For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself 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 scattered, and brought to nought.
For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself 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 scattered, and brought to nought. Josephus (Antiquities 20: 5, 1) speaks of a deceiver of the name of Theudas, who headed an insurrection some twelve years after this; and as the circumstances appear to agree with what is here said, DeWette, Meyer, Neander, Lechler, and others take them to be the same person, in which case our historian is held to have fallen into a chronological error. But the error of our historian in this case (as Olshausen says) is double: he has not only named before Judas a man who lived long after him, but he has made Gamaliel name a man who lived after himself. This should be a little too much even for the laxest interpreters to palm upon such a historian as Luke. It is surely far more natural (with some of the best interpreters) to suppose that among the many raisers of insurrection against the Roman authority who appeared among the Jews, by the testimony of Josephus, this was one, in the days of Augustus, of whom he makes no mention. (See the notes at Luke 13:1-3.)