The Death of Judas (Both Versions of the Story)

[Unknown Soldier]

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.

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.

 

[steve_bank]

That the gospels are not consistent in the context of the times is to be expected. There were probably a collection of accounts tgat were in circulation.

As fiction Judas is an important character in the plot. He sets in motion the last part of the story that ends in the crucifixion. Judas is an antagonist.

 

[James Brown]

That the gospels are not consistent in the context of the times is to be expected.

You and I didn't go to the same church as kids.

When read alone, there's no indication in Acts that Judas committed suicide. There's no indication in Mark that Judas used the money to buy land.

I think the bigger contradiction is not in how Judas died but in how he lived. One account has him wracked with guilt and remorse, giving back the money he received for his act of betrayal, and committing suicide. The other account has him using his payment to become a landowner, then dying in a tragic accident.

 

[Politesse]

As fiction Judas is an important character in the plot. He sets in motion the last part of the story that ends in the crucifixion. Judas is an antagonist.

Well, not in the Gospel of Judas.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

That the gospels are not consistent in the context of the times is to be expected. There were probably a collection of accounts tgat were in circulation.

If people are making up stories without each other's knowledge, then as you say we should expect discrepancies. And we have no idea which of those accounts is factual if any of them are factual.

As fiction Judas is an important character in the plot. He sets in motion the last part of the story that ends in the crucifixion. Judas is an antagonist.

That's a good observation. Note that we are told that prior to Judas's betrayal of Christ, Satan entered Judas. Later, we are told that God wanted Jesus to be crucified! So Christians find themselves in the embarrassing position of basing their faith on stories that have both Satan and God working together to ensure our salvation.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Yet another version.

...
"Few will be aware that there is a passage in Cramer’s catena ascribed to Apollinaris of Laodicea which quotes from the fourth book of Papias on the fate of Judas."
...
Judas walked about as an example of godlessness in this world, having been bloated so much in the flesh that he could not go through where a chariot goes easily, indeed not even his swollen head by itself. For the lids of his eyes, they say, were so puffed up that he could not see the light, and his own eyes could not be seen, not even by a physician with optics, such depth had they from the outer apparent surface. And his genitalia appeared more disgusting and greater than all formlessness, and he bore through them from his whole body flowing pus and worms, and to his shame these things alone were forced [out]. And after many tortures and torments, they say, when he had come to his end in his own place, from the place became deserted and uninhabited until now from the stench, but not even to this day can anyone go by that place unless they pinch their nostrils with their hands, so great did the outflow from his body spread out upon the earth.
...

Actually Appoinarus relates two slightly different versions of this tall tale of Papias. papias was one of the earliest Christian writers, he died about 130 CE.

 

[Elixir]

having been bloated so much in the flesh that he could not go through where a chariot goes easily, indeed not even his swollen head by itself. For the lids of his eyes, they say, were so puffed up that he could not see the light, and his own eyes could not be seen, not even by a physician with optics, such depth had they from the outer apparent surface. And his genitalia appeared more disgusting and greater than all formlessness, and he bore through them from his whole body flowing pus and worms, and to his shame these things alone were forced [out]. And after many tortures and torments, they say, when he had come to his end in his own place, from the place became deserted and uninhabited until now from the stench, but not even to this day can anyone go by that place unless they pinch their nostrils with their hands, so great did the outflow from his body spread out upon the earth.
...

I hate it when that happens

 

[steve_bank]

As fiction Judas is an important character in the plot. He sets in motion the last part of the story that ends in the crucifixion. Judas is an antagonist.

Well, not in the Gospel of Judas.

I do respect your knowledge of history, region, amd mythology.

So objectively I'll ask you why should that be any more true than anything else?

I watched a show on the Arthurian legends. It turns out it was invented by a monk who wrote a history of Britain that in his day was a best seller. He had folk tales to work with.

I grew up thinking it was history. People in England today think it is history. There is absolutely no archeological evidence for it. There is no evidence of large scale warfare, even battles from the day.

It actually looks like there were two regions which interbred borne out by gemstones.

My point being humans have a capacity for invention coupled with a need to believe in something. When it comes to Chrtisnity secular or supernatural people pick and choose what to take as truth.

 

[steve_bank]

That the gospels are not consistent in the context of the times is to be expected. There were probably a collection of accounts tgat were in circulation.

If people are making up stories without each other's knowledge, then as you say we should expect discrepancies. And we have no idea which of those accounts is factual if any of them are factual.

As fiction Judas is an important character in the plot. He sets in motion the last part of the story that ends in the crucifixion. Judas is an antagonist.

That's a good observation. Note that we are told that prior to Judas's betrayal of Christ, Satan entered Judas. Later, we are told that God wanted Jesus to be crucified! So Christians find themselves in the embarrassing position of basing their faith on stories that have both Satan and God working together to ensure our salvation.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

In the times I would not call it fraud or deception, probably the way things worked. There was no mail, newspapers, printing presses, or communcations. Things spread in the general population by word of nouth.

Today it spreads at Internet speeds. Invention of facts, pseudo science. Some of it is intentional some of it is just ignorance in repeting stories until people begin to believe.

If you have worked in a large company you would know how rumors, gossip, and stories can quickly spreadr and how real facts get tweeted in the retelling.

 

[Politesse]

So objectively I'll ask you why should that be any more true than anything else?

Objectively? It probably isn't, most people think that the Gospel of Judas was a 3rd century document.

But then, the same can be said of most of the "orthodox" documents, once tradition and inference are set aside as potential sources of information.

I'm also quite fond of Arthuriana, by the way! I don't need Arthur and Gawaine to be real people in order to find a mythical cycle interesting, even enlightening. Even recent history contains more "story" than most people are comfortable acknowledging. We don't even remember our own lives with objective clarity, let alone anyone else's. Three centuries down, six.... that's an awful lot of people's biases for a story to filter through.

 

[steve_bank]

Agreed on Arthur. I expect the tales in the day would be analogous to the magical acyon advnture of Lord Of The rings.

There is a morality depited in the quest for the grail.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

That the gospels are not consistent in the context of the times is to be expected. There were probably a collection of accounts tgat were in circulation.

If people are making up stories without each other's knowledge, then as you say we should expect discrepancies. And we have no idea which of those accounts is factual if any of them are factual.

As fiction Judas is an important character in the plot. He sets in motion the last part of the story that ends in the crucifixion. Judas is an antagonist.

That's a good observation. Note that we are told that prior to Judas's betrayal of Christ, Satan entered Judas. Later, we are told that God wanted Jesus to be crucified! So Christians find themselves in the embarrassing position of basing their faith on stories that have both Satan and God working together to ensure our salvation.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

In the times I would not call it fraud or deception, probably the way things worked. There was no mail, newspapers, printing presses, or communcations. Things spread in the general population by word of nouth.

Today it spreads at Internet speeds. Invention of facts, pseudo science. Some of it is intentional some of it is just ignorance in repeting stories until people begin to believe.

If you have worked in a large company you would know how rumors, gossip, and stories can quickly spreadr and how real facts get tweeted in the retelling.

FOAF tales! Friend of friend tales. "I know this is true because it happened to my sister's best friend cousin!" Preposterous tale follows. Some FOAF tales are centuries old and keep changing with the times.

Google Scopes for some good ones. Like "The Mexican Pet". Jan Harold Brunvand has written several books on FOAF tales and how they spread. And mutate. And has collected many classic FOAF tales.Once you have studied the phenomenon of FOAF tales you will never read the bible the same again.

Google for the journal FOAF tale news for more. (contemporarylegend.org)

 

[Swammerdami]

I watched a show on the Arthurian legends. It turns out it was invented by a monk who wrote a history of Britain that in his day was a best seller. He had folk tales to work with.

I think you're referring to the 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The historicity of Arthur ( Historicity of King Arthur) is controversial, but all scholars agree that Monmouth's book is fiction. Better is to examine sources as early as the 7th century, one of which mentions 'Arthur' as though he were already a famous legend.

The best guess is probably that 'Dux' (not a King) Arthur was a fiction conflated from a combination of myths and facts, but historicity cannot be ruled out. If he existed he was a warrior allied with Romans and Britons (Goidelic speakers) against Saxon invaders. Among intriguing proposals:

• Rome had imported many conscripted Sarmatian warriors to Britain. (The long distance to the Sarmatian homeland made desertion less likely.) There are parallels between Sarmatian myths and themes (e.g. Lady of the Lake) of Arthurian myths (See here for example.)
• Scotland lays claim to the Arthurian legend. Clan Campbell has fabricated a pedigree which traces their agnatic descent from Arthur. There is a legend that the Round Table is next to Stirling Castle in Scotland. This video may be melodramatic, but still interesting.
• If Arthur is an English hero, why do the Scots (and even French!) revere him? These people were long-term enemies of the English. Perhaps their reverence for Arthur precedes Monmouth's fiction.
  
  Some of the terms in the Arthurian language (e.g. the sword Excalibur) appear to have Gaelic (Old Irish or Scots) etymology yet the context is Brythonic/Goidelic (Old Welsh). Is this a contradiction? No! In the 6th-century large parts of present-day Scotland were Goidelic-speaking. Scots (Gaelic) invaders intermarried with these Britons and allied with them to fight Saxons (and Picts). Some think that Arthur was  Artuir mac Áedán (although that Wiki doesn't mention the case), a Scots prince with (perhaps) three Goidelic grandparents.

Is it clear that Arthur was historic? Absolutely not! (The historicity of Jesus is much more certain in my opinion.) But it's not certain that he was pure fiction either. (Goidelic hasn't been spoken in Scotland for many centuries, perhaps helping to explain why place-names in the legends are indecipherable.)


This is a digression from the thread topic. If there's interest in further discussion I will try out my rusty super-powers and create a new thread.

 

[FwL]

I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario in which tumbling head first would cause a person to become disemboweled.

 

[Politesse]

I watched a show on the Arthurian legends. It turns out it was invented by a monk who wrote a history of Britain that in his day was a best seller. He had folk tales to work with.

I think you're referring to the 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The historicity of Arthur ( Historicity of King Arthur) is controversial, but all scholars agree that Monmouth's book is fiction. Better is to examine sources as early as the 7th century, one of which mentions 'Arthur' as though he were already a famous legend.

The best guess is probably that 'Dux' (not a King) Arthur was a fiction conflated from a combination of myths and facts, but historicity cannot be ruled out. If he existed he was a warrior allied with Romans and Britons (Goidelic speakers) against Saxon invaders. Among intriguing proposals:

• Rome had imported many conscripted Sarmatian warriors to Britain. (The long distance to the Sarmatian homeland made desertion less likely.) There are parallels between Sarmatian myths and themes (e.g. Lady of the Lake) of Arthurian myths (See here for example.)
• Scotland lays claim to the Arthurian legend. Clan Campbell has fabricated a pedigree which traces their agnatic descent from Arthur. There is a legend that the Round Table is next to Stirling Castle in Scotland. This video may be melodramatic, but still interesting.
• If Arthur is an English hero, why do the Scots (and even French!) revere him? These people were long-term enemies of the English. Perhaps their reverence for Arthur precedes Monmouth's fiction.
  
  Some of the terms in the Arthurian language (e.g. the sword Excalibur) appear to have Gaelic (Old Irish or Scots) etymology yet the context is Brythonic/Goidelic (Old Welsh). Is this a contradiction? No! In the 6th-century large parts of present-day Scotland were Goidelic-speaking. Scots (Gaelic) invaders intermarried with these Britons and allied with them to fight Saxons (and Picts). Some think that Arthur was  Artuir mac Áedán (although that Wiki doesn't mention the case), a Scots prince with (perhaps) three Goidelic grandparents.

Is it clear that Arthur was historic? Absolutely not! (The historicity of Jesus is much more certain in my opinion.) But it's not certain that he was pure fiction either. (Goidelic hasn't been spoken in Scotland for many centuries, perhaps helping to explain why place-names in the legends are indecipherable.)


This is a digression from the thread topic. If there's interest in further discussion I will try out my rusty super-powers and create a new thread.

Arturus Dux Bellorum -- the "Duke of Battles". When I was a teenager, I wrote a historical novel that placed Artur during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and had him be the proximate cause of Lucius Verus' ever so slightly suspicious death.

It was so much harder to do research on this kind of thing back in the 90s, though! If I tried it today I'd get distracted by the research itself and never get anything written.

 

[Politesse]

I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario in which tumbling head first would cause a person to become disemboweled.

Depends what you land on!

But I think the implication of the story is that this was a miraculous death, a human being just sort of unraveling to their basic components, ruah (the breath of life) having been suddenly withdrawn from them. Hence the gory details in the Papian version cited above, in which each of the basic senses the ancient world recognized are specifically mentioned as disabled, ending with his genitive abilities. In the Hebrew Scriptures, you often see symbolic (or real) disembowlements used as a shorthand for a wound from which there is no possibility of recovery. You almost always see that the fat which protects the entrails is specifically mentioned in Judean legal texts concerning animal sacrifices; while no anatomists, they were aware of the seemingly fragile biological curtain that protects us from a inevitably fatal gut wound, and attached special mystical importance to it as a result.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario in which tumbling head first would cause a person to become disemboweled.

That's what I've been saying. One possibility is that when the rope broke and Judas fell, his feet struck some object below him which spun him 90 degrees so he was falling face-down. He then struck a second object which was sharp and that sliced his gut disemboweling him.

Anyway, we can either just conclude that the stories of the death of Judas are contradictory and cannot both be true, or we can work hard imagining convoluted scenarios in which Judas hanged himself and was also disemboweled. I say make the former assumption. It's much simpler and involves fewer assumptions. The latter scenario is for those who must believe whatever the Bible says.

 

[Politesse]

The latter scenario is for those who must believe whatever the Bible says.

Why would anyone need to do that? Books have authors. They have a context. You learn more, not less, from studying them critically.

 

[steve_bank]

Both theists and atheists suffer from literal renderings of the bible.

 

[Politesse]

Literalist hermeneutics are the gateway to self-deception, no matter who you are. If you aren't being honest with yourself about what it is you're doing when you're reading a book - that is, having a kind of asynchronous conversation with authors whose perspectives were shaped by contexts and experiences different from your own - you're going to end up valorizing your interpretation of the text in a way that fundamentally lacks in either humility or true understanding. Because you won't understand that yours is an interpretation, even if people try to demonstrate that to you a thousand times that your way of seeing the text is not the only possible or correct read.