Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to a census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around 6 CE. The revolt was crushed brutally by the Romans. Mentioned by Josephus in Jewish Wars, (Book 2, Chapter 8, Section 1 and Chapter 17, Section 8), and in Jewish Antiquities Book 18, and in Acts of the Apostles 5:36-38. Antiquities Book 18 states he founded the "fourth sect" (the first 3 are the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes) along with Zadok the Pharisee, which scholars associate with those Josephus calls Zealots, and on whom he blames the Great Jewish Revolt and destruction of Herod's Temple. They preached that God alone was

Judas led an assault on a Roman garrison at the kings armory in Sepphoris, then the capital of Galilee (7 km from Nazareth).

When Jesus spoke of a millstone hung around someone's neck and that person being cast into the sea, he was using an illustration contemporary to his time. According to the Jewish historian, Josephus, in his Antiquities, Judas the Galilean was drowned in a lake in this fashion , Josephus does not relate the death of Judas, although he does report (Antiquities 20.5.2 102) that Judas' sons James and Simon were executed by procurator Alexander in about 46 AD, several years after R. Gamaliel's statement.