Ver. 36. πρὸ γὰρ τούτων τῶν ἡμερῶν: Gamaliel appeals to the experience of the past—the phrase is placed first with emphasis, cf. xxi. 38; on St. Luke’s fondness for phrases with ἡμέρα see above, and Friedrich, pp. 9, 89. But whilst Gamaliel appeals to the past, his appeal is not to a remote but to a near past which was still fresh in the memories of his generation, perhaps because, as St. Chrysostom urges, such recent examples μάλιστα πρὸς πίστιν ἦσαν ἰσχυρά.-- ἀνέστη, cf. vii. 18, like the Hebrew
D3» and so constantly in LXX, Exod.
i. 8, Deut. xiii, 1, xxxiv. το, Judg. ii. το, iv. 9, v. 7, etc.—Oecddas: St. Luke evi- dently places Theudas before Judas, But
158
εἲς οὐδέν.
37. μετὰ τοῦτον ἀνέστη ᾿Ιούδας 6 Γαλιλαῖος, ἐν ταῖς
ἡμέραις τῆς ἀπογραφῆς, καὶ ἀπέστησε λαὸν ἱκανὸν ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ :
1 ukavov om. ΝΑ” Β δτ, ἆ, Vulg., Eus., Cyr.; so Tisch., W.H., R.V., Weiss, Wendt. πολυν in CD, so Hilg., but not retained by Blass in B. απωλετο, Par. reads κατελυθη; ‘‘recte,’’ says Blass, who receives κατελ. in B. This will be only consistent with the
former rejection of ανῃρεθη.
a difficulty arises from the fact that the only Theudas of this period known to us is placed by Josephus in the reign of Claudius, about the year 44, 45. He gave himself out as a false prophet, gathered round him “a great part of the people,” and persuaded them to follow him to the Jordan with a promise that its waters should miraculously divide before him as in the days of Moses. But the Roman procurator, Cuspius Fadus, sent a troop of horse to meet him, some of his followers were slain, others taken captive, whilst he himself was made prisoner and beheaded, and his head sent to Jerusalem, Jos., Ant., xx., 5, I. But a serious chronological discrepancy must be faced if the Theudas of Josephus is the Theudas of St. Luke. Gamaliel speaks of a Theudas who arose before the days of the enrolment, R.V., which marked the attempt of Judas, 1.ε., about 6-7 A.D. But are they the same? As early as the days of Origen their identity was denied (ο. Cels., i., 57), see '' Acts,” B.D.?, Bishop Lightfoot, p. 40, and in comparing the two accounts in Josephus and Acts there is no close resemblance beyond the name, see Nosgen, im loco, _and Belser, Theol. Quartalschrift, i., p. 70 (1896). St. Luke speaks definitely of 400 followers; Josephus evidently con- siders that the pretender was much more successful, so far as numbers were con- cerned, for he writes: πείθει τὸν πλεῖσ- τον ὄχλον. These and similar discrep- ancies are also well insisted upon by Zahn in his recent Introduction, ii., 416, 417 (1899), and his own conclusion is that only such ordinary words are com- mon to the two accounts as Luke, avy- ρέθη: Jos., ἀνεῖλε; Luke, ἐπείθοντο ; Jos., ἔπειθε; and that we cannot get beyond the bounds of possibility that the two authors refer to the same fact (on Zahn’s criticism of Krenkel’s view of the depen- dence of Luke on Josephus in the narra- tive, see u.s.). In referring to the ap- pearance of the many false Messiahs, such as the Theudas of Josephus, Azz., xx., 5, I, Dr. Edersheim, Sketches of Fewish Social Life, p. 66, remarks : ‘‘ Of -course this could not have been the
Theudas of Acts v. 36, 37, but both the name and the movement were not solitary in Israel at the time’’ ; see also Ramsay, Was Christ born in Bethlehem? Ῥ. 259. And no testimony could be stronger than that of Josephus himself to the fact that at the time of the Advent Judea was full of tumults and seditions and pre- tenders of all kinds, Ant., xvii., 10, 4, 8; B. F., Πιν 4,1. The view has been main- tained by many commentators that the Theudas of Josephus may reasonably be supposed to be one of the many false teachers and leaders mentioned by the Jewish historian and not always by name, who pandered to the feverish hopes of the people and gave themselves out as of kingly rank—(so recently Belser, Felten, Page, Plumptre, Knabenbauer). The name Theudas contracted from Theo- dorus may not have been so common as that of Simon or Judas (although on the other hand,see Nosgen, Apostelgeschichte, p- 147)—‘t Josephus describes four men bearing the name of Simon within forty years, and three that of Judas within ten years, all of whom were instigators of rebellion”—but it was the Greek equivalent to several familiar Hebrew names, ¢.g., Jonathan, Matthias; and Bishop Lightfoot allows that there is something to be said for Wieseler’s sug- gestion that on the ground of the name the Theudas here may be identified with Matthias, the son of Margalothus, an in- surgent in the time of Herod, prominent in the pages of Josephus, Axt., xvii., 6, 2 (see also Zéckler on the whole question, Apfostelgeschichte, p. 197, 2nd edit.). We must admit the objection of Wendt that this and other identifications of names and persons cannot be proved (and some of them certainly are very precarious, as Alford pointed out), but we cannot sup- pose that St. Luke could have made the gross blunder attributed to him in the face of his usual accuracy (see Blass, Acta Apostolorum, p. go), or endorse with Schiirer what he calls ‘‘ the slight autho- rity of the Acts in such matters” (Fewish People, div. i., vol. ii., p. 169). If it is hardly possible that Josephus can have been mistaken, although some writers