The Christians of Thessalonica must have en- dured some persecution after he tore himself away from them. They imitated the Judeean churches in patient suffering (I Th 2'''). It was three or four years before St. Paul could return to Mace- donia (1 Co 16'), and he certainly would not fail to visit the capital, unless its gates were still shut against him. Members of the church of Thessa- lonica whose names are known are Jason, Gaius, Secundus, Aristarchus, and perhaps Demas. In post-apostolic times the gospel made rapid progress in Thessalonica, which becauieone of the bulwarks of Eastern Christendom, winning for itself the name of ' the Orthodox City.' It has now a popu- lation of 130,000, of whom 60,000 are Sephardic .lews, speaking a corrupt form of Spanish, called Ladino.
LiTERATiTRE. — W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, London, 1835 ; Murray's Handbook to Greece, do., 1900, 822-833.
James Strahan. THEUDAS. — Theudas is mentioned only once in the NT. In Ac 5*" Gamaliel counsels moderation in the treatment of the Christians, citing Theudas's career as evidence that a movement which is not of God will come to naught of itself. Regarding Theudas we are told that he claimed to be a unique person and drew to himself about four hundred followers, but the uprising was soon crushed and the leader slain. This incident is said to have taken ])lace some time before the days of Judas of (ialilee, who led a revolt at the tiuie of ' the enrolment.'
' These statements in themselves occasion no particular difficulty. It is only when they are placed beside similar statements in Josephus that
any problem arises. In An(. XX. v. 1 f. Jo.scphua mentions a certain Theudas who set himself up as a prophet and persuaded a large number of jiersons to follow him to the Jordan, where he said he would stay the waters by his word and lead his followers across on dry land, liut l'".a<lus, the pro- curator of Judiea (from A.I). 44 to c 40), sent out a band of horsemen, who scattered or slew Theudas's followers, captured their leader, cut oli' his head, and carried it to Jerusalem. Soon afterwards Fadus's successor, Alexander, put to death two sons of Judas of Galilee— the Judas who had rai.sed an insurrection when Quirinius made an enrolment of the Jews. In another connexion Josephus describes this revolt, which occurred in A.D. 6-7 {Ant. XVIII. i. 1, 6, BJu. viii. 1).
The agreement between Acts and Josephus with res]iect to Judas is apparent, although it is not cerlain that they have exactly the same date in mind (cf. Lk 2^'^-). They are al.so in general agree- ment as to the iierform.ance and fate of Theudas, but they diller very radically as to his date. Josephus places him nearly forty years after Judas, and thus sub.sequent to the time of Gamaliel, while Acts makes Theudas precede Judas. It is this chronological discrepancy th.at constitutes the chief difficulty in the interpretation of Ac 5^".
Various solutions of the problem liave been proposed :
(1) It has often been assumed that Acts and Josephus refer to two different persons, and th.at Josephus's failure to mention the incident recorded in Acts is not a sufficient reason for doubting the latter. This ex|)lanation seems to have been current as early as the time of Origen {cf. c. Cels. i. 57), and it still has many advocates.
(2) Others, while also believing that Ac 5** and Jos. Ant. XX. v. 1 refer to dili'erent events, seek to discover elsewhere in Josephus an incident corresponding to that of Acts. Theudas is thought to have been one of the many revolutionists men- tioned in Josephus by some other name. He has been identified \vith the Simon who is found anion" the disturbers arising soon after the death of Herod the Great {Ant. XVII. x. 6, BJ II. iv. 2). This was the opinion of Sonntag ('Theudas der Aufruhrer' in SK x. [1837] 6'22-652). K. Wieseler {Chronologischer Synopse der vier Evangdien, Gotha, 1843, p. 103 ti'., lleitrage zur richtigp.n IViirdigung der Evangelien und der evangclischen Geschirhte, do., 1869, p. 101 d'.} equates the Theud.as of Acts with Matthias (ffeu5as = Seii6uj/)os = .i;TO), who in the last days of Herod's reign incited his pupils to pull down the golden eagle which had been placed over the great gate of the Temple {Ant. XVII. vi. 2-4, BJ I. xxxiii. 2-4).
(3) Still other interpreters think the Theudas incidents of Acts and of Josephus are so similar in general content that they must have been origin- ally identical, but it is Josephus, they hold, rather than Acts that is erroneous. So J. D. Michaelis {Einlcitung in die gottlichcn Srhriften des Neuen Biindes*, Gottingen, 1788, i. 62 f.), who says that Josephus is correct in mentioning an uprising under Fadus, but wrong in making Theud.is the leader. More recently F. Blass {Acta Apoatvlorum, Gottingen, 1895, p. 89) explains the uitficulty by assuming a textual corruption in Josephus. Originally he had given no name, or else a differ- ent one, and some Christian copyist under the influence of Ac 5™ introduced the name of Theudas.
(4) Another type of explanation ascribes the error to Acts. fi. Weiss would make the reference to Theudas a redactional interpolation {Lehrbuch der Ehileitung in das NT^, Berlin, 1889, p. 574, n. 4). Other analysts would also derive the verse about Judas from a secondary source. Hut most scholars who find Acts at fault think the error a