The strange death(s) of Judas Iscariot

Dan McClellan Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we bring you greater access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. Uh, we're gonna

Dan Beecher talk about that, uh,

Dan McClellan that, the villain, the,

Dan Beecher the final villain of the Jesus story, uh, Judas Iscariot, the, the, the man, the myth, the legend. The guy, the betrayer of Jesus. Mm-hmm. Uh, because there's a confusing, uh, uh, discrepancy, uh, between the story of Judas in Matthew- Mm-hmm ... and the story of Judas in Acts.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So I thought we would dive in and just, uh, just sort of talk about, uh, about this discrepancy. And so, uh, where should we start? Should we start with Acts or should we start with Matthew? Um,

Dan McClellan why don't we start with Acts, actually?

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, that's the fun one. Yeah. We will definitely, uh, start with the fun one, where in Acts, and this is, uh, this is chapter one, verse, uh, what, 15? No. Um- Sorry, I, I had it pulled up. Uh,

Dan McClellan it starts in 18. We have this parenthetical aside about what happened to Judas.

Dan Beecher Okay. So yeah, chapter one, verse 18. Uh, Judas, having received his, uh, his pieces of silver- Mm-hmm ... for, for his betrayal of Jesus, uh, has apparently purchased himself a field. Uh, i- in verse 18, it says, "Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness." And this is so great, "Falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out. Th- this became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language, uh, Hak- Hakeldama." Mm-hmm. Uh, I, I'm gonna assume I pronounced that perfectly. Uh, that is Field of Blood.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So yeah- I like it ... we, uh, that, that's a, a gruesome end- Yep ... to, to a person's life. Just, just tripping apparently and- ... just explosion.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, we have, uh, a couple of things. First, this sounds to some degree like kind of an etiology for why there's this field called the Field of Blood. Mm. And so, uh, it may be that the author is saying, "Oh, this would be a great opportunity to tie in and tie off the story of Judas, because we got this place over here that's called the Field of Blood." Um, and it's a, it's a Greek, uh, transliteration, Hakeldama, um, is, um, how, uh, what it is in, uh, in the Greek. But yeah, it is, it is pretty brief and, uh, yeah, he has a reward. He buys a field. Now, the Greek here, uh, where it talks about him falling, says headlong in the KJV. This could mean head first, or it could mean towards his head or on his head. Uh, there's an argument that some people have made that the Greek there could, instead of falling, could mean to, um, to burst. And so that would kind of fit a little better the, um, or s- to swell up. Ah. That would kind of fit a little bet- better, this idea that he burst asunder. So he just has a field and is standing there- ... um, beholding the field in which he grows all his you know what, and then he just starts swelling up, uh, like, uh, Violet in, uh, uh, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Right ... and then bursts. And then, you know, you find traditions somewhat like this in the ancient world, where somebody, some divine punishment was that somebody swelled up and, and popped. Um, so- ... would not be totally unheard of, uh, but very gross. And then the other option is that he, yeah, was just walking and was like, "Doop-de-doo," and then splat. Fell on his head, or-

Dan Beecher Sometimes when you hit your head just right, your entire bowels burst out of your body. Yeah. It's a, it's a n- that's a known thing. Yeah. Uh, it's a l- it's an alarming story. Yes. It's an alarming, uh, uh, tale, and what? I don't, I don't think it could happen. I don't think you can just burst open. But there you go. There, there, there's one story of, uh, Judas. The other comes to us from Matthew 27.

Dan McClellan And, and I wanna make a point here before we move to the one in Matthew 27. Okay. This is two verses long. The first verse tells what happened, and then the second verse just ties it into this etiology for, for

Dan Beecher this place that was called the Field of Blood. And- Yeah, it definitely, it, like the one thing that seems clear from, uh, from comparing these two stories is that there is, in fact, a field of blood. Mm-hmm. At the end of both of these stories, we know that there's a place called the Field of Blood.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Uh,

Dan Beecher so here we go. Uh, this is, I'm gonna start with, uh, with, this is twen- chapter 27, verse three. "When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brock- brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. He said, 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.' But they said, 'What is that to us? See it, see to it yourself.' Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. Uh, but the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, 'It is not lawful to put them in the, into the treasury since they are blood money.'" After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter's field and placed, uh, uh, as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason, that field has been called the field of blood to this day.

Dan McClellan And then, um, the next two verses I think are, are relevant, but we'll get to them in a second. Let's talk about this story a little bit. So- Right ... the passage in Acts was two verses. This one is so far six verses. Six of, of a total of eight. So the first thing to note is that this story is significantly expanded. Yeah. And when you're, when you're comparing two versions of a story, one principle that is not a, a hard and fast law, but is a tendency, is something called lectio, uh... Oh I forget the Latin. Lectio brevis I think, I think is what it is. But the, uh, the shorter reading is what that means, and the idea is the shorter reading is usually, not always, but usually the earlier one. Because the tendency is for stories to accrete more details- Mm ... rather than for people to shave details off. And so just from looking at the length of these two stories, it seems like the one in Matthew is probably the one that's a little later and is adding more details to it. Hmm. But the details are also interesting. Let's take a, a, a look at the beginning. Uh, and, and this, there's an earlier part where Judas goes to these people and negotiates the price for turning Jesus over, and they negotiate 30 pieces of silver, and so that's delivered to Judas. And here it says, "He repented, brought back the 30 pieces, threw it into the temple," um, and they tell him, you know, "This is your problem, man." Yeah. Um, now that 30 pieces of silver is significant, uh, but w- I wanna put a pin in that and keep going. The chief priests take the silver and say, "This is blood money," and here we have the tie-in with the field of blood idea. Right. But they buy a potter's field as a place to bury foreigners. Um, and this potter's field is also interesting. So I wanna go on to verses nine and 10 where the author of Matthew says, "Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the Prophet Jeremiah." And this one is wrong. It's not Jeremiah. It's- ... actually Zechariah. Um-

Dan Beecher Oh, Matthew, get it straight, will

Dan McClellan ya? Uh, and this is, um, probably, uh, Zechariah 11 verses 12 through 13, but we also have a reference to verse nine. Um, but, uh, where is it? That it was... Uh, "And they took the 30 pieces," so this is, this is Zechariah, "And they took the 30 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." So this is, this doesn't exactly match any text that we have from Zechariah, but it very closely matches Zechariah 11:12 through 13 where it says, "I then said to them, 'If it seems right to you, give me my wages, but if not, keep them.' So they weighed out as my wages 30 shekels of silver. Then the Lord said to me, 'Throw it into the treasury for this lordly price at which I was valued by them.' So I took the 30 shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury in the house of the Lord." And so- Okay ... the story in Matthew seems very, very close to this prophecy from Zechariah, and this fits Matthew's MO. One of the things Matthew is doing is trying to show that Jesus fulfills all these prophecies from the Hebrew Bible. Right. And Matthew is willing to change the story to make it fit better these prophecies. Sometimes these are prophecies that are found in the other gospels, sometimes they're prophecies that are not, that Matthew is coming up with. And so if we look in Acts, we've got a very short story. None of the details that are found in the prophecy from Zechariah are found in the story of Judas's death from Acts.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I- I- it's very interesting. You know, it's funny because one of the things that I looked at when I was looking into this was, you know, if you just Google, "How did Judas die?" You find a lot of apologetic, uh, websites, things like Answers in Genesis- Mm-hmm ... saying, "Don't worry, these aren't conflicting stories, uh, because maybe Judas hanged himself like Matthew says, and then he rotted. And while he was hanging there, he, uh, expanded and expanded because he was, you know, the bacteria, and blah, blah, blah. And then he burst open after the rope broke or the branch broke." And it, they, they, they go through this very elaborate, um, harmonizing of these two different stories. Mm-hmm. None of them acknowledge that there's another problem, and that is who bought the field-

Dan McClellan Right ...

Dan Beecher which is a directly conflicting idea. Like, there, you can't harmonize, he bought the field and was walking in his field with, he threw... Like, w- and he bought, he bought the field with his money that he got with that, the, the- Yeah ... the 30 pieces of silver. And, uh, and then the Matthew version, which is he threw the pieces of silver back at them, and then they went and bought the field.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There, you can't plausibly harmonize it. But there are a lot of folks who are willing to say, "Well, if you presuppose this scenario, and if you assume this scenario, and if this were going on in the background. And, oh, well, you could speak of someone buying something with the other person's money as the other person buying it." Like, you can come up with all of these rationalizations- Right ... for why it is not impossible.

Dan Beecher Of course you can, yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and this is, this is something that, that I've, uh, repeatedly mentioned on, on my own, um, social media channels is if you wanna harmonize two passages, as long as not impossible is the bar, one, that's the lowest bar you could possibly set, but two, you can always get over that bar. If, well, it's not physically impossible is the bar, you can harmonize anything. Right. But this, I think, raises one of the biggest problems with apologetics is, is apologetics, one, does not follow the data where the data lead. Does not allow the data to operate on their own terms. Apologetics treats the data as an obstacle to be overcome, because they have a predetermined endpoint. Right. And they just need to get around, and get rid of, and get over, and get by the data to be able to arrive at that endpoint. And it so commonly results in not impossible stacked on not impossible, stacked on not impossible, stacked on not impossible. Is it probable? Of course not. Is it plausible? Of course not. Is it impossible? Eh. And as long as they can gin up the tiniest little sliver of it's not physically impossible, even though we've got a dozen pi- we've got a stack of 12 it's not physically impossibles sitting on top- Right ... of each other, it's still not impossible, therefore- Jangling like a Jenga

Dan Beecher tower that's- Yeah ... ready to tumble at any,

Dan McClellan in any direction. They've got the tiniest little sliver of not impossible, and that's all they need. Right. Because the goal is not to show that it's probable or even that it's plausible. The goal is just to show it's not physically impossible, therefore there is the tiniest little glimmer of validity to the belief in the univocality and the inerrancy of this text, and that's all they need to grasp onto. Because it's ultimately not about, uh, coming up with what's most likely. It's about defending my belief in this whatever, in the inerrancy of this text, in the univocality of this text to themselves. Right. Not to anyone else, to themselves, so they can feel justified in having that belief, even if that justification is built upon the foundation of that tiniest little sliver of not impossible. And so any, any two stories from outside the Bible that were so incongruent a- as these two would immediately be dismissed as contradictory. But because the guiding principle here is not what really happened or what do the texts actually say, the guiding principle here is, "Damn it, make it work," that's gonna be the end result, is as long as I have that tiny little sliver of not impossible. But, um, you know, what's going on here is Matthew is telling this story in a way to make it sound like a fulfillment of this prophecy in Zechariah, and we've got all these details that are not found in the other account of Judas' death that are there only to make Matthew's story fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah. And this is not the only place where Matthew is telling stories in weird ways. Uh, the triumphal entry is another one that is also a prophecy from Zechariah about the king riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, even, uh, a colt, the foal of a donkey. And this is, um, this is apposition. This is repeating the same thing again using different, uh, or additional details to kind of flesh it out further. Matthew tells the story in a way that has Jesus riding on two animals simultaneously into Jerusalem, which has been depicted- I remember that ... yeah, it's been depicted a variety of different ways. Some people have him sitting on the bigger one with the, the smaller one like a footrest. Um-

Dan Beecher Like an ottoman.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I, I- A

Dan Beecher nice donkey ottoman that you can get.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Those are great. I'd, I'd love to s- see a depiction of, like, a trick riding Jesus, where he's got a foot on each saddle and he's, and he's kind of- ... going through.

Dan Beecher That's always been how I've pictured it. I've, I... Yeah. It's always been a circus act to me. But I, that's my preferred version. But, uh, that,

Dan McClellan and there, there are arguments for why this is the way it is, but o- one that I think is, is probably most likely in, in my opinion, is that, uh, Matthew's reading this in the Greek translation, and in the Greek translation, the poetry of the Hebrew, the apposition, doesn't come through as well. And so I think Matthew saw a donkey and a colt, the foal of a donkey, and thought, "Two of them? Okay," and wrote the story that way. Because his priority is making sure Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies from the Hebrew Bible as the author of Matthew understand them, even if that means Jesus has stacked a colt on top of a donkey, and then is balanced on top of the colt, which is probably the most likely way you're gonna get Jesus into Jerusalem on two animals. But we've got a similar s- situation with Judas, where Matthew is telling the story in a completely different way, in a way that is incongruent, is not plausibly harmonized with Acts. And so there are gonna be folks who are gonna say, "Pfft, yeah, it's totally the same story. You know, I, I don't have a problem harmonizing it." Of course not. Nobody has a problem doing with what, doing what is necessary for their worldview to be safe. Right. Um, so it's, uh, it's, it's two different stories. And yeah, we were talking earlier about a third version of this story.

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah. Yeah. A story as big as

Dan McClellan a house. It comes from, uh, around 120 to 130 CE. There was this, uh, this Christian leader named Papias of Hierapolis, uh, who is- wrote some accounts of Jesus's life that are no longer extant, but s- they are quoted in pieces in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History. And to begin, Eusebius thought that Papias was kind of a moron. Did not think he was incredibly intelligent. Did- doesn't seem to have respected Papias very much. I don't know.

Dan Beecher You've told me the story, uh, uh, that, that Papias came up with for Judas, and I think he sounds like a real smart guy.

Dan McClellan But Papias tells a story of, of Judas, uh, being on his property and basically swelling up, again, like Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But he grows to a size bigger than a house. And this is all, like, maggots and festering whatnot is just making him swell up. And for some reason, there's a mention of his genitals swelling up and becoming disgusting. Mm-hmm. And he's exuding maggots and, and who knows what, and bursts forth his intestines and, uh, whatever covers this property. And, uh, as the story goes, the stench was unbearable for over a century, uh, o- on the field of blood where, where Judas died. Which is an odd thing for Papias to, to say, since ostensibly, according to a lot of people, and this is a discussion for another day, but Papias, a lot of people claim, is one of the earliest witnesses to the Gospel of Matthew as written by Matthew. A lot of people think he's the first one to attribute, uh, Matthean authorship to the Gospel of Matthew, but doesn't seem to take it seriously if his story of Judas totally ignores Matthew's story. Right. And instead is this kind of outlandish, uh, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory story of, uh, of Judas, uh, swelling up and then bursting, uh, asunder in the field.

Dan Beecher Well, uh, there you go. I, I, I don't know what to believe now. Now I'm just, I'm confused. Uh, I- all I know for sure now is that I don't want to go to tumble headlong in a field- ... because that sounds terrifying.

Dan McClellan Well, as long as you don't betray

Dan Beecher the Lord,

Dan McClellan I think you're safe.

Dan Beecher It should be okay?

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan That's, uh, that's... As long as you stay away from that cliff. I know it is tempting- ... uh, to go dance along the edge of that cliff, but stay away from the cliff. I don't know. How,

Dan Beecher how much silver you got? Well, I'll, I'll consider it. Anyway...

Dan McClellan Oh, and another thing to note- Oh ... the, the 30 pieces of silver, that, according to a chapter in Exodus, that was the value of a slave, so-

Dan Beecher Oh, wow

Dan McClellan ... a lot of people find that noteworthy that Christ was betrayed for the pr- value of a slave. Um, so now we're, now we're connecting Matthew to Zechariah to Exodus, so there's some trigonometry involved, but, uh- I love it.

Dan Beecher I love it ... but, yeah. Eventually we'll- Event- eventually we'll figure this thing out.

Dan McClellan Yeah, eventually. One day. We'll get there.

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, uh, I guess that's how we're gonna have to leave this one 'cause I, there's no real conclusion to come to. Uh, but thanks to all of you for tuning in. We sure do appreciate that. If you would like to become a part of, uh, helping to make this show go, you can go to our Patreon page, which is patreon.com/dataoverdogma. Uh, you can write in to us, uh, contact@dataoverdogmapod.com is the way to do that. And, uh, until next week, have a good one.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.