at least ten years later. The revolt of Judas in "the days of the enrolment" was in 6 A.D. Thus the events appear to have been transposed in the speech and one of them to have been still in the womb of the future!
The error, if it is one, is commonly explained as due to a cursory reading and inaccurate recollection on the part of the Evangelist of the passage in the Antiquities which alludes to the fate first of Theudas and then of the sons of Judas under the procuratorship of Tiberius Alexander (about 46-48 A.D.), the latter notice leading to a brief mention of their father. This view has been supported by Burkitt (Gospel History and its transmission, pp. 106 ff.), Krenkel (Josephus and Lucas), Schmiedel (art. in Encycl. Bibl.) and many German commentators. It has been rejected, among others, by Schürer, Blass, Harnack (Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels, p. 115), Stanton (Gospels as Historical Documents, pt. II, p. 272), and most recently by Prof. C. C. Torrey (Composition and date of Acts, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1916). Cf. also an art. on "St. Luke and Josephus," by the Rev. J. W. Hunkin, in the Church Quarterly Review for April 1919, pp. 89-108.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there has been error on the part of some one responsible for putting the speech into the mouth of Gamaliel. The attempts which have been made to remove the apparent anachronism are unconvincing. Either an earlier unknown Theudas is postulated (but one would expect the person named by Gamaliel along with the notorious Judas to have been of sufficient importance to be mentioned by Josephus); or the mistake as to the date of Theudas is shifted to Josephus; or the name Theudas is regarded as a Christian interpolation in the Antiquities (Blass).
But that the passage in Acts is to be explained by
