“For before these days rose up Theudas, giving himself out to be somebody, to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves, who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were dispersed, and came to nought. After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the enrolment, and drew away some of the people after him. He also perished, and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered abroad.”
He reminded them of two previous examples of men who had proclaimed that they were acting in the name of God and gave out themselves to be ‘somebody', the one Theudas, the other Judas of Galilee. It appears that Theudas had gathered around him four hundred followers. But they were soon dispersed and came to nothing.
Theudas was a common name in Palestine, and there is no reason at all, apart from the coincidence of the name, to see him as the same Theudas of whom Josephus wrote, who appeared some thirty years later, of whom Josephus said very different things, i.e. that as a wonderworker he had gathered together a ‘very great multitude' of followers, and approached the Jordan promising that its waters would divide in front of them and they would walk over dryshod, only for his host to be slaughtered. Gamaliel's Theudas may well indeed have been the grandfather of this one, for grandsons often received the names of their grandfathers, and insurrection tended to run in families. A young man brought up in an atmosphere of reverence for his grandfather, hatred of the Romans and belief that God would one day exercise supernatural powers through His instruments, might well have conceived such a mad scheme. They may, however, have been unrelated.
Judas the Galilean was another insurrectionist (they were fairly common among the Jews around that time) who had rebelled against the Roman's first tax census in 6 AD, and was defeated by Quirinius, the legate of Syria. This was a very different census from the one that took place at the time of Jesus' birth which was probably a requirement for submission to the emperor on the twenty fifth anniversary of his reign in around 3 BC. He fanatically declared that as God was the King of Israel, tribute was only due to Him, and that to pay it to Rome was blasphemy.
In both cases, Gamaliel pointed out, they had failed and their followers had been severely dealt with so that their influence had become ineffective. That was in fact only partly true for the simmering anger continued and the later Zealots would look back to Judas the Galilean as their role model.
Luke has a purpose in giving us the details of Gamaliel's speech which was given ‘in camera'. H wants it to be quite clear to his readers that Jesus is not at all like Theudas and Judas the Galilean, for His aims and purposes are totally different. Rather than being against Rome, He has a message to be proclaimed in Rome.