The two accounts of the death of Judas Iscariot are directly contradictory. Here's Matthew 27:5:
And here's Acts 1:18:
There are at least three problems in harmonising these verses. First, the most obvious: did Judas hang himself, or fall?
It's just about possible to say that Judas hanged himself and then the rope snapped and so he fell onto the field (although the natural reading of Acts is that he just slipped). Another explanation is that his hanging attempt was not successful (though Matthew surely expected his readers to understand that it was).
Did he throw the silver away or use it to buy a field? This is as blatant as contradictions come.
I suppose a hardcore infallibilist might say that "the reward of his wickedness" does not refer to the silver he received for betraying Jesus. But no honest reader of Acts will conclude that it means anything else. Alternatively, a reader of this page notes that Matthew 27:6-8 has the priests of the temple buy a field with the money, and suggests that this means, by extension, that Judas "acquired the field". This is also the view of the NIV Study Bible:
But I find it hard to believe that any competent author would write in such an obscure way, stretching the meanings of words beyond recognition. The real meaning of Acts is clear as day: Judas bought the field himself.
Even if we accept these implausible attempts at harmonisation, one final thing that needs to be addressed is why Judas hanged himself in the very same field that the priests bought. Did he deliberately go there, knowing they had purchased it? Or did they purchase it after he was dead? Acts seems to imply the former, otherwise he "acquired the field" after he was dead! Matthew, however, doesn't seem to give Judas time to do this: his suicide is described as if it was very soon after he threw the money away, and therefore, before any such purchase.
But this seems like a small problem compared to the two above.
Updated: 2008-05-26
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