What Do These 2 Accounts Tell Us about How Judas Died?

The Gospel of Matthew tells us more than any other gospel about Judas’ betrayal, remorse, and death. According to Matthew, Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, but when he saw that Jesus was condemned, he was filled with remorse. 

There has been much written about the slight difference in the word used here for remorse (μεταμελεῖσθαι, metameleisthai) and the more typical word used for full repentance (μετάνοια, metanoia). It seems as if Judas felt a deep sorrow and sadness, but it did not drive him to Christ. Instead, it took him to the temple to try to make things right. 

When Judas confessed “betraying innocent blood,” the chief priests told Judas, “What is that to us?” They attempted to absolve themselves from any complicity in shedding Jesus’ blood. And essentially told Judas he was on his own. Their statement here is similar to the sarcastic, “sounds like a personal problem to me” in our day. 

Judas responded by “throwing down the pieces of silver,” likely scattering into the places where only the priests could go retrieve them, departing, and then hanging himself. 

The priests gather together and use the money to buy a potter’s field to bury strangers. This highlights their horrendous hypocrisy. They could not accept this money back from Judas because it was now unclean. Such filthy lucre couldn’t be used in God’s holy temple and so had to be used for something else—like burying unclean people in an unclean cemetery. The hypocrisy is that these same thirty pieces of silver came from the treasury in the first place. 

They used Judas’ money to buy a field which is now known as the Field of Blood. This, Matthew says, fulfills what Jeremiah prophesied. Why he credits Jeremiah but mostly cites Zechariah has given rise to many theories. The most likely explanation is that it is a convergence of material from both sources (Jeremiah 19, 32 and Zechariah 11), and Matthew, as was custom, quotes the more prolific prophet. 

So, what do we learn from Matthew? We learn that Judas changed his mind about his act, acknowledged that he sinned against innocent blood, but rather than pursuing forgiveness, made one last attempt at self-atonement by taking his own life.  

Luke’s telling of the Judas story is somewhat scant. In the Gospel of Luke, we only read of his betrayal and his leading the religious leaders to Jesus. They needed Judas’ close ties to the Lord so that they could arrest him without the crowd. They offered him money, Luke doesn’t tell us how much, and he fulfilled his end of the bargain. 

In his Gospel, Luke doesn’t conclude the Acts story. But we hear of Judas again in the opening chapter of Acts. There Peter, taking leadership, stands among the remaining disciples and, using the Psalms, declares that Judas’ betrayal was foretold. But it is important as a fulfillment of Jesus’ mission of restoring Israel, that the eleven once again become “the twelve.” 

Peter doesn’t mention any details about Judas’ end, but Luke gives us a parenthetical statement to let his readers now how Judas met his demise. He, like Matthew, mentions the field of blood—but has Judas being the purchases of it rather than the chief priests. He also does not mention a suicide for Judas but rather that Judas “falling headlong” (prēnēs genomenos) busted open, and his bowels gushed out. 

“Falling headlong” is a rare phrase. There is also a possibility that the meaning isn’t “fell” but  “Swelling up.” It could also mean that he fell down, and from this fall, he busted open. All Luke tells us is that either Judas fell and practically exploded or, more graphically, that he swelled up so much that he popped. 

Before considering how we might reconcile these accounts, let’s first look at a little snippet from church history.

Photo Credit: Unsplash/Sincerely Media

Papias lived around 60-130AD. He was a bishop in Asia Minor and likely knew many of the disciples. It’s quite possible that he even knew John, the beloved disciple. We do not actually have Papias’ works but we have those who quote Papias. One has Papias teaching that Judas was actually cut down “before choking” and lived out his days become so “swelled up” that “he could not pass where a wagon could easily pass.” There is another more graphic and lengthier story as well: 

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.

Papias seems to have more similarity to the account given in Acts than with Matthew. He has Judas “walking about as an example of godlessness” and becoming so bloated that he eventually is trampled by a wagon. 

We do not need to necessarily reconcile Papias with the biblical accounts. But do we need to reconcile Acts and Matthew? Are these two stories contradictory? 

There have been a few popular explanations for how these two accounts are both true. One such telling has it that Judas would have been hanged over a ravine, and either through the length of time, the strong winds of the area, or plain old divine judgment, the branch or rope snapped, and the dead body of Judas plummeted to the floor and there burst. In this telling, Matthew explains how he got up in the tree, and Luke tells us how he got down. 

Another similar explanation is that nobody cared to remove the decomposing body of Judas. Being rejected by the Christian community and being unclean to the Jewish community he was left out in the heat and eventually swelled to such a point that he burst open. Once again, Matthew is telling it from one perspective, and Luke, in Acts, is telling us more about the aftermath. 

These explanations are certainly plausible. They would explain how both could be true, though I’m not quite sure how we could reconcile Papias with either of these. In order to reconcile with Papias, we’d probably need to say that Matthew only spoke of Judas’ attempt to commit suicide. But that doesn’t seem plausible. And it also doesn’t fully fit with the timing of Acts either. Papias is worded as if he lived with this edema for a bit of time. That cannot be reconciled with the timing of Acts very well either. 

But what do we make of this story from Papias? Where did it come from? Why would he not fall back on either Luke or Matthew’s telling of the story? Why paint this horrendous picture of Judas? 

Here we have to understand a bit of difference between the way we in the 21^st century may write about a person’s death and how it might happen in the 1^st century. In our day, when a person is dying, a nurse will stand by the bedside, listen for the final gasp of breath, look at a watch and call a specific time of death. Even in the most horrendous and grotesque of deaths, we do not read of those details, and this is true even of those who are wicked. 

In the first century, the standards of historical accuracy were different than ours today. They were better storytellers. The main concern for Matthew and Luke isn’t to give us a specific cause of death but to paint a picture of the man who died. 

Matthew, writing to a predominately Jewish audience, is telling us something about Judas by hanging him from a tree. “Cursed is everyone who is hanged from a tree.” Of course, we see that this is quoted later by Paul in Galatians to show how Christ became a curse for us. Jesus’ death was efficacious. Judas’ death was meant to be self-atoning. It’s not heroic, it’s one more selfish act for Judas. His sorrow did not lead him to repentance or seeking Christ. He’s likely meant to be contrasted with Peter in the story. 

Luke is telling us something different. And I think this is where we get the Papias story as well. Why would they paint a picture of Judas “swelling up” or “bursting open”? Dropsy, which is what both Papias and Luke could be describing, was long considered a judgment of those who were gluttonous and greedy. The secular author Horace says this: 

“By indulgence the dreadful dropsy grows apace, nor can the sufferer banish thirst, unless the cause of the malady has first departed from the veins and the watery languor from the pale body” 

Luke paints a picture of a disciple who was “among the twelve” who abandons the group because of greed and as a result “goes to his place” (Acts 1:25). Judas was overcome by greed, and it’s evidenced by the way that he died.

Photo Credit: ©Moritz320/Pixabay 

One can come up with a plausible story as to how Judas both “fell headlong and burst open” and died from “suicide.” But if we are being honest, there is no mention in the text of a broken rope, a snapped tree limb, a fall down a ravine, or any other such story. All we have are those two events. These hypothetical scenarios show how it could have happened. But is that the story we are meant to tell from Judas? 

Is it not better to let the text speak for itself? In Matthew, we’re meant to see a man who was filled with sorrow but not a sorrow that leads to repentance. His repentance never led him to Christ, but to a tragic act of taking his own life. In this, we are given a picture, especially by contrasting Judas with Peter, that a repentance that does not cling directly to Christ will always meet an unfortunate end.

In Luke, we are meant to see the end of those who are given over to greed. In Judas, we see not only the warning of what becomes of a man who betrays the Messiah, but we also see what becomes of a man whose life was given to greed. Judas’ field of blood is a fitting testimony to the man who kept building bigger barns. 

Yes, I believe that both are true. I don’t exactly know how, but I’m more concerned with listening to the story that both authors are telling us.