Chapter XI.--The Impostor Theudas and his Followers.
1. Luke, in the Acts, introduces Gamaliel as saying, at the consultation which was held concerning the apostles, that at the time referred to, [347] "rose up Theudas boasting himself to be somebody; who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered." [348] Let us therefore add the account of Josephus concerning this man. He records in the work mentioned just above, the following circumstances:
2. "While Fadus was procurator of Judea [350] a certain impostor called Theudas [351] persuaded a very great multitude to take their possessions and follow him to the river Jordan. For he said that he was a prophet, and that the river should be divided at his command, and afford them an easy passage.
3. And with these words he deceived many. But Fadus did not permit them to enjoy their folly, but sent a troop of horsemen against them, who fell upon them unexpectedly and slew many of them and took many others alive, while they took Theudas himself captive, and cut off his head and carried it to Jerusalem." Besides this he also makes mention of the famine, which took place in the reign of Claudius, in the following words.
[347] kata ton deloumenon chronon, i.e. about the time of Agrippa's death. But Luke writes pro gar touton ton hemeron, "Before these days."
[348] Acts v. 36.
[349] Josephus, Ant. XX. 5. 1.
[350] About 44 a.d. See above, chap. 8, note 2.
[351] There is a chronological difficulty in connection with this Theudas which has caused much dispute. The Theudas mentioned by Josephus arose in the time of Claudius; but the Theudas referred to by Gamaliel in the Acts must have lived many years before that. Various solutions of greater or less plausibility have been offered, almost any one of which is possible, and abundantly sufficient to account for the alleged discrepancy, though none can be proved to be true. Compare Wieseler's Chron. des ap. Zeitalters, p. 138, note 1; Ewald's Gesch. des Jüdischen Volkes, Bd. VI. p. 532; Jost's Gesch. der Israeliten, Bd. II. Anhang, p. 86; and the various commentaries on the Acts in loco. A question of more importance for us, in the present instance, is as to Eusebius' conduct in the case. He identifies the Theudas of Luke with the Theudas of Josephus,--an identification which is impossible, if both accounts are accepted as trustworthy. Eusebius has consequently been accused of an intentional perversion of facts for the sake of promoting the credibility of Luke's accounts. But a protest must again be entered against such grave imputations upon the honesty of Eusebius. A man with a very small allowance of common sense would certainly not have been so foolish as consciously to involve himself in such a glaring anachronism--an anachronism which every reader had the means of exposing--for the sake of making a point in confirmation of the narrative of Luke. Had he been conscious of the discrepancy, he would certainly have endeavored to reconcile the two accounts, and it would not have required a great amount of ingenuity or research to discover in the pages of Josephus himself a sufficiently plausible reconciliation. The only reasonable explanation of Eusebius' anachronism is his carelessness, which caused him to fall into many blunders as bad as the present, especially in questions of chronology. He read, in the Acts, of Theudas; he read, in Josephus, of a similar character of the same name; he identified the two hastily, and without a thought of any chronological difficulty in the case. He quotes the passage from the Acts very freely, and possibly without recollecting that it occurs several chapters before the account of the famine and of the other events which happened in the time of Claudius.
Chapter XII.--Helen, the Queen of the Osrhoenians.
1. [352] "And at this time [353] it came to pass that the great famine [354] took place in Judea, in which the queen Helen, [355] having purchased grain from Egypt with large sums, distributed it to the needy."
2. You will find this statement also in agreement with the Acts of the Apostles, where it is said that the disciples at Antioch, "each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren that dwelt in Judea; which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Paul." [356]
3. But splendid monuments [357] of this Helen, of whom the historian has made mention, are still shown in the suburbs of the city which is now called Ælia. [358] But she is said to have been queen of the Adiabeni. [359]
[352] Josephus, Ant. XX. 5. 2.
[353] In the times of these procurators, Cuspius Fadus and Tiberius Alexander.
[354] Josephus had already mentioned this famine in the same book of his Ant., chap. 2, §5.
[355] Josephus gives an extensive account of this Helen and of her son Izates in the Ant. XX. 2. Helen was the wife of the king Monabazus of Adiabene, and the mother of Izates, his successor. Both Izates and Helen embraced the Jewish religion, and the latter happening to come to Jerusalem in the time of the famine, did a great deal to relieve the distress, and was seconded in her benefactions by her son. After their death the bones of both mother and son were brought to Jerusalem and buried just outside of the walls, where Helen had erected three pyramids (Jos. Ant. XX. 4. 3).
[356] Acts xi. 29, 30. The passage in Acts has Saul instead of Paul. But the change made by Eusebius is a very natural one.
[357] "Pausanias (in Arcadicis) speaks of these great monuments of Helen and compares them to the tomb of Mausolus. Jerome, too, testifies that they were standing in his time. Helen had besides a palace in Jerusalem" (Stroth).
[358] Ælia was the heathen city built on the site of Jerusalem by Hadrian (see below, Bk. IV. chap. 6).
[359] Adiabene was probably a small province lying between the Tigris, Lycus, and the Gordiæan Mountains (see Dion Cassius, LXVIII.), but before the time of Pliny, according to Vaux (in Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography), the word was used in a wider sense to indicate Assyria in general (see Pliny, H. N. VI. 12, and Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIII. 6). Izates was king of Adiabene in the narrower sense.