Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 5:36

"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." — Acts 5:36 (ASV)

Many have seen a problem in Gamaliel’s reference to the Jewish revolutionaries Theudas and Judas the Galilean in this speech. According to Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century, Judas’s rebellion occurred about A. D. 6 and Theudas’s about A. D. 44, thus making Luke’s chronology wrong (cf. “after him” in v.37). Furthermore, this scene before the Sanhedrin occurred about A. D. 34, well before the rebellion of Theudas. In answer to these problems, it seems most likely that the Theudas that Gamaliel referred to was one of the many insurgent leaders who arose in Palestine at the time of Herod the Great’s death in 4 B. C., not the Theudas who led the Jewish uprising of A. D. 44. Our problem with these verses, therefore, may result just as much from our own ignorance of the situation as from what we believe we know as based on Josephus.