How Did Judas Die?

How did Judas die? Who bought the field? Is it Jeremiah or Zechariah, who prophesied about the potter’s field? 

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation where someone asks you to get a piece of paper from their desk, and you actually went and found that there was no paper on the desk, but you found a piece of paper on the floor and the window was open, would you think that this person lied to you? Or would you conclude that the paper may have fallen from the desk to the floor due to the air current from the open window? 

This is exactly the answer to those who say that there is a contradiction in the Bible regarding the death of Judas. The Gospel of Matthew says that he “went away and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5), while Luke the evangelist in the book of Acts says that “he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out” (Acts 1:18). Which of them is telling the truth? If we examine the text closely, we will understand that he hanged himself, then fell on the ground, which led to his body bursting open, and his intestines spilling out. So it is an arrangement of events and not a contradiction, as the skeptics claim. 

As for the purchase of the field, we find the Gospel of Matthew saying that the chief priests consulted and bought the potter’s field with the silver that Judas threw in the temple, and being the price of blood, the priests decided that it cannot enter the treasury. On the other hand, the book of Acts says that Judas acquired the field. Who among them says the truth? 

To respond to this suspicion of contradiction, we must return to two points: 

The first point is the original language in which the text was written, because going back to the original language tells us what the writer intended from the text. In the book of Acts, Luke the Evangelist says that Judas (acquired) a field… The word to acquire here in the original language is written ἐκτήσατο (aktisato) which is a verb in the ancient Greek language meaning that a person gained or acquired something through another person, i.e. a third party. Judas here was a third party in the acquisition process,  as it was acquired through the chief priests.Luke did not go into the details, but directly mentioned the end result, and he said that Judas fell on his face (as a result of the decomposition of the hanged body or the breaking of the rope with which he hanged himself) and he mentioned that he acquired the field (as a result of the high priests buying the field with the money of Judas himself, as Matthew said in his gospel). 

The second point is the way Matthew wrote his gospel. We find that Matthew always links events with the prophecies of the old Testament, so he mentions the details that can be linked in the minds of the Jews with their scriptures to prove to them that these events were foretold by the prophets, so we find him mentioning the name of the field (the potter’s field, while Luke did not mention the name of the field in the book of Acts) and connects it directly to a prophecy from the Old Testament and says that the chief priests took the silver and bought the field. 

We come to the last issue, which is who is the prophet who prophesied the potter’s field? This prophecy is partially mentioned in the book of Zechariah, and partially in the book of Jeremiah. Did he make a mistake when he cited the prophet Jeremiah instead of the prophet Zechariah? 

Simply and without going into details, the Jews used to divide scriptures of the Old Testament into three parts: the law – the psalms – the prophets. The Jews called the part of the prophets Jeremiah (because at that time it was the first book in the group). Therefore, as we are accustomed to with Matthew when he talks to the Jews, he mentions what they know (what was said by Jeremiah as the overall title of the book of the prophets including the book of Zechariah) and he did not mention the division that we know of today (Zechariah). 

Likewise, the prophecy mentioned by Matthew is a prophecy consisting of two parts, one of which was mentioned in the book of Zechariah, and the other was already mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, but because this part of the book was called Jeremiah, Matthew did not make the division. A skeptic should go back to history to find out how the Jews arranged the Tanakh (the Hebrew name for the Old Testament). 

Conclusion: 

Judas hanged himself (as mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew) and then fell on his face (as mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles) and the chief priests bought the field by proxy with Judas’ money (as the Gospel of Matthew mentioned), and thus Judas acquired the field as a third party as the verb “acquire” means in the original language (as mentioned in the book of Acts). The prophecy mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew is a prophecy that consists of two parts, one of which is mentioned in the Book of Zechariah and the other in the Book of Jeremiah, but the Jews used to call all the writings of the prophets Jeremiah.  

Was Jesus Crucified Before The Passover Meal Or After?

According to all four of the Gospels, Jesus ate the Passover meal before he was crucified. (Matthew 26:17-29; Mark 14:12-25; Luke 22:7-22; John 13:1-30) This, after all was the Last Supper; not just a minor detail, but a critical event, as it was at this time that Our Lord instituted the Eucharist. A problem arises though in an apparent contradiction that can be found in the Gospel of John during his account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate: “Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, ‘Behold your King!’” – John 19:14. If this was the Preparation Day, and the Passover Meal is about to be eaten; how could the meal have taken place the night before?  

While all four Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified on the day of preparation; the Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke, called the Synoptic Gospels because of how similar they are, make reference to the day being a Preparation Day for the Sabbath. The Gospel of John stands alone in using the term “Preparation Day of the Passover”. Is there a reasonable explanation for this? Did Saint John make a mistake? 

Some skeptics who desperately desire to discredit the Bible have gone as far as to accuse Saint John of simply falsely stating that it was the Preparation Day of Passover so that he could draw a parallel to Jesus being crucified on that day, and the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb. This accusation of course falls apart when we see that Saint John was not falsifying anything, and his Gospel does not contradict the Synoptic Gospels at all.  

It is worth noting before we go further that the chronology laid out in the Gospel of John is what the Church follows most closely, so if we are to ask “Did Saint John make a mistake?” we might as well ask the same question of the other three Evangelists. Thankfully, all four Gospels are correct, we just need to make sure that 1) We are approaching this correctly, and 2) We are not looking at this purely from a materialistic viewpoint.    

Saint John’s use of the phrase “Preparation Day of the Passover” is correct. Jesus was crucified on Friday Morning, before Passover. There are other verses to support this: 

“Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat Passover.” John 18:28 

“Therefore, because it was Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day). The Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken, and that they might be taken away.” John 19:31.  

Now let’s look at a verse from the Gospel of Matthew: 

“Now on the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, ‘Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover’” Matthew 26:17. 

But wait, doesn’t Matthew clearly say “eat the Passover”? Yes, and it refers to the meal as Passover in the other Gospels as well. It was clear that at least in part, the Last Supper was a commemoration if the Passover. This was made clear in the Gospels, but it wasn’t eaten on the Passover. The meal itself wasn’t even the right food for a Passover meal.  

First, a key component of the traditional Passover meal (Seder) would have been unleavened bread. The Greek word used for the bread eaten at the last supper is Artos, which is the word used for common leavened bread. Traditionally, no Leaven can be consumed at all at Passover. If Our Lord was eating Passover, as he did many times before, he would have used unleavened bread. There also would have been Lamb.  There is no mention of a Lamb being eaten in any of the Gospels. It would not have been possible in the first place for there to have been a Lamb, because a Lamb could not have been slaughtered on the day before Passover.  

The First Day of The Feast, is the Thursday before the Feast of unleavened bread, which would have taken place Friday Evening – the beginning of the Sabbath, which would have been Passover. The Last Supper was not the Passover meal, it was a meal eaten in anticipation of the Passover. Why is this important? Why not just call it an anticipatory meal and avoid all the confusion and debate? This is where we get into the heart of the issue, and we need to try to look at it from a spiritual perspective.  

God gave the Passover to his people before he brought them out of Egypt, and for hundreds of years Passover was strictly observed every year in commemoration.  Everything though changed that night, the day before Passover, when our Lord gathered with his disciples to break leavened bread. On the night before his crucifixion, when by his power, death would be conquered once and for all; he gave us a new Passover, with new meaning. There was no Lamb at the last Supper, because he was now the spotless, unblemished Lamb. It was on that night he gave us the gift of his own body, and blood; gifts that we receive at every Divine Liturgy. Within a few short days of this event, the world both seen and unseen would be changed forever.  

Was Jesus crucified before the Passover meal? The answer is “Yes”. 

How Did Judas Die?

How did Judas die? Who bought the field? Is it Jeremiah or Zechariah, who prophesied about the potter’s field? 

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation where someone asks you to get a piece of paper from their desk, and you actually went and found that there was no paper on the desk, but you found a piece of paper on the floor and the window was open, would you think that this person lied to you? Or would you conclude that the paper may have fallen from the desk to the floor due to the air current from the open window? 

This is exactly the answer to those who say that there is a contradiction in the Bible regarding the death of Judas. The Gospel of Matthew says that he “went away and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5), while Luke the evangelist in the book of Acts says that “he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out” (Acts 1:18). Which of them is telling the truth? If we examine the text closely, we will understand that he hanged himself, then fell on the ground, which led to his body bursting open, and his intestines spilling out. So it is an arrangement of events and not a contradiction, as the skeptics claim. 

As for the purchase of the field, we find the Gospel of Matthew saying that the chief priests consulted and bought the potter’s field with the silver that Judas threw in the temple, and being the price of blood, the priests decided that it cannot enter the treasury. On the other hand, the book of Acts says that Judas acquired the field. Who among them says the truth? 

To respond to this suspicion of contradiction, we must return to two points: 

The first point is the original language in which the text was written, because going back to the original language tells us what the writer intended from the text. In the book of Acts, Luke the Evangelist says that Judas (acquired) a field… The word to acquire here in the original language is written ἐκτήσατο (aktisato) which is a verb in the ancient Greek language meaning that a person gained or acquired something through another person, i.e. a third party. Judas here was a third party in the acquisition process,  as it was acquired through the chief priests.Luke did not go into the details, but directly mentioned the end result, and he said that Judas fell on his face (as a result of the decomposition of the hanged body or the breaking of the rope with which he hanged himself) and he mentioned that he acquired the field (as a result of the high priests buying the field with the money of Judas himself, as Matthew said in his gospel). 

The second point is the way Matthew wrote his gospel. We find that Matthew always links events with the prophecies of the old Testament, so he mentions the details that can be linked in the minds of the Jews with their scriptures to prove to them that these events were foretold by the prophets, so we find him mentioning the name of the field (the potter’s field, while Luke did not mention the name of the field in the book of Acts) and connects it directly to a prophecy from the Old Testament and says that the chief priests took the silver and bought the field. 

We come to the last issue, which is who is the prophet who prophesied the potter’s field? This prophecy is partially mentioned in the book of Zechariah, and partially in the book of Jeremiah. Did he make a mistake when he cited the prophet Jeremiah instead of the prophet Zechariah? 

Simply and without going into details, the Jews used to divide scriptures of the Old Testament into three parts: the law – the psalms – the prophets. The Jews called the part of the prophets Jeremiah (because at that time it was the first book in the group). Therefore, as we are accustomed to with Matthew when he talks to the Jews, he mentions what they know (what was said by Jeremiah as the overall title of the book of the prophets including the book of Zechariah) and he did not mention the division that we know of today (Zechariah). 

Likewise, the prophecy mentioned by Matthew is a prophecy consisting of two parts, one of which was mentioned in the book of Zechariah, and the other was already mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, but because this part of the book was called Jeremiah, Matthew did not make the division. A skeptic should go back to history to find out how the Jews arranged the Tanakh (the Hebrew name for the Old Testament). 

Conclusion: 

Judas hanged himself (as mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew) and then fell on his face (as mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles) and the chief priests bought the field by proxy with Judas’ money (as the Gospel of Matthew mentioned), and thus Judas acquired the field as a third party as the verb “acquire” means in the original language (as mentioned in the book of Acts). The prophecy mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew is a prophecy that consists of two parts, one of which is mentioned in the Book of Zechariah and the other in the Book of Jeremiah, but the Jews used to call all the writings of the prophets Jeremiah.  

Did Jesus Heal Two Blind Men Or Only One Blind Man?

Also, did this take place on His way to Jericho or from Jericho? 

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus healed two blind men (Matthew 20), while according to the gospels of Mark and Luke, He healed only one blind man (Mark 10 and Luke 18). The gospel of Luke also states that Jesus was entering Jericho (Luke 18), nevertheless, the gospel of Mark states that Jesus was going out of Jericho. 

How can we reconcile the difference between these biblical accounts? 

Those who doubt the authenticity of the bible are diligent in searching for any discrepancy that might prove the existence of a contradiction in the bible. Yet they barely exert the same amount of effort to understand the historical and geographical background of the text which explains most of these alleged contradictions. Additionally, they only read the Bible in their own language without returning to the original language in which the Bible was written.  

One of the famous events that at first glance might seem confusing or contradicting is the healing of the blind men mentioned in the different gospels. But before getting to that event and explaining it, let’s just illustrate what happened with an example. Imagine a friend of yours who owns two mobile phones and one of them got broken. Later that friend told a group of your friends that he was going to fix his phone. Does that statement make him a liar or contradicting himself? You know that he has two mobile phones and him saying that he was going to fix his phone doesn’t contradict the fact that he still has two phones.  

In a similar manner, When Mark and Luke mentioned the event of the blind man healing (the same event mentioned by Matthew due to the use of almost the same words to describe it, hence pointing to the same event), they didn’t mention that there was only one blind man; nevertheless, they focused on the healing of one person as his father was known to the readers at the time. The blind man was Bartimaeus which translates to the “son of Timaeus”. This however does not deny the presence of another blind man. 

Mentioning one does not deny or refute the existence of others. In that sense, the mention in Luke and Mark of only one person doesn’t preclude the possibility that there were two blind men. Had they said that only one blind man was healed, then this would have been a contradiction, but that is not the case. There is also another opinion explaining that these two blind men were not together, it is very possible that one was met by Jesus at the beginning of the road, while the other towards the end of the road. Hence, considering them two separate events Mark and Luke only mentioned one; but Matthew mentioned the two. 

This leads us to the second alleged contradiction: Was Jesus entering or going out of Jericho? 

Between the years 1929 and 1936, the English archaeologist John Gargstang conducted research in Palestine, through which he discovered the existence of two cities with the name of Jericho. One of which is the one whose walls fell before Joshua and the people of Israel (that city was demolished and built several times). And the other is Herod’s Jericho, where the winter palace of Herod is found. It is located southwest of ancient Jericho at about one mile distance. The Jewish historian Josephus spoke of the existence of both cities in his books “The wars of the Jews” and “Antiquities of the Jews”. 

Hence, on his way from across the Jordan river heading to Jerusalem, Jesus was going outside of ancient Jericho (according to Matthew) moving towards Herod’s Jericho (according to Luke); that is where he healed two blind men on his way (according to Matthew). One of them was Bartimaeus (according to Mark) and the other was unknown to the readers. It’s also very possible that the two men were about one mile (1500 meters) apart, leading Mark and Luke to consider them as separate events and therefore, mention only one. 

This explanation should draw our attention to the importance of understanding the background of the text as well as look for the spiritual, literal and historical meaning behind it.