
Recently I had an opportunity to host my dear family from Florida. Even though they were here for just a few days, we had an amazing time together and I truly love them! Needless to say, we talked about all sorts of issues, but sooner or later the topic of the Bible and Christianity came along. They asked me what’s is my opinion on the Gospels. In a nutshell, I explained that, for me, the Gospels, from the perspective of history, are extremely important documents. They are still without a question our best source of the life of Jesus. Unlike those crazy mythicists who think that Jesus never existed, I can assure you that he did exist and that we can say a lot of things about him. Thanks to the Gospels, we can conclude with certainty that Jesus of Nazareth is one of the best attested Palestinian Jews of the entire 1st century. From the year 1 to the year 99 CE, we know that there were hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Palestine. How many of those Jews are better attested than Jesus? Only one: Jewish historian Josephus. He is attested better only because he left us multiple writings. If you only look at the external attestations for the 1st century Palestinian Jews, Jesus actually is much better than Josephus. We have four Gospels (biographies) written about him, and these Gospels come from the very next generation after his life. Contrast that with Josephus: we have zero (0!) external accounts. So far so good. We were in total agreement!
However, I explained also how I believe that the Gospels and Acts contain discrepancies and that is impossible to think that every single thing (from A to Z) happened just as it is presented in those documents! What do I mean by discrepancy? In a situation where you have two or more accounts of the same event (e.g. Mark and Matthew describe the same event from the life of Jesus or his disciples) that are different from each other in ways that can’t be reconciled – that’s a discrepancy. Furthermore, if you have two accounts of the same event that are in real contradiction, they both can’t be correct – that’s pure logic! Maybe, one is accurate, or the other is. Maybe they are both inaccurate, but they can’t be both accurate. I think that if you do a careful reading of the Gospels and Acts, you’ll find those kinds of examples. Respectfully, my interlocutors didn’t agree. As it was explained to me, they believe that everything that is written in the Gospels and Acts happened just the way it was described – every small detail of the life of Jesus and his disciples. There are no mistakes, no discrepancies – nothing! For them, the Scripture is (literally) an inerrant word of God – immune to any discrepancies. Growing up as a Catholic, my view on the inerrancy of the Scripture was (and still his!) totally different. Our lovely discussion then went even further. They challenged me to give an example of a discrepancy. Enjoying a good and respectful discussion, I mentioned my favorite example: the death of Judas (Yes, this is not my first ride – I’ve had my share of conversations of this type already!).
Judas’ name is so hated that it is even banned in some countries – believe it or not! He is a symbol of betrayal and evil – the man who turned his back on Jesus and handed him over to the Jewish authorities. The kiss of Judas, an act of betrayal, is one of the most thrilling moments in the Gospels. He even occupies the lowest level of hell in Dante’s Inferno. If you know with whom Judas shares his terrible destiny in the final circle of hell, I’ll buy you a bear! (please, don’t cheat!) 🙂
But what happened to Judas after Jesus’ death? Did he live happily ever after? Well, not precisely. Mark’s Gospel (our earliest biography of Jesus) doesn’t state anything about Judas’ destiny after Jesus’ death. John (our latest) biography doesn’t either! To be precise, we have two accounts of what happened to Judas in the New Testament. The first one is the Gospel of Matthew: Judas hanged himself (ἀπήγξατο). As Matthew explains, after the betrayal, Judas felt remorse and tried to return his pay of thirty pieces of silver to the Jewish chief priests, telling them that he has sinned because he betrayed the innocent man! However, they rejected his money and Judas threw it down in the Temple and went out to hang himself. The chief priests then collected the money but decided that they can’t put it back into the Temple because it is blood money – money that has been tainted with the innocent blood of Jesus. Because of that, they use the money to buy a field outside of Jerusalem. Matthew concludes that this field was called the “Field of Blood” because it was bought with Judas’ blood money. Luke gives us also an account of Judas’ death (Acts 1, 18-19), but his account contains some surprising differences. We are told that Judas himself, not the Jewish priests, bought the field with the money he earned for his betrayal. And according to Luke, Judas didn’t hang himself. Instead of that, we learn that he fell “headlong (πρηνὴς)” and “burst open in the middle” so that “his bowels gushed out”. Luke concludes by noting that the reason why the field was called the “Field of Blood” was because Judas bled all over it.
After I laid my case, one of my cousins immediately responded with his view on how to reconcile these two accounts: “Maybe Judas hanged himself, the rope broke, and he fell to the ground, head first, bursting in the middle”. Of course, this solution is not new – it was proposed already by St. Augustine (354-430 CE) who obviously thought that reconciliation is the best possible course of action. However, there are a few problems with this theory. First and foremost, if somebody is hanging and the rope snaps, how would that person fall? Does he fall head first? I don’t think so. I would like to know the single case in human history where somebody was hanged and he died by going head first and his guts opened up. In its influential and respectable commentary on the Acts of Apostles (Yale University Press), esteemed scholar Joseph Fitzmyer rejects (page 224) the possibility of harmonizing these two descriptions of what Judas did to himself by concluding that these accounts “were not meant to be harmonized: they merely echo different legends about Judas’ death”. Moreover, the nature of his death (hanging or falling headlong) isn’t the only discrepancy in the accounts. Who bought the land? Did Judas buy the land (as Luke states) or chief priests (as Matthew notes!)? Furthermore, why the field was called the “Field of Blood”? Was it because it was purchased with blood money, as Matthew says, or because Judas bled all over it, as Luke says? In my honest opinion, to reconcile all of this, you have to come up with a completely impossible scenario. To complicate things a little more, there is a third account of Judas’ death – although this one comes from the outside of the New Testament. Papias (bishop of Hierapolis who lived at the beginning of the 2nd century CE) has this to say about Judas’ death:
- Judas lives as an example of ungodliness in this world. His flesh was so swollen that where a wagon can easily pass he was not able to, not even his bloated head on its own. For the lids of his eyes, they say, were so swollen that he was not able to see light at all, and his eyes were impossible to see even for a doctor through an optical instrument, so deep had they gone bellow the outside of his face. His gentiles were more disgusting and larger than those of anyone else, and when he relieved himself, pus and worms flowed through his whole body, to his shame. After great agonies and punishments, they say, he finally died in his own place: because of the smell, it is still deserted and uninhabitable; in fact, to this very day no one can pass that place unless they pinch their nose, because such a great amount of discharge passed from his body and onto the ground.
Not a happy picture, right? Papias doesn’t mention anything about Judas hanging himself or falling headlong. His account brings a different cause of Judas’ death. So, what do we know about his death? Not so much! As a historian, I do think that Judas really existed and that he truly betrayed Jesus. He probably(?) died in some sort of unnatural way – but that’s the far as we can go. Details are just beyond the reach. The accounts we have are in clear contradiction and we have no a priori reason to go with one (Matthew) or the other (Luke) – not to mention the third account of Papias! Do I think that this example is crucial for salvation? Of course not. As numerous Catholic scholars (such as John P. Meier, and Raymond Brown) have recognized, the Gospels (including the Acts) are not historically reliable in every small detail, every letter, and every episode from the life of Jesus and his disciples. There really are some discrepancies as is the case with most of the narrative sources (biographies) from antiquity. Still, the Gospels are our best sources for the life of Jesus, and I’m sincerely grateful for having them!
And what about my dear cousins? Well, the conversation moved forward in different directions. I do respect their belief system, and if they truly believe that every single letter of the Gospels and Acts transmits the things as they actually happened (in every possible detail), I’ll honor it. However, as I historian of early Christianity, I can’t agree. So, it seems we have to agree to disagree. And what about you? What should you think? I would just suggest that you shouldn’t stick to your guns no matter what. Whatever you’ve been brought to believe, whatever your parents told you or even your professor; you should always have an open mind to a possibility of a change. If logic, reason, and truth take you in a different direction – that’s perfectly okay! You have to see for yourself. Please be free to question my theories and conclusions also! Scrutinize my arguments, and use reason and logic. Be open-minded and go for it!
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