Acts 5:36

For before these days rose up Theudas Gamaliel proceeds to give illustrations that mere pretenders will come to naught. But about the mention of Theudas much discussion has been raised, because it is declared that the statements of Gamaliel contradict the facts recorded by Josephus, and therefore cannot be received as historic. In this way discredit would be thrown on all the rest of his speech.

It is true that Josephus mentions a Theudas (Antiq. xx. 5. 1) who rose up and professed himself a prophet, in the time when Fadus was procurator of Judæa, about a.d. 45 or 46, and persuaded a great part of the people to take their goods and follow him to the river Jordan, through which he promised he would afford them a miraculous passage. This man, who with many of his followers was destroyed, could clearly not be the leader of the revolt which took place before that raised by Judas of Galilee in the time of the taxing which took place some few years after our Lord was born. But when we turn to the history which Josephus gives of the events which preceded this rebellion of Judas we find him saying (Antiq. xvii. 10. 4), "At this time [i.e. in the days when Varus was president of Syria] there were ten thousandother disorders in Judæa, which were like tumults." Of these innumerable disturbances he gives account of no more than four, but presently in the same chapter says: "Judæa was full of robberies, and whenever the several companies of the rebels could light upon any one to head them, he was created a king immediately." Then in a brief space after (Antiqxviii. 1. 1) Josephus proceeds to mention Judas of Galilee, though he calls him sometimes (Antiqxviii. 1. 6; xx. 5. 2; B. J.ii. 8. 1, and 17. 8) a Galilean and sometimes a Gaulonite (xviii. 1. 1), and his rebellion in the days of the taxing. Now amid so many outbreaks, spoken of but not described, there is no violence in supposing that one may have been led by a Theudas, a name not very uncommon, and thus the order of events as stated by Gamaliel would be perfectly correct. The great multitudeof the followers of the later Theudas indicates a far larger number than the four hundredof whom Gamaliel speaks. Moreover while Gamaliel's Theudas was killed and his followers dispersed, Josephus says that many of the adherents of his Theudas were slain, and many taken prisoners. There seems, therefore, more reason to identify this Theudas of whom mention is made by Gamaliel with some of the ten thousandrebels whom Josephus speaks of before the time of the census, than to suppose that Gamaliel, who is correct in his account of Judas, has mentioned in the other case a rebel who did not rise till long after the time of which he is speaking.

That such false leaders were numerous and had caused a terror in the minds of the more thoughtful among the Jews we can see from the Jewish literature which has come down to us. Thus (T. B. Sanhedrin97 b) Rabbi Shemuel bar Nachmani on the authority of Rabbi Jonathan, expounding Habakkuk 2:3, says, "It means, may his spirit be blown away (perish) whosoever over-anxiously calculates about the ends. For people have said [in consequence of such calculations] when the end [so calculated] came, and he [Messiah] did not come, that he would never come at all. Yet wait anxiously for him, for it says if he tarry wait anxiously for him." We have here the despairing echo of Gamaliel's words, "Let them alone."

boasting himself to be somebody Literally, saying that he was, &c. Of course each one of these leaders professed himself to be the Messiah, for that was what the people in their distress were ever looking for.