Death of Judas

[KBrad]

I had a friend ask me about the apparent difference in the accounts of Judas’ death. In Matthew 27:5 Judas “went and hanged himself” (RSVCE). In Acts 1:18 Judas’ death is described as “falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowls gushed out” (RSVCE).
I am sure the differences have something to do with tranlating expressions and different perspectives of the same account. Not being a scripture scholar or having any background in Greek or Hebrew, I am hoping someone can help me reconcile the different accounts.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

I haven’t seen anything official on this.

One speculation is that he hung himself on a limb extending over a small cliff. At some point the rope gave way and his body fell.

 

[Sir_Knight]

Joe, I was about to say the same thing but you beat me to it additionally, if you had a long rope and jumped, when you hit bottom all your guts would fall out your keester. Gruesome either way, when your neck snaps, your bowels give way.

 

[awalt]

Good example that everyone can understand showing that the Bible may appear to be clearly contradicting, therefore fallible, but in fact it’s not – we just don’t understand enough :bowdown:

 

[legeorge]

I heard an explanation that said that Judas hanged himself as it is written in Matthew. And what it says in Acts could be an explanation of what happened when Judas’ body was discovered (and cut down?) after he hung himself. His body could have burst forth from the build up of gases and so forth (normal decay process?). I don’t know how accurate this is, but it makes sense. Wish I could remember where I heard that.

 

[legeorge]

I found this by accident while browsing through past issues of This Rock 2004:

Q: Matthew 27:5 says that Judas hanged himself, while Peter says in Acts 1:18 that he fell and was disemboweled. How can we reconcile what appears to be an apparent contradiction?

A: There are two possible ways to reconcile the verses:

Luke’s purpose in Acts may have been simply to report what Peter said at a point in time when the apostles’ information on Judas’s death may well have been sketchy. After some of the Temple priests converted (cf. Acts 6:7), they may have given further details on Judas’s death that were later incorporated into the Gospel accounts.
It is also possible that after Judas hanged himself the rope broke and he fell onto rocks that disemboweled him postmortem. Matthew’s emphasis then would have been Judas’s actions in taking his own life, while Peter’s emphasis was on what happened to him after his suicide.

Hope that helps!

 

[KBrad]

Thank you all for your reponses. Below is my response to my friend’s inquiry. I cannot attest to the accuracy of the scenerios as I am not, as I stated, a scholar in this area. I found the information I researched interesting. In addition to the information provided in this forum I took information from the following sources:
www.dtl.org/bible/ng-post/contradictions.htm and www.apologeticspress.org

*Starting with the understanding that, as Catholics, we believe the scriptures to be inerrant and cannot therefore contain “contradictions”, we understand the two accounts must describe only one event, the death of Judas. The death of Judas is not mentioned by Mark or John and is only referred to by Luke in Acts, not in his gospel.

Among ancient Hebrews suicide does not appear to have been very common. I understand only a few cases are mentioned in the Old Testament, among them, Samson, Saul and his armor-bearer. I think we can safely assume there was no “preferred” method of suicide among ancient Jewish people. That leaves us with the question “How did Judas kill himself?”

It is probable that no one witnessed the suicide of Judas. So we can deduce that the accounts of his death in both Matthew and in Acts are “after the fact” recordings.

There are at least two possible scenarios of Judas’ suicide that would reconcile both Matthew’s account and Luke’s account.

First Judas could have “hanged” himself in the way our modern understanding of the term implies … with a rope and “hanging” off the ground from a tree branch or some other elevated device. After a period of time his body could have bloated and then fallen, bursting open. In this scenario Matthew would have recorded the “method” of Judas’s suicide (by hanging) while Peter (in ACTS) speaks of the “results” of the death (the body falling and bursting).

Another possibility is that Judas did not “hang” himself as we understand “hanging”. A method of suicide among the Assyrians (which the ancient Jewish people were familiar with) was by impalement. A sharpened stump, a stick, or other device wedged into the ground, was used and the person would fall headlong upon it. Depending on the size of the impaling instrument, the person’s body would “hang” upon the instrument which most likely protruded through the midsection and perhaps allowing the guts to spill out.

Either of the scenarios would fit both the accounts recorded in Matthew and in Acts. *

 

[Zooey]

I think that the supposed conflicts all go away when you realize what happens when a person is hanged/hangs himself. There is a sudden terrific jerk in the rope, plus sudden pressure on the windpipe. The normal reaction is for all the body sphincters to let go, releasing the contents .
Add to that the fact that a proper “hangman’s knot” was many centuries in the future, he probably hung there for quite some time before he was dead. (A mediaeval English form of death by torture was to hang a man to the point of fainting, then cut him down & carry him off to another place & hang him again, “from one village to the other”, until–presumably–the guards got too tired to bother. *Then *they killed him.)
Judas would have been cut down as soon as someone discovered him, because of Jewish purity laws (for which, see Leviticus).We do not know, however, when he was discovered, nor where. Either or both of these factors could also have affected the state of the body.

 

[donosti]

Judas hanged himself,he wasn’t completly dead when probably the arm tree broke off and he fell and he burst open on some sharp rocks.That’s my own comclussion,I think it makes sense.