Did Luke Make Up Speeches (Part 3)? On Theudas

The reference to a revolutionary named Theudas in Gamaliel's brief speech recorded in Acts 5 is a famous "crux," a place where some critics allege that Luke at least partially made up a speech and in doing so created a historical impossibility. If Gamaliel is referring to the same Theudas mentioned in Josephus, they can't both be right. In fact, that Theudas hadn't even carried out his attempted revolution (according to Josephus) at the time of the story in Acts 5.  Did Josephus make a mistake? Did Luke make an honest mistake? Did Luke's informant make a mistake? Or was Luke just throwing in a couple of representative revolutionaries' names in his partly made-up speech, not caring if they were historically possible for that speech or not?   Spoiler: I think the best explanation of all the data is that there were two revolutionaries who were sometimes known as Theudas. Is this just a desperate, ad hoc theory to save Luke's bacon? Nope. (And by the way, it also saves Josephus from the charge of mistake.) Listen to learn why this is such a plausible solution and why it has lots of explanatory power.

Originally published to YouTube Jul 17, 2022