 19th century.
WWII 38 to 55 million died
I’m I the only one that didn’t know this?
I had not heard of it. But for some context in considering the pure death bringing wars of the time: (If I am correctly estimating percentages below)
Our Civil War overlapped the Taiping Rebellion in the last 4 years. In the course of our war, we lost a bit less than 2% of our population compared to the US population in 1861. I think the deaths were primarily combatants.
This Chinese civil war resulted in something over over 4% of their pop. compared to what it was in 1850 (the beginning of that conflict). Most of the deaths there were civilians and due to plague and famine.
This Chinese civil war lasted 10 years longer than ours, thus they had 3 times as long to kill people off. So for pure efficiency of death dealing in those days, I would say Americans should get the top honors.
Although the U.S. casualties in the Civil War don’t in any way reach those of the Taiping revolt, the casualty figures (over 600,000) killed more Americans than all of the declared wars put together. and despite what the Southern revisionists say the salient issue was the right to own slaves, and both belligerents had god on their side so I guess you could say that religion played a role in the slaughter as well although nobody showed up to play Jesus’ relative but one Confederate general was an Episcopal priest. He was decapitated during a battle in 1864. And as to civilian casualties, every major city in the Southern States was destroyed or disrupted, e.g. Vicksburg in 1863 where famine killed many civilians not to discount the thousands of former slaves who starved after emancipation.
Cap’t Jack
I was doing the estimated percentages that I came up with based on figures of 700,000 deaths during the US Civil War and a pop. of about 32 million in the US in 1861. And 20 million deaths in the Taiping Rebellion with a Chinese pop. in 1850 of 430 million. I just did a rough calculation in my head on the percentages of total deaths.
It is amazing to me that China could sustain such a population in 1850.
Be careful with estimations Tim. The 1860 census shows 31 million Less freed persons of color equals 27 mill. Also the nearly 4 million slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person for voting. These figures don’t jive after the War because of the emancipation effort. Also, the estimation of 700,000 is off due to the vast number of desertions, especially in the Southern Army. Since both sides instituted a draft, there were many who left the field on both sides, skewing the figures. That’s why most historians go with the 600,000 casualty figure ( KIA, MIA, WIA). We may never really know the true figures as the military estimates came from the muster Rolls turned in by company officers who completed the reports based largely on heresay. I’ve seen some casualty figures estimated as high as 800,000 and less than 600,000. Anyway, your percentage estimate shouldn’t suffer by a couple of points. As to the Taiping Revolt we will never come close to disasters in China due to the immensity of the population. They’re still trying to get a handle on the casualties from the Japanese invasion and occupation.
Cap’t Jack
I am certainly open to other estimations. I was trying to come up with comparable figures as to percentage of total deaths in each war to the popuation of the respective countries at the outset of the two wars.
Here’s a classic example Tim, the casualty estimates for World War Ii for China are as high as 20 million due to Japanese atrocities and occupation, and as low as 10 million or roughly 1.38% of the pop. Whereas the U. S. sustained 418,000 or .32%. the Chinese estimates include untold numbers of civilians whose personal records were destroyed during the war so the figure may never be known for certain. What is certain however is the continued distrust of Japan by the Chinese. So per capita, World War II killed more Chinese, and everybody else for that matter, than any other conflict.
Cap’t Jack
I understand your points. I recall seeing an estimate for Chinese deaths during the Taiping rebellion that speculated that as many as 30 million (rather than 20 million) may have died. And the population of China was much higher in the late 1930’s than it was in 1850. Still as I said, I was trying to come up with a somewhat reasonable estimation of the population devastation in the Taiping Rebellion vs. the US Civil War. I doubt that anyone else is interested in pursuing this matter of minor curiosity to me, but I would welcome anyone else’s attempt at such an estimation.
BTW, it is interesting to recognize that the devastation to the Chinese population was so much worse during the Taiping Rebellion than it was in WWII (although WWII did, however, take place over a much shorter duration). I guess Jesus’s brother was more of a bane to China than Hirohito. Which is odd, wasn’t Hirohito considered to be a god, at the time, whereas Jesus’s brother was only a son of god.
I understand your points. I recall seeing an estimate for Chinese deaths during the Taiping rebellion that speculated that as many as 30 million (rather than 20 million) may have died. And the population of China was much higher in the late 1930’s than it was in 1850. Still as I said, I was trying to come up with a somewhat reasonable estimation of the population devastation in the Taiping Rebellion vs. the US Civil War. I doubt that anyone else is interested in pursuing this matter of minor curiosity to me, but I would welcome anyone else’s attempt at such an estimation. BTW, it is interesting to recognize that the devastation to the Chinese population was so much worse during the Taiping Rebellion than it was in WWII (although WWII did, however, take place over a much shorter duration). I guess Jesus’s brother was more of a bane to China than Hirohito. Which is odd, wasn’t Hirohito considered to be a god, at the time, whereas Jesus’s brother was only a son of god.According to wiki it was 20 million casualties over a period of 14 years as opposed to 20 million maybe over seven years for World War II. And except for maybe EOC it's just you and me Tim, and my interest lies in the study of and teaching History as a profession. And I doubt that the stats will ever agree unless tons of new info are found and published, but the one thing that you and I could agree on is that religion can become a catalyst for war or used as an adjunct to fan the flames as in the American Civil War. I've read several personal correspondences from both sides that proclaim god to be on their side and the southern statesmen used the bible to justify slavery as well. The bad news is that modern secessionists are wanting to fan the flames yet again. And Hirohito was considered a living god when all he wanted to be was a marine biologist. Oh how the mighty have fallen! Jesus wanted men to be fishermen for converts while Hirohito wanted to study fish. Cap't Jack
Jesus wanted men to be fishermen for converts while Hirohito wanted to study fish. Cap't JackIt's too bad that religious devotees can't recognize when there is something fishy about their object of worship.
Wasn’t China’s Emperor a god too?
War of the Gods!
Another tangential thought just occurred to me. Jesus was born of the “virgin” Mary. I am not sure whether his half brother, Hong’s mother was a virgin, though for politeness sake, we should assume she was a nice lady. But in both cases, a Y chromosome would have been necessary to result in male births. This leads me to the conclusion that God must have had some sort of supply of Almighty semen. (IOW, there must have been at least two Almighty semen.)
Wasn't China’s Emperor a god too? War of the Gods!Yeah, it looks like that is the case.: "In Imperial China, an emperor was considered the Son of Heaven. The scion and representative of heaven on earth, he was the ruler of all under heaven, the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven, his commands considered sacred edicts." wikipedia The Son of Heaven vs. the Son of God Don King could have made some money off of that matchup.
And don’t forget that the emperor of Japan is a DIRECT descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu who had “relations” with a local daimyo and their progeny began the reign of emperors down to Akihito. So add the Nippon legend to the battle of the living gods!
Cap’t Jack
Another tangential thought just occurred to me. Jesus was born of the "virgin" Mary. I am not sure whether his half brother, Hong's mother was a virgin, though for politeness sake, we should assume she was a nice lady. But in both cases, a Y chromosome would have been necessary to result in male births. This leads me to the conclusion that God must have had some sort of supply of Almighty semen. (IOW, there must have been at least two Almighty semen.)Here is a link about creating male mice without a Y chromosome. I read a similar article a few months ago that I can't find. Apparently this may have been the original sex gene in our worm ancestors before the Y chromosome evolved. (I may have the details scrambled though; mostly I remembered the part about worm ancestors. :) ) http://ts-si.org/genetics-&-genome/28187-male-mice-created-without-y-chromosome
Another tangential thought just occurred to me. Jesus was born of the "virgin" Mary. I am not sure whether his half brother, Hong's mother was a virgin, though for politeness sake, we should assume she was a nice lady. But in both cases, a Y chromosome would have been necessary to result in male births. This leads me to the conclusion that God must have had some sort of supply of Almighty semen. (IOW, there must have been at least two Almighty semen.)Here is a link about creating male mice without a Y chromosome. I read a similar article a few months ago that I can't find. Apparently this may have been the original sex gene in our worm ancestors before the Y chromosome evolved. (I may have the details scrambled though; mostly I remembered the part about worm ancestors. :) ) http://ts-si.org/genetics-&-genome/28187-male-mice-created-without-y-chromosome Thanks ufo, I did not know about that. It thus seems that the Almighty could have made Jesus and/or Hong males by activating the SOX3 gene However, if it works the same in people, as it did in the mice, then neither Jesus or Hong would have been able to produce semen. I don't know about Jesus having any descendants, but Hong apparently did. http://pagemaestro.tripod.com/hung/ Thus I, still, strongly suspect that Hong was not an actual son of he Almighty, unless the Almighty had at least one Almighty sperm. (P.S., You know I am goofing around here, don't you?)
Oops, I googled “Jesus descendants” and came up with this guy’s theory about that: http://bloodline-evidence.blogspot.com/2009/06/hugh-montgomerys-theory.html
So if this guy is correct, then the SOX3 gene, probably wasn’t the way that Jesus was born of a virgin as a male. IOW, claims of Jesus being sired by God, seemingly would have required the existence and use of an Almighty sperm.