We now read:
about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers
were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. Furthermore, in the days of
the census Judas the Galilean appeared and led a band of people in
revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.”
(my bold)
Solution 4 — that we have mistranslated ‘meta touton’, and that Josephus got his before/after mixed up when dealing with an oral tradition from his childhood, relies on just one error by one of the authors, rather than a wholesale dismissal of one or a dubious reconciliation which creates as many problems as it solves. It deals with the residual problem of why Luke’s Gamaliel seems so intent on fixing the date of the second event, when he gives only a vague reference to the first event. It is also preferable in that it follows from a closer rather than looser reading of the texts, and reflects the evidenced reliability of the two sources.
We do not need to posit any desire to mislead on the part of Josephus, though it must have been attractive to him to have at least something to write about Fadus, who is otherwise an inactive figure.
The implications are enormous:
- Theudas slain by Pilate, not by Fadus
- Theudas defeated by Pilate in the same way the Samaritan false prophet was
- Theudas resembles too much to Dositheus, Samaritan heretic considered by Origen as contemporary of Jesus
- Georges Ory was probably right: Theudas is one and the same as the Samaritan false prophet.