The Death of Judas (Both Versions of the Story)

[Jagella]

The New Testament includes two versions of the story of the death of Judas. Matthew 27:5 tells us that Judas hanged himself, and Acts 1:18 says that Judas fell head-first and was disemboweled from the fall.

Most people might read these passages and see that there is a conflict between these two stories. Since these two stories are contradictory, at least one of them must be untrue, and we would then know that the Bible has at least one error in it.

Christian apologists cannot tolerate any errors in the Bible or in their beliefs, so they must reconcile these two conflicting stories. But how?

I am acquainted with an apologetic that is popular with Jehovah's Witnesses which they use to resolve the two stories of the death of Judas. According to at least two Jehovah's Witnesses I've spoken to, Judas hanged himself like Matthew 27:5 says, but the rope broke. Judas then fell, and the fall disemboweled him like we are told in Acts 1:18.

Question for Debate: Is this apologetic for the death of Judas plausible?

I can think of at least two reasons why the proposed reconciliation of the paradox of the death of Judas is not plausible. For one thing, nowhere does the Bible say that the rope Judas used to hang himself broke. Matthew tells us Judas hanged himself, and if Judas did hang himself, then hanging was the cause of his death. He could not have died that way if the rope broke.

The second objection I can raise is that if Judas fell headfirst like Acts tells us, then he could not have fallen that way if he hanged himself! Unless, of course, apologists wish to argue that Judas hanged himself by his feet.

[1213]

…Christian apologists cannot tolerate any errors in the Bible or in their beliefs, so they must reconcile these two conflicting stories. But how?

I am acquainted with an apologetic that is popular with Jehovah's Witnesses which they use to resolve the two stories of the death of Judas. According to at least two Jehovah's Witnesses I've spoken to, Judas hanged himself like Matthew 27:5 says, but the rope broke. Judas then fell, and the fall disemboweled him like we are told in Acts 1:18.

Question for Debate: Is this apologetic for the death of Judas plausible?…

I think that is plausible and good explanation. And because of it, person who is honest, can’t claim Bible has error in this case.

[benchwarmer]

…Christian apologists cannot tolerate any errors in the Bible or in their beliefs, so they must reconcile these two conflicting stories. But how?

I am acquainted with an apologetic that is popular with Jehovah's Witnesses which they use to resolve the two stories of the death of Judas. According to at least two Jehovah's Witnesses I've spoken to, Judas hanged himself like Matthew 27:5 says, but the rope broke. Judas then fell, and the fall disemboweled him like we are told in Acts 1:18.

Question for Debate: Is this apologetic for the death of Judas plausible?…

I think that is plausible and good explanation. And because of it, person who is honest, can’t claim Bible has error in this case.

Rather than just flat out claiming it's plausible, please explain HOW it's plausible. This should be interesting...

[Jagella]

I think that is plausible and good explanation. And because of it, person who is honest, can’t claim Bible has error in this case.

Can an honest person conclude that a hanged man fell headfirst and disemboweled himself?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 2 by 1213]

I agree and its worth pointing out this is far from just a "Jehovah's Witnesses" reading.


CATHOLIC ANSWERS.COM

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.
https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-do-we-e ... w-and-acts

CARM : Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry.
https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/mat ... lling-down

There is no contradiction here at all because both are true. A contradiction occurs when one statement excludes the possibility of another. The Second Law of Logic, the Law of Non Contradition, (LNC) says that something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense. It is not a contradiction to describe something differently: Judas was hung and Judas fell down. Both are possible since neither negates the possibility of the other. A contradiction occurs when one statement makes another statement impossible but both are said to be true. So, what happened here is that Judas went and hung himself and then his body later fell down and split open. In other words, the rope or branch of the tree probably broke due to the weight and his body fell down and his bowels spilled out.

Also, notice that Matt. 27:3-8 tells us specifically how Judas died, by hanging. Acts 1:16-19 merely tells us that he fell headlong and his bowels gushed out. Acts does not tell us that this is the means of his death where Matthew does.

VARIOUS COMMENTARIES

Acts 1:18-20. ... his falling headlong, and bursting asunder, (in consequence, probably, of the rope breaking wherewith he hanged himself,) so that his bowels gushed out, is explained at large. - Benson Commentary

And falling headlong - The word here rendered "headlong" - π�ηνη�ς prēnēs (Latin "pronus," whence our English word "prone") - means properly "bent forward, head-foremost"; and the idea is, that his position in hanging himself was such that when the cord broke he fell headlong, or fell forward on his face. - Benson Commentary

Expositor's Greek Testament:

...Felten and Zöckler (so too Lumby and Jacobson) see in St. Luke’s description a later stage in the terrible end of the traitor. St. Matthew says καὶ ἀπελθὼν ἀπήγξατο: if the rope broke, or a branch gave way under the weight of Judas, St. Luke’s narrative might easily be supplementary to that of St. Matthew. Blass, in loco, adopts the former alternative, and holds that thus the narrative may be harmonised with that of St. Matthew, rupto fune Iudam in terram procidisse. It is difficult to see (as against Overbeck) why π�ηνὴς γεν. is inconsistent with this. The words no doubt mean strictly “falling flat on his face� opposed to ὕπτιος, not “falling headlong,� and so they do not necessarily imply that Judas fell over a precipice, but Hackett’s view that Judas may have hung himself from a tree on the edge of a precipice near the valley of Hinnom, and that he fell on to the rocky pavement below is suggested from his own observation of the locality, p. 36, Acts of the Apostles (first English edition), see also Edersheim, ubi supra, pp. 575, 576. At all events there is nothing disconcerting in the supposition that we may have here “some unknown series of facts, of which we have but two fragmentary narratives�: “Judas,� B.D.2, and see further Plummer sub v. in Hastings

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[Jagella]

Rather than just flat out claiming it's plausible, please explain HOW it's plausible. This should be interesting...

Here's the gospel according to Jagella:

Poor Judas by chance tried to hang himself with an unusually weak rope that did not bear his weight during his hanging attempt. When that rope broke, Judas fell feet-first onto a ledge below him. When his feet hit that ledge, the impact spun him forward into a headfirst fall. He then fell onto yet another ledge, his belly striking that ledge causing his abdomen to rupture spilling its contents.

Matthew only bothered to report the hanging while Luke only reports the latter stage of the fall that involved the disembowelment. Neither one of them knew about the broken rope or the ledges Judas fell onto, or if they were aware of these details, they didn't bother to record them.

Perfectly plausible, eh?

[Jagella]

I agree and its worth pointing out this is far from just a "Jehovah Witness" reading.

Can you offer a blow-by-blow account like I did in Post 6, or do you just agree with what I said there?

Here are two possibilities we may entertain to explain how the Bible records the death of Judas:

• A. We can add a lot of improbable details to the two stories to combine them into one harmonious whole.
  B. We can simply see the two stories as in conflict because Matthew and Luke were either not aware of the version the other had written or didn't care about or agree with the other version.

I find B to be the more probable explanation of the two, so I accept B as the explanation for the apparent conflict between the stories of the death of Judas.

[benchwarmer]

Rather than just flat out claiming it's plausible, please explain HOW it's plausible. This should be interesting...

Here's the gospel according to Jagella:

Poor Judas by chance tried to hang himself with an unusually weak rope that did not bear his weight during his hanging attempt. When that rope broke, Judas fell feet-first onto a ledge below him. When his feet hit that ledge, the impact spun him forward into a headfirst fall. He then fell onto yet another ledge, his belly striking that ledge causing his abdomen to rupture spilling its contents.

Matthew only bothered to report the hanging while Luke only reports the latter stage of the fall that involved the disembowelment. Neither one of them knew about the broken rope or the ledges Judas fell onto, or if they were aware of these details, they didn't bother to record them.

Perfectly plausible, eh?

I suppose if we also presuppose that Judas also got HIMSELF above all these ledges to begin with in order to initially hang himself.

I'm sure many of us could come up with all sorts of Rube Golberg contraptions that allow someone to both hang themselves successfully and then also manage to have the rope break such that a head dashing and disembowelment follows.

My gospel:

Judas found the flimsiest piece of rope he could (because he liked doing the job poorly) and then proceeded to plan the actual hanging. He fancied the idea of riding a unicorn into the sunset so he found a horse and strapped a horn to its head. Then he found a suitable tree to tie the rope to. After tying the rope to the tree and around his neck, he mounted his 'unicorn'. He intended to have the unicorn bolt toward the sunset and snap his neck in the process. However, after slapping the unicorn on the flank, the unicorn balked and bucked him instead. He went flying up then down thereby breaking his neck, then the weak rope in short succession. As the unicorn/horse continued to flail around, poor Judas came down belly first right on the horn disemboweling himself in the process. After the unicorn/horse flipped him off his horn, he trampled him for good effect and thus dashed his head on rocks laying about on the ground.

Gee, I guess it is plausible after all.

[Willum]

There is the boring answer:
That "disemboweled" was used as an allegory for a horrible death. "Disemboweled" is such an unnatural condition, one could reasonably expect the writer to understand that it was a horrible death, and not an actual disembowelment.

[Difflugia]

[Replying to post 1 by Jagella]

The two accounts are contradictory in the Christian apologetics sense that it is impossible for them to be true together. Matthew 27:8 says that the Field of Blood was called Field of Blood because strangers were buried there. Acts 1:18-19 says that it was called the Field of Blood because Judas's guts fell out there.

The actual death accounts are implausible because a fuller account of the tradition referenced in Acts is included in the Fragments of Papias:

Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out.

This is pretty obviously based on the same tradition as the one in Acts, but can't be made to fit the "hanged himself then exploded" apologetic.