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Bible Encyclopedias
Theudas
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Theu´das, a Jewish insurgent, who was slain, while a band of followers that he had induced to join him were scattered and brought to nought. This statement was made by Gamaliel at the meeting of the Sanhedrim held about A.D. 33, to consider what measures should be taken for the suppression of the Gospel now preached and recommended by the virgin zeal of Peter and the apostles (; , sq.). Josephus (Antiq. xx. 5. 1) tells us of a Theudas who, under the procurator Phadus (A.D. 44), set up for a prophet, and brought ruin on himself and many whom he deluded, and attempts have been made, though not very successfully, to identify the Theudas of Gamaliel with the insurgent spoken of by Josephus, who appeared eleven years later.
These remarks have been made to meet the ordinary view of the case. But the name Theudas is an Aramaic form of the Greek Theodotos, which is a literal translation of the Hebrew Matthias or Matthew. It is, then, of a Matthew that Luke speaks; and in Josephus (Antiq. xvii. 6. 2-4) we find a detailed account of one Matthew, a distinguished teacher among the Jews, who, in the latter days of Herod the Great, raised a band of his scholars to effect a social reform in the spirit of the old Hebrew constitution, by 'destroying the heathen works which the king had erected contrary to the law of their fathers.' A large golden eagle, which the king had caused to be erected over the great gate of the Temple, in defiance of the law that forbids images or representations of any living creatures, was an object of their special dislike, which, on hearing a false report that Herod was dead, Matthias and his companions proceeded to demolish; when the king's captain, supposing the undertaking to have a higher aim than was the fact, came upon the riotous reformers with a band of soldiers, and arrested the proceedings of the multitude. Dispersing the mob, he apprehended forty of the bolder spirits, together with Matthias and his fellow-leader Judas. Matthias was burnt.
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Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Theudas'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/t/theudas.html.
