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 a casual perusal of Josephus by St. Luke is highly improbable for the following reasons:— (1) St. Luke gives the number of the followers of Theudas as “about four hundred”; Josephus writes “most of the common people.” Clearly St. Luke had access to some source other than Josephus. (2) The carelessness attributed to St. Luke in the supposed use of Josephus is not what we should expect from the professions of the writer of the prologue to the third Gospel and from the handling of his sources in the earlier work.