You may or may not be familiar with the name Bart Ehrman. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and skeptic. Ehrman grew up in a Christian home, attended a conservative Bible school, and then found hiw way to a liberal seminary where his faith in the God of the Bible unraveled. That seminary happens to be the seminary I would attend a couple of decades later.
For Ehrman, everywhere he looks he sees holes in tahe biblical story. The inconsistencies that he sees have led him to determine that he cannot trust in the God of the Bible. One of those holes that Ehrman comes back to regularly (he’s done so in his books, his blog, and in interviews) is the apparent contradictory telling of Judas’s death in the gospels. Ehrman’s perception of this apparent contradiction demonstrates the choice of faith we have.
Here is how Ehrman describes the contradiction:
In Matthew’s gospel, Judas hangs himself. And what happens is he goes and feels remorse about what he’s done; he’s betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. He tries to return the thirty pieces of silver but the high priests won’t take it, so he throws it down on the Temple, and goes off and hangs himself. And the priests then say “Oh, we’ve got these thirty pieces of silver. We can’t put it back in the treasury; it’s blood money, used to betray blood. So they go off and they buy a field, and it’s called the Field of Blood because it’s purchased with blood money — after Judas hanged himself.
Luke also wrote the book of Acts as we were saying, and in chapter 1 there is a second account of his death. In this account what happens is: There is nothing about Judas hanging himself; nothing about the priests buying the field. In this account, Judas goes and buys the field before he dies. And he doesn’t hang himself; he somehow falls headfirst and — his intestines break open and bleed all over the ground. And so the people in Jerusalem start calling this the “field of blood” because Judas bled all over it.
Those two accounts cannot be reconciled![i]
The two accounts of Judas’s death are found in Matthew 27:3-10 and Acts 1:15-22. While a superficial reading understandably makes the accounts seem incompatible, I believe that they are not contradictory. You can read J. Caleb Jones’s much longer explanation of how we can reconcile these accounts here, but let me offer a Cliff Notes’ version of how many Christians understand how these stories can fit together.
Here is how many Christians reconcile the two accounts of Judas’s death: Judas betrays Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, which he tries to return after Jesus is found guilty of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin. Filled with remorse, he goes and hangs himself in the Potter’s Field. The priests can’t put the money in the Temple treasury, so they purchase the Potter’s Field. As Judas’s body hangs it decomposes and the bacteria balloons his body. The rope breaks (or is cut) and the corpse falls down the steep incline, bursting open in the field. The Potter’s Field is renamed the Field of Blood because it was purchased with blood money.
Which account do you think is more likely? Ehrman’s or the account I offered? The apparent contradiction in Matthew and Luke’s accounts tells us both about the texts and also the reader of the texts.
What does the apparent contradiction tell us about the text? It could tell us that Matthew and Luke were lying. It could tell us that they were sloppy and dropped the ball in getting their stories straight. It could also tell us that the gospel writers share the story of Jesus of Nazareth from their perspectives (and the vantage point of those they interviewed (as is the case with Luke)) without trying to airbrush out differences.
Any of these interpretations may be valid. Were the writers of the gospels liars, sloppy, or confident in their multi-perspectival accounts? Your answer to this question depends both on how you read their stories and the posture of your heart as you approach their stories.
If you haven’t read the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), I encourage you to do so. It only takes a couple of hours to read each gospel. Whatever you might say about the gospels, they are without a doubt four of the most important short books that have ever been penned. You owe it to yourself not to judge them based on what others say about them. As you read the gospel accounts, consider whether the authors seem credible as witnesses. Do they seem trustworthy?
When we read challenging passages (like the description of Judas’s death), we are faced with a choice: do we believe the account? This question becomes heightened when we deal with something as serious as the resurrection of Jesus. On its face, it seems highly improbable that a man would rise again from the dead. Is it possible to believe this could happen? In short, trusting the biblical accounts requires faith.
What we consider less frequently is that not believing the biblical account requires faith as well. My choice to believe that Matthew and Luke tell different perspectives of the same true story about Judas’s death involves faith. It requires greater faith still for me to believe that Jesus of Nazareth died on a cross and rose again from the dead three days later. But it requires faith to believe what Ehrman believes: that the accounts of the gospel writers are written long after the death of Jesus, cobbled together by untrustworthy stories passed on for many generations, and are, at their core, false.
How does it require faith to disbelieve? Because it isn’t that Ehrman is merely choosing to disbelieve, he is choosing to believe something different. For instance, Ehrman believes that the gospels were written much later than most biblical scholars believe the evidence points to. He believes that oral history is much less reliable than many scholars do.[ii] He believes that it is more likely that Jesus’ body was stolen than resurrected, despite the challenges with this theory.[iii] This doesn’t dig into faith involved in believing that the universe emerged out of nothing.
We are people of faith, all of us. The Bible and our experience challenges every one of us. I empathize with those who are frustrated that the Bible doesn’t provide satisfactory answers to the questions that they wrestle with. I understand the challenge of wrapping your belief around an ancient text and a Savior who asks you to trust him when you’ve never heard his voice or touched the nail imprints in his hands. But don’t lose sight of the fact that the footing of materialism, mysticism, Hinduism, relativism, or skepticism are all the same. Every worldview requires faith.
There isn’t life with faith or without faith, the question is rather where you will place your faith. I choose to place my faith in Jesus of Nazareth. Where do you place yours?
[i] https://jcalebjones.com/2020/04/29/why-bart-ehrman-is-wrong-on-judas-iscariots-death/
[ii] For a book-length defense of the first two points, I would point the reader to Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham.
[iii] See Gary Jensen’s brief article for a short explanation of some of those challenges.
Why Bart Ehrman is Wrong on Judas Iscariot’s Death – The Spirited Nature (jcalebjones.com)
Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash