Net2004

taken from the old gastrich.org website
http://web.archive.org/web/200502101....gastrich.org/

1. The distinction that the Inerrantist demands must be made between the two words used for 'purchase' is not sustainable. There is nothing in the slight variation of meaning that supports the attempted harmonization. The word used by Matthew for "bought" is agorazo - a general term meaning, "to go to market." It means to purchase, and also to redeem. It is a verb that refers to the transaction of business. But the word Luke uses is ktaomai, which means to "get, acquire, obtain, possess, provide, purchase." It is simply incorrect to state, as Gastrich does, that ktaomai cannot also mean Judas purchased the field in his own right. To the contrary, that is its natural and ordinary meaning. Gastrich is merely employing an old trick of inerrantists of attributing a substantial difference in meaning where there is only a stylistic and superficial difference in words used.

- 2. In fact, the money was thrown away by Judas, so no longer belonged to him. Judas did not give any 'order' or 'permission' to the priests to buy a field with his money, and in no way can the field be said to be bought 'on his behalf'. The money was renounced. Jason Gastrich offered the analogy wherein someone has $20 and tells another person to go to the store and buy them some bread. But this is obviously a false analogy. Unlike the bread buyer, Judas did not ask the priests to buy the field on his behalf. What is more, Judas could not have asked the priests to buy the field on his behalf: he was already dead, as he hanged himself after he returned the money according Matthew.

- 3. Judas died in the very field the Chief Priests and Elders bought! What an incredible coincidence!! This coincidence needs explaining, if the harmonization is to be accepted. Yet attempts to do so are specious and speculative. If the harmonizer tries to argue that the Chief Priests and Elders bought the field because Judas died in it, perhaps because he polluted it (a speculative suggestion), they must admit that Judas did not own the field at the time he died in it. But this provides a further problem...

- 4. This attempted harmonization overlooks a very important fact. In Matthew, Judas is dead when the "Field of Blood" is bought by the chief priests and elders. The field never belonged to him during his lifetime. In Acts, however, Judas is still alive when the field is bought. In order to concoct his harmonization, the Inerrantist must ignore the order of the narrative in Acts 1:18ff, that begins with Judas buying a field with his reward, and later walking in his own field. In Matthew, the field in which Judas dies is never his own field. Yet, the field in Acts is described as 'his estate' ('he epaulis autou'). But in Matthew, the field was not owned by Judas, so could not have formed a part of his estate; it was only bought after his death.

sschlichter

Does Acts say he did not regret?

Does matthew say he hung himself in someone else's field?


the word used means to obtain, to possess, to provide, OR possibly to purchase.

There are many ways to obtain something. You can buy it, it can be inheritied, or mischeivious priests can stick you with it after you hang yourself in it - causing Luke to conclude that he got what was coming to him for his 30 peices of silver.


well detective, the text refuses to answer your questions about Judas. Perhaps that is not where the investigation should lead.

well, it is the only place in the NT that the word is used (I think) so I guess if you feel the need to end your investiagtion then go ahead and draw premature conclusions.

if one person says Lincoln was shot and then another person (with that info in mind) comes along and tells you that he lied in a bed for 6 hours in a coma and then died then it is up to you to put the pieces together.

Why else would Matthew write the book if he did not want to share other details than Mark. Why would he feel the need to tell parts of a story that were already told.

Historical events and people are used as typology of another event or person. You have to know the future to be good at it though.

that is where you started and I had no expectation that you were going to end up somewhere else.

~Steve

sschlichter

first of all, there is no incentive that it does not mean to purchase, second, your statement only makes the point. As Matthew states (and your website), the priests purchased, but Luke states that Judas acquired when he could have also said purchased. so, the priests performed the transaction (possibly in Judas name) and Judas acquired the field (possibly literally). why else would the word for purchase only be used in Matthew and not Luke.

possible meanings:

1) He figuratively acquired what he had coming to him. No need for a legal contract on the land. It is Luke saying that is what he got with his 30 pieces of silver.

2) The priests purchased the land because they did not want to return the blood money into the treasury (as Matthew states clearly) and since it used for such ignoble purposes, Luke is again stating figuratively that Judas got a field of blood for all his troubles.

3) The priests did not want to allow Judas to return the money and since they found him hung, they bought the land underneath him in his name and laughed about it all the way back to the temple.

Those are my favorites but if pressed, we could come up with many more possibilities since we only have 3 sentences that actually say anything about it.

James Brown

No, it doesn't say anything about his emotional state whatsoever.

No, the passage doesn't say where Judas hung himself.

Is there a point in asking what certain passages didn't say?

Interesting how the majority of bible translators have interpreted it to mean simply "purchase." The word 'acquire' is sometimes used to mean "steal," often with a sly wink. Should we assume that Judas stole real estate given his character? After all, if there are multiple meanings for a word, and one of them fits our predetermined answer, then that's the one to use, come what may, right?

I'll grant you that having Judas die an bloody, painful, but accidental death would be satisfying to the readers of Acts--a just reward for someone who profited from the betrayal of their Lord. But since Acts gives no hint that the word "acquired" to be interpreted as mischievous priests sticking it to Judas, it would be disingenuous for us to do so.

The basic problem stems from the fact that there are two stories of Judas' death. Had only Matthew or only the author of Acts mentioned it, there couldn't possibly be an internal contradiction. It's only because the two stories have discrepancies that we can say they contradict.

I've highlighted your key qualifier. I think it's difficult for some to read the Acts passage without the Matthew passage in mind. But remember that the New Testament did not always come in neatly bound volumes, with chapters and verses carefully delineated, and with the two Judas stories appearing nearby for scholars to carefully compare side by side. For the early church, for decades and even centuries, books of the Bible appeared alone, carefully preserved and protected, copied slowly by hand for wealthy patrons. They weren't on sale at bookstores everywhere. Plus, the majority of Christians could not even read them, since illiteracy was the norm.

Pretend you are a new Christian who has never held a Bible in your hands living in first-century Italy. You have never been to Palestine let alone heard of Galilee or the Jordan River. You've converted because of a traveling preacher's sermons you heard at someone's home. He has with him a copy of the Acts of the Apostles and reads the book out loud to you. This preacher has never seen the gospel of Matthew (currently resting somewhere in a house-church back in Jerusalem) and in fact has only heard the gospel of Mark read to him in the past, so he knows about Judas' betrayal but not about his guilt or argument with the Pharisees. Now read Acts 1:18-19 and tell me how it should automatically be assumed that Judas was remorseful, or that he gave the money back to the Pharisees, or that he hung himself. Take off your Matthew-colored glasses and read the passage as if hearing it for the first time, by itself, just like countless other early Christians.

Only a writer who knows for a fact that his audience already has knowledge of Lincoln being shot could get away with describing that Lincoln merely died of heart failure. Likewise, only a writer who knows for a fact that his audience is already intimately familiar with the gospel of Matthew could get away with merely adding additional details about the state of Judas' corpse, and could expect his audience to dovetail the two stories together so that they appear to be consistent, up to and including using alternative meanings of the word 'acquired' in order to harmonize what, on first appearance, seems to be two different people buying the same piece of land with the same money.

No, I started, decades ago, just like you. I believed that Judas threw the money back into the temple, then searched for a piece of land that was for sale and hung himself on a tree overlooking a cliff. The branch broke just as Judas was gasping his last breath, so that he died in two ways (unlike the rest of us who typically die only one way). The Pharisees scooped up the money and bought the same piece of land--quite the coincidence--and signed the title over to Judas' name (even though he was dead) because they didn't want to have anything to do with Judas or the money that they used or the land that they just bought.

Then I realized later that there was no reason to jump through these logical hoops and agreed that the two passages contain a contradiction.

thentian

The gospel according to Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck:

Huey: Judas hanged himself from a tree...
Dewey: ... but the branch broke, so that...
Louie: ... he fell to the ground and burst open!

This whole babble was delivered to you by the Dizzy Company. All Rights Reserved.

James Brown

Or we could say that Matthew and/or Luke made a mistake and get on with our lives. Christianity will not crumble to pieces with this one admittedly minor contradiction. Only inerrantism will, which in my opinion is a false religion.

sschlichter

yes, they need to state something in order to be contradictory to something else

I would quit assuming so much altogether. it is causing you to be in error.

there are only stories because you assume too much and inject facts into the story. there is much less than 2 stories. The reference in Acts is less than a story.

It may or may not be difficult, either way it is un-necessary. The tangential end of Judas was recorded in Matthew. Only new details needed to be added to explain why they are selected a new apostle.

ok, I have pretended. All I came up with is that the details of Judas life and death are not important to the purpose of the book of Acts. I do see however, that it was necessary to explain why a new apostle was selected.

Do me a favor and pretend that the book contains matters of theological importance to the reader and then re-read the passage. What is the point in Acts, chapter 1 and how important is the details of Judas' death?

for the most part, this is pointless to respond to. However, you are using the term alternate as if it was a secondary meaning. As Net2004 pointed out. If the author meant specifically to purchase, he would have used the same word as matthew.

It is my contention that there is not enough information to be even called a contradiction. Luke intentionally (for whatever reason) said he swelled up or fell headlong) without saying why. strange, possibly, contradiction, no because hanging yourself and rotting is a plausible reason to me to be swelling up and bursting. I have given you what I feel are pluasible literal possibilities for the purchase of the land as well as the possibility that Luke is speaking figuratively as we maight say "he bought it". you disagree so I do not see anything else coming of this. You asked me to respond to your points on Judas and I did. Unless you have something new, I suggest we wrap it up.

~Steve

sschlichter

Are you having trouble getting on your with life because I believe in inerrancy? (interestingly enough, I was somewhat unclear on inerrancy until this thread - I found it quite convincing).

~Steve

aChristian

I can't think of any names off the top of my head except for Gleason Archer who is pretty good on the Old Testament. I would probably agree with most of the scholarship from Dallas Theological Seminary and Moody Bible Institute.

James Brown

And they do. Matthew states that the chief priests bought the property with the money that Judas gave back to them. Acts states that Judas bought the property with the money the chief priests gave to him. That's a contradiction.

You've yet to identify where I'm in error. Thinking of possible alternative scenarios is not identifying error.

What facts have I injected? When one account says that the chief priests bought the land with the money that Judas gave back to them, and another account says that Judas bought the land with the money the chief priests gave him, that's not an injection of facts. That's an identification of a contradiction.

The Acts passage did more than add new details. It added contradictory details. What's more, it's not necessary to add these details merely to explain why they selected a new apostle. A brief mention that Judas had hung himself out of remorse would be all that would be needed to remind the readers of Acts what happened to him.

Instead, we have what appears to be a contradiction. Rather than the chief priests purchasing the land, it was actually Judas who purchased the land, and rather than Judas hanging himself, he actually fell to his death and disemboweled himself. By adding needless details, the author of Acts forces readers of both accounts (those committed to inerrantism, at least) to create rickety artifices, coming up with elaborate schemes of chief priests illegally purchasing land in a dead man's name in order to not be associated with either the land or the man, all so that the author can drive home what a bad, bad man Judas was--schemes which you yourself have been doing for the last several days.

Yes. As I stated earlier, this is a common fallback position: "There are no contradictions in the Bible. And all contradictions that are in the Bible are not important."

Is that the standard now? Must every verse in the Bible have "theological importance" or else it can be jettisoned in the name of inerrancy?

All right, I'll do it for Acts 1. In my view, there's no theological importance in telling us how many days Jesus appeared to the disciples. It's irrelevant that two men in white appeared to the disciples when only one of them spoke. To what purpose do we need to know that the Mount of Olives is a sabbath day's walk from Jerusalem? There's no theological importance telling us that Peter spoke to 120 people. And there's little point in naming the two men considered for Judas' replacement when the author could have just named the chosen Matthias.

There. Acts 1 is chockablock with irrelevant details of no theological importance. A sharp editor could tighten that chapter up nicely by excising out the dead wood. Other aspects such as Jesus' final words and Peter's sermon, however, do have theological importance and ought to be included.

As for Judas' death, however, we still have the problem that, whether the details are important or not, their inclusion in the book of Acts creates a problem for Matthew. I'm not about to try to figure out why the author of Acts added the two lines about Judas--I can't read another person's mind, let alone someone who's been dead for two millenia. Why he wrote is not nearly as critical as what he wrote, and based on what he wrote the author of Acts is in conflict with Matthew.

And as I have already pointed out, the majority of biblical translators use the word 'bought' or 'purchased' when translating Acts. Your argument--that 'acquired' has to mean some complicated legal haiku in order to have land bought by neutral parties in a dead man's name--your argument is with all those translators, not me. It's not my fault that the majority of English biblical translators describe both the chief priests and Judas buying the same piece of land with the same money.

More of the same. "It can't mean what it appears to mean because I've decided it can't be a contradiction. It must mean something much more complicated and subtle."

I'm going to close by quoting from Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus. As a young inerrantist, he wrote a college paper to explain why Mark 2 does not contain a contradiction. Jesus told the story of David taking consecrated bread "in the days of Abiathar the high priest." The only problem is that OT passage in question (I Sam 21:1-6) identifies Abiathar's father Ahimilech to be the high priest at that time--an obvious contradiction and an outright error. Here are Ehrman's words: