The narratives of the death of Judas (Matt 27.3-10 and Acts 1.15-26) present themselves as a perpetual problem to those who seek to harmonize parts of Scripture. Here are the two passages:
Matthew 27.3-10 [NRSV]
When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.” After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one on whom a price had been set, on whom some of the people of Israel had set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.”
Acts 1.15-26 [NRSV]
In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus— for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” (Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) “For it is written in the book of Psalms,
‘Let his homestead become desolate,
and let there be no one to live in it’;
and ‘Let another take his position of overseer.’ So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.
The usual harmonization states that Judas hung himself (ala Matthew’s account) and remained there for a few days while his dead body became swollen. Then the branch on which he hung himself broke and he fell ‘headlong’ onto the rocks and his swollen body exploded.
That sounds like a reasonable answer to the question of harmonizing these two accounts…but what about the other conflicting details?
Why is this field called ‘the Field of Blood’? Is it because the priests bought the field with the blood money given back to them by Judas (ala Matthew’s account)? Or is it because Judas fell in the field and his intestines poured out of him (ala the account in Acts)?
Who bought the field? Was it the chief priests (Matthew) or was it Judas himself (Acts)?
Did Judas show remorse for his actions, which ended in his suicide (Matthew) or did he get the just reward for his wickedness and fall in a field and die (Acts)?
And which text of the HB was this narrative told to fulfill? Was it Jeremiah (Matthew, supposing he had the citation correct) or Psalms (Acts)?
It should be obvious that I don’t consider these two narratives able to be harmonized. I think a better way to look at contradictions like these in Scripture is to attempt to understand what the author is attempting to say by shaping her or his narrative in the way she or he has chosen to shape it.
The interesting thing about the death of Judas in Acts is its relationship with other literature describing the death of a wicked person. In the narrative of 2 Macc 5, we find the description of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes which reads:
But the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him with an incurable and invisible blow. As soon as he stopped speaking he was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures-and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions. Yet he did not in any way stop his insolence, but was even more filled with arrogance, breathing fire in his rage against the Jews, and giving orders to drive even faster. And so it came about that he fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body…. And so the ungodly man’s body swarmed with worms, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away, and because of the stench the whole army felt revulsion at his decay…. So the murderer and blasphemer, having endured the more intense suffering, such as he had inflicted on others, came to the end of his life by a most pitiable fate, among the mountains in a strange land.
This is a graphic description, to be sure, but I bring it up to note how it relates to the death of Judas in Acts: both deaths are seen as a punishment of wicked deeds and both deaths graphically describe the bowels or intestines of the person being punished. There is another passage that is found at the end of the Hebrew Bible that also relates to both of these death narratives. That is the death of King Joram found in 2 Chron 21.
And after all this the Lord smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease. In the course of time, at the end of two years, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great agony. His people made no fire in his honor…he departed with no one’s regret. They buried him in the city of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.
Again in this narrative we see a wicked person being ’smote’ by God resulting in his death…a death that includes a description of his ‘bowels.’
There are similarities between these two accounts and the death of Judas in Acts, but there are also some differences. I’m not saying there is a one-to-one relationship here. But there is enough similar material to question as to whether the author of Acts was influenced by these two narratives and whether, by being influenced by them, she or he was attempting to say something about just how wicked Judas was.
Another interesting question to ask is why the author of Acts turned the seemingly repentant, or at least remorseful, Judas of Matthew into a wicked person whose death mirrors the death of two other extremely wicked people? What social or theological situation would make this shift in presentation necessary?
Being a Hebrew Bible student, I don’t have the answers to these questions and I’m not familiar enough with the scholarship of Acts and early Christianity to even research it further. The reason I bring it up is because we talked about it in class yesterday and I thought that it would be an interesting topic to write about and discuss.
Does anyone have any familiarity with the proposal that the author of Acts was influenced by the death narratives of Antiochus Epiphanes and Joram? If so, is there some situation going on in early Christianity that you are aware of that would cause the author of Acts to cast Judas is a more negative light that how he is cast in Matthew’s narrative? Any comments/thoughts would be appreciated.
6 November 2009 at 9.49 am
Art: You are working at it too hard. As I am sure you know, Thomas Paine wrote about many of these Bible contradictions over two hundred years ago in “The Age of Reason.” These contradictions cannot be harmonized or analyzed into some kind of “understanding.” So, is the Bible really the “Word of God”? Was the same God who created the perfection of the atom somehow unable to inspire the writing of a book that did not have contradictions? I don’t think so. This is the question that needs to be critically examined.
6 November 2009 at 10.49 am
Part of the problem is that fundamentalists and liberals alike believe that when the Bible says something, nothing more can be said about it. That just isn’t true. The Bible gives us sufficient knowledge, not all knowledge possible. There were multiple things going on with Judas and to think that only one author says it all is reductionistic.
6 November 2009 at 11.02 am
@Ron: I think you’re missing the point. The contradictions are not the issue. It’s understanding why, or for what purpose, the differences exist that I’m curious about.
Also, the idea that God could have only given a Bible that has no contradictions is an odd one to me. I’m not sure if it’s the idolatry inherent in that idea that bothers me the most, or the desire it reveals to recreate God in the image of some ancient logician.
Either way, the idea falls desperately short of reality.
6 November 2009 at 11.02 am
@Jeremy: “There were multiple things going on with Judas and to think that only one author says it all is reductionistic.” Is this comment aimed at me? If so I think you missed my point because I’m not coming anywhere close to saying that only one author got it right. Rather, I just focused on the narrative in Acts. Never do I say that one is more “right” or “closer to the truth” than the other.
6 November 2009 at 11.03 am
I like Art’s approach. It tries to see what Acts is saying and why rather than following the usual hackneyed approaches of “Oh, here’s a contradiction, let’s reject the Bible” (atheist) or “Let’s forcefully harmonize these two accounts, because the truth of the Bible depends on it!”
6 November 2009 at 11.40 am
Art, could the God who doesn’t lie tell us in his word that Salvation is by faith and somewhere else that it is not? That God is not to be worshipped. Moreover, the God who lies is not God. In your attempt to advocate the humanity of the Bible you make God to be a liar. You degod God.
6 November 2009 at 11.43 am
@Jeremy: Who said anything about lying? I don’t believe I said anything about lying. Those are your words.
6 November 2009 at 12.20 pm
The Acts version leaves a couple of questions for me. From what did Judas fall headlong? Was it from a cliff? Was it intentional or did he stumble and fall? Any thoughts?
The inconsistencies don’t trouble me too much at this point in my journey to understand how to understand scripture. In whatever way Judas died, the fact remains–he died.
6 November 2009 at 12.24 pm
It is your implication. If God inspired contradictions, then he lied because he did not tell us what is true.
6 November 2009 at 12.42 pm
@Jeremy: They are contradicting stories when they are taken literally (i.e., this is exactly what happened). I don’t think any historiography, biblical or otherwise, works that way. Yes, God inspired these two narratives. Yes, they can be seen as contradictions from a modernist viewpoint. No, I do not take them as such. I used ‘contradictions’ above in an unnuanced way as a short hand for saying ‘two narratives with conflicting accounts.’
6 November 2009 at 4.23 pm
I realize you didn’t bring up the Jeremiah reference here, although you have in a previous post. Did you ever check out what John Calvin had to say about it?
“How the name of Jeremiah crept in, I confess that I do not know nor do I give myself much trouble to inquire. The passage itself plainly shows that the name of Jeremiah has been put down by mistake, instead of Zechariah, (Zec 11:13;) for in Jeremiah we find nothing of this sort, nor any thing that even approaches to it.” (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. 33: Matthew, Mark and Luke, Part III, tr. by John King, [1847-50].)
Apparently, John Calvin is not at all troubled by the humanity of Scripture. In fact, he seems quite nonchalant about it, as it were, just interested in moving on to more important matters. Do you think he’d have trouble keeping a job at various Reformed seminaries?
6 November 2009 at 5.39 pm
@Manlius: If Calvin said what he ha written here either in class, from the pulpit, or in a job interview at various Reformed churches or seminaries then he would definitely be in trouble. A “strong view of inerrancy” (read: “what we, the extreme right wing of conservative Presbyterianism, consider inerrancy to be”) has become the only test of orthodoxy that seems to matter nowadays.
It seems Calvin may not be allowed to exist within the tradition he is hailed as starting.
Thanks for pointing this quote out to me.
6 November 2009 at 6.55 pm
For more evidence of Calvin’s approach, check out his commentary on 1 Peter 3:14. He has no problem thinking that Peter misread the prophet Isaiah, but affirms that he has every right to do so to make his particular point. He goes on to tip his hat to a more harmonizing type of reading, but he himself feels no need for a “forced explanation.” Art, you and Calvin are like two peas in a pod.
“But Peter no doubt meant to allude to a passage in the eighth chapter of Isaiah; for when the Jews against the prohibition of God sought to fortify themselves by the aid of the Gentile world, God warned his Prophet not to fear after their example. Peter at the same time seems to have turned “fear” into a different meaning; for it is taken passively by the Prophet., who accused the people of unbelief, because, at a time when they ought to have relied on the aid of God and to have boldly despised all dangers, they became so prostrate and broken down with fear, that they sent to all around them for unlawful help. But Peter takes fear in another sense, as meaning that terror which the ungodly are wont to fill us with by their violence and cruel threatenings. He then departs from the sense in which the word is taken by the Prophet; but in this there is nothing unreasonable; for his object was not to explain the words of the Prophet; he wished only to shew that, nothing is fitter to produce patience than what Isaiah prescribes, even to ascribe to God his honor by recumbing in full confidence on his power.
I do not, however, object, if any one prefers to render Peter’s words thus, Fear ye not their fear; as though he had said, “Be ye not afraid as the unbelieving, or the children of this world are wont to be, because they understand nothing of God’s providence.” But this, as I think, would be a forced explanation. There is, indeed, no need for us to toil much on this point, since Peter here did not intend to explain every word used by the Prophet, but only referred to this one thing, that the faithful will firmly stand, and can never be moved from a right course of duty by any dread or fear, if they will sanctify the Lord.”
6 November 2009 at 7.02 pm
Calvin also seems to doubt that Luke is right when he says Paul spoke in Hebrew. He thinks it likely that Paul spoke Aramaic, since he would have wanted the commonfolk to understand.
“2. That he spake Hebrew. This is indeed an usual thing, that when men which speak diverse languages are together, we hear those more willingly who speak our own language; but the Jews were moved with another peculiar cause, because they imagined that Paul was offended 1 with his own kindred, so that he did even hate their tongue, or that he was some rogue which had not so much as learned the speech of that nation whereof he said he came. Now, so soon as they heard their own language, they began to have some better hope. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether Paul spake in the Hebrew or in the Syrian tongue; for we know that the speech of the Jews was corrupt and degenerate after their exile, forasmuch as they had much from the Chaldeans and Syrians. For mine own part, I think, that because he spake as well to the common sort as unto the elders, he used the common speech which was at that day usual.”
6 November 2009 at 7.11 pm
Let me just give you one more. Then I think I’ve sufficiently made my point.
Calvin seems to think that at least in one part of the resurrection narrative, Luke is more accurate than Mark. Notice how he stresses the importance of their agreeing on the substance while diminishing the issue of their disagreement on the particulars.
“As to the purchase of the spices, Luke’s narrative differs, in some respects, from the words of Mark; for Luke says that they returned into the city, and procured spices, and then rested one day, according to the commandment of the law before pursuing their journey. But Mark, in introducing into the same part of the narrative two different events, attends less accurately than Luke to the distinction of dates; for he blends with their setting out on the journey what had been previously done. In the substance of the fact they perfectly agree, that the women, after having observed the holy rest, left home during the darkness of the night, that they might reach the sepulcher about the break of day.”
7 November 2009 at 8.00 am
Why is it okay that the Bible has contradictions in it? Don’t these contradictions detract from the historical accuracy of the Bible? What if we gave the Bible to a Martian and told him/her to read it? What do you think that a Martian would think of it? I was raised to believe that the Bible was the literal, inerrant Word of God and that this was a matter of faith. Then, as an adolescent, I actually read the whole Bible and I begin to wonder if it were really the Word of God? Each time I have read it since adolescence, it has made less and less sense to me. Too much divine killing. Too many contradictions. Too many events which read like legends. Too much unclear writing. Too many illogical events. To say nothing of the textual problems of which books were selected, which of thousands of different texts of those books were selected, and which translations of those texts were selected. So much of Christianity depends upon this one book. How are we so sure that it is the Word of God? I also think one can raise these questions without being an atheist or a liberal. There are still deists, like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, out there. I get to these questions just from actually reading the Bible.
7 November 2009 at 11.39 am
Ronald,
I guess it would depend on the Martian’s hermeneutic. If for instance the Martian came to the land of
Laputa , for instance then you would be right. They would likely view the Bible as a silly book of superstitions. If however the Martians landed on, say, the land of the
Houyhnhnms , then thats a different story entirely.
Pax Christi… (man I hope my tags worked)
7 November 2009 at 11.48 am
Nick, A little humor goes a long way. “Gulliver’s Travels” is quite a book.
16 November 2009 at 6.45 am
Don’t forget that the author of Acts (aka “Luke”) also has the charming story of Herod Agrippa who is struck down by an angel, and eaten by worms (presumably a reference to an affliction in the guts). His crime, like Jehoram and Antiochus Epiphanes, was to be a haughty blasphemer who robbed God of his rightful glory.
Is there something about pride and opposition to God that necessitates being overcome by worms? I’m also thinking of Isaiah 14:11 here where the verse that is often applied to Satan (tenuously I feel) says that the proud one is covered by worms in the grave (sheol).
Just a few thoughts.
Admittedly no worms in Luke’s death of Judas, but plenty of gut spillage. Weren’t guts seen as the seat of compassion and pity by the ancient mind? Are proud guts therefore utterly corrupt and fit for nothing?
30 November 2009 at 7.34 pm
[...] Boulet takes a look at the way the death of Judas is portrayed, and some of Luke’s possible [...]