So, you think you know what scripture says? I have chosen this passaged today as a warning. You must always, no matter what, check out what you are told about God and about scripture for yourself regardless of who tells you. The passage below will change your perspective on what you have “known” all of your Christian life.
Matthew 27:3-5-
“Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ And they said, 'What is that to us? You see to it!' Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself.”
Acts 1:18-
“” (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out.)”
These two seemingly opposite renditions of the suicides of Judas can be explained if we allow the Bible to interpret the Bible and we remove our own understanding. The word “hang” in Matthew 27:5 was translated that way by the KJV translators because that is how the Greeks read it from the Aramaic. It is imperative to remember that the disciples wrote the gospels- not the Greeks! Therefore, since Aramaic was the common language for the Jews of that time this word would have been used to refer to the suicide methodology Judas employed. The actual word is an Aramaic word- #4223- “mecha” and it means to hang, to smite, and to impale.
When we observe with diligence Acts 1:18, we see that Luke was more accurate in his description of Judas’ death- he fell headlong. This phrase actually means that he fell head first. The phrase following- “he burst open” is actually translated from the phrase “burst asunder.” This term asunder means to be severed, to be in pieces. It does not make any sense whatsoever that Judas grabbed rope and made a noose, slung it over a tree in the middle of a field and hung himself in the way that Western culture envisions it. What makes more sense and what scripture bares out is that Judas went to the field and fell on his own sword which caused his body to be “hanged” in the same manner that it has been said that some have “hanged” their enemies on a spear and erected the gruesome sight as a warning to would be attackers.
Furthermore, the only way for Judas to break in two - to be asunder- is if there was an object used that was capable of separating the body from itself. I have seen inaccurate renditions of this scene that depict Judas hanging from a noose in the field, the branch that it is affixed to breaking under the weight and Judas’ dead body falling to the ground with such force that it bursts in two. This depiction contradicts itself because the height of the tree that would be needed to cause such damage would be all but impossible for Judas to get into in the first place. Even when people commit suicide by jumping out of a building or off of a bridge, their bodies are flattened but intact for all intents and purposes. There could, however, been a sharp rock beneath the tree that Judas could have fallen on that plausibly have cut him in two but there again, how would he have hanged himself in the first place if there was a sharp rock below him? I suppose he could have stood on the rock and slung the death noose over the branch and then, once it was securely around his neck, removed his feet from the rock and hanged successfully- however, this bears the same error as mentioned above- if this were the case, the tree would not have been tall enough to create so strong an impact as to force piercing through of a human body!!
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