Acts 5:35

And he said unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves as touching these men, what ye are about to do. For before these days rose up Theudas, giving himself out to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were dispersed, and came to naught.

Theudas ... The fact that the historian Josephus records the uprising led by a Theudas as occurring about fifteen years following the date of Gamaliel's speech in this passage has been cited by some scholars as an anachronism; but the dogmatic prejudice of critics on this point is based upon the very weakest of arguments, the most notable of which is that, in the case of conflicting dates, Josephus is more trustworthy than Luke. It is quite the opposite; it is not Luke but Josephus who is wrong in this instance, as in so many others. As Lewis pointed out, there is also the possibility that different incidents were referred to in Acts and in Josephus, there having been many uprisings during the period of which Gamaliel spoke, "providing the possibility that another Theudas may have led one of them."[41] Furthermore, regarding the "unlikelihood" that two men named Theudas could have led uprisings, there are entirely too many examples of such things in history to justify the notion that it could not have happened here. McGarvey mentioned two rebellions in Ireland in 1848,1891, both being led by a William Smith O'Brien, and two other disturbances in Great Britain in 1800 and in 1890, both of which were led by a Parnell.[42] If a similar thing did not occur in the event mentioned here, and if it could be proved that Gamaliel and Josephus were speaking of the same episode, such would be proof that Josephus erred in his chronology, an error that J.B. Lightfoot did not hesitate to attribute to him, saying, "Josephus has made a slip in his chronology."[43]

The point of Gamaliel's appeal to the example of Theudas was simply that God did not bless his efforts and that all came to naught, with the application that without God's blessing, the work of the apostles would also fail. He then gave another example of the same thing.

[41] Jack P. Lewis, Historical Backgrounds of Bible History (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1971), p. 170.

[42] J. W. McGarvey, op. cit., p. 99.

[43] Adam Clarke, op. cit., p. 721.