There are two versions of the death of Judas: Matthew 27:3-8 and Acts 1:18-20. I’m looking at discrepancies between these two versions.
In Matthew, the priests buy the field of blood. In Acts Judas acquired it. In response, conservative apologists claim Judas acquired the property because the priests bought it with Judas’ money. ** you do not have permission to see this link **
To me, this argument flies in the face of common sense. If the same thing happened now in America, I would say that Judas had abandoned the money, and the priests were not acting on his behalf or for his benefit. Can anyone suggest any biblical law that might shed light on this issue?
Are you planning to file a lawsuit on behalf of the Judas estate for recovery of the thirty pieces? I wouldn’t count on collecting a fat fee from the heirs.
I had a feeling somebody would have figured this out already, so I Googled. Thirty pieces of silver had a purchasing power roughly equivalent to six hundred dollars at the time. Obviously that could be off, but probably not by much. Small claims. I’d kick this over to Judge Judy’s court. Does she have a time machine?
In my opinion, the thirty pieces are probably symbolic in some way we don’t fully understand now, and Judas (if he existed, and wasn’t traduced, and wasn’t doing this on Jesus’ orders, which I have at times suspected) wasn’t doing what he did for money anyway.
They kept adding details to make the story say what they wanted it to say, and we’re looking for the story beneath the story.
I did some more research, so let me modify my question. Why was the thirty pieces of silver considered “blood money”?
Bible Hub gives the Pulpit Commentary (a Bible commentary from the 1800s) for Matthew 27:6. ** you do not have permission to see this link ** This commentary supposedly explains why the priests considered the thirty pieces of silver to be blood money.
The wages of murder. It was inferred from Deuteronomy 23:18 that no money unlawfully gained, or derived from an impure source, might be used in purchasing things for God’s service. Under Jewish Law such money must be restored to the donor; if circumstances rendered this impossible, or the offerer insisted on giving it, it was to be expended for some public object, the original owner being considered, by a legal fiction, to be its possessor still, and that which was paid for by the money being deemed as his gift to the community (comp. Acts 1:18, “This man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity”).
Is this commentary correct? I have not found any Jewish law that would make the thirty pieces of silver “blood money.” Deuteronomy 23:18 says that the wages of a prostitute shall not be brought into the house of the Lord. Not exactly the same thing.
Robert said
I don’t think we need to find specific legal reasoning supposedly used by the historical high priests, but rather look at the function of the story for Matthew, the author.
You’re probably correct. I want to know about the specific legal reasoning, but perhaps there is no specific definition of “blood money.” Your answer may be as good as I’ll ever get.
Robert said
godspell said
… In my opinion, the thirty pieces are probably symbolic in some way we don’t fully understand now …
Mark, or his predecessor, already drew upon the text of the prophet Zechariah and other Jewish scriptures in constructing his passion narrative. Matthew merely incorporates this additional detail from Zechariah 11,12-13 (cf also Jeremiah 32,6-10). This process is not unlike the pesher exegesis used in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls to show how the Teacher of Righteousness and their community were fulfilling details from especially prophetic scriptures, although Matthew was perhaps not as skilled in this type of exegesis as some of the scribes at Qumran.
Mark may have drawn on now-lost Passion narratives written by Jewish converts, in Aramaic. And for all we know, those narratives were the ones consciously referring to the OT and and other texts, in ways that were recognizable to other literate Jews, but not pagan converts.
The literary becomes literal. The allusive becomes conclusive. That’s how it goes. And somewhere under all that is what really happened.
Robert said
Lawyerskeptic said
I did some more research, so let me modify my question. Why was the thirty pieces of silver considered “blood money”?… This commentary supposedly explains why the priests considered the thirty pieces of silver to be blood money.
… Is this commentary correct? I have not found any Jewish law that would make the thirty pieces of silver “blood money.” Deuteronomy 23:18 says that the wages of a prostitute shall not be brought into the house of the Lord. Not exactly the same thing.
I don’t think we need to find specific legal reasoning supposedly used by the historical high priests, but rather look at the function of the story for Matthew, the author. As Ulrich Luz says in his Hermeneia commentary (III, 473-474):
The narrator Matthew returns quickly to the chief priests, who interest him more than does the briefly mentioned suicide of Judas. They find the silver pieces where they have been thrown and are faced with a dilemma. Blood money* does not belong in the temple treasury. It is irrelevant whether the Jewish leaders were thinking of the prohibition against the wages of prostitutes and dogs in the temple (Deut 23:19) or of something else. What is important is that the evangelist wants to create the impression of hypocrisy. The same people who without scruples previously set the stage for a legal murder are now overly concerned with minor details (cf. 23:23–24). They strain the gnat and swallow the camel. The same people who have declared that Judas’s remorse is none of their business and have left him to his own devices now suddenly know that the money they gave Judas and have now gotten back is “blood money.” With his ostensibly prosaic portrayal the evangelist wants to expose the depth of the Jewish leaders’ malice. For him they, not Judas, are the evil persons.
*Τιμὴ αἵματος appears also in T. Zeb. 3.3 as the price for which Joseph was sold.
I think Matthew’s point is that the temple priests are murdering hypocrites. They don’t want Jesus’ blood on their hands, anymore than Pilate does. This is their way of washing their hands of him. Counterpoint.
And of course, there’s no way any Christian writer could know this happened. Matthew is tweaking the narrative to illustrate his version of Jesus’ dislike of legalist religion–it’s the intent behind the act that matters, not whether it was within the law or not.
The empty tomb
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The tomb of Jesus posed two main problems for early Christians: firstly, the earliest memory of the tomb seems to recall it as the site of the dishonourable burial of a man executed as an enemy of the Roman imperial system; and secondly, the narrative of the empty tomb stood for several reasons in an ambiguous relationship to the announcement of the resurrection. Yet within three centuries, that ‘place’ had been rehabilitated both architecturally and ritually (memorialised together with the site of the crucifixion) as ‘sacred space’ in the Church of the Resurrection (the typical Eastern designation for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). For discussion, see Morris 2005:33-34). By about 380 CE, Cyril of Jerusalem could thus pronounce this place ‘the very centre of the world’ (Cat. 13.28). The present article argues that ‘the place where they put him’ was not originally venerated as ‘sacred space’, but rather was remembered as a place of shame; and also describes several different narrative and theological strategies, introduced in the canonical gospels and interpreted by early Christian readers, that changed how the tomb of Jesus was remembered and that allowed for it eventually to be regarded as ‘sacred space’.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I’d view with great skepticism any claim that the place now venerated as Jesus’ tomb is where he was buried, if he was buried. There’s considerable doubt among present-day scholars that Jesus was buried at all.
Regardless of whether he was entombed, regardless of whether the tomb was found empty, the problem for early Christians was that very few Jews could accept the notion that the Messiah would be a penniless Galilean who had been crucified as a criminal.
The problem for students of history is that the penniless Galilean crucified as a criminal remains the most influential human who ever lived. And that is unlikely to change in the forseeable future.
the most influential human who ever lived…
On the contrary the life and career of the historical Jesus was almost completely occluded until modern times. The most influential person was the Christ that was invented by the post-Easter Church. Even Paul writing only twenty years after Jesus’ death has little interest in Jesus the man.
No, because Christ wasn’t a person. Christ is a myth created around a real person, just like “Honest Abe” is a myth created around Abraham Lincoln, a man who despite a justified reputation for personal integrity was nonetheless was also a highly skilled politician and lawyer, with a love for telling tall tales. Lincoln was President of a backwater Republic for less than five years–if that’s all he was, his influence would be limited to what he and many others achieved in terms of preserving the Union and ending slavery (which many historians think might have happened anyhow). It’s the myth of Lincoln that makes people keep writing books about him. The myth, and the attempts to see behind the myth, to the real person, and understand how one became the other.
If you agree with Bart that the gospels contain real information about the historical Jesus–his deeds and his words–which served in turn as the founding principles of a religion that began to form itself immediately after his death–then what you said is pretty hard to explain.
I agree Paul was more interested in the Jesus of his imagination, but we know he did meet people who met Jesus, and it beggars imagination that he never asked them any questions. In any event, if there had been no Jesus, there would have been no Paul the evangelist, no Paulline epistles, and of course no mythic Christ, nor any religious organization devoted to that myth built around the memory of a man, who undeniably did study the gospels, which most historians believe do contain ideas that stemmed from Jesus.
Influence for a historical figure is not excluded to what that person said to people he or she actually met. Most real influence occurs long afterwards, as the memory of that person persists, and is invariably distorted in the process of transmission. But under all that distortion, the real person is still there, and his or her ideas still survive, still disseminate.
All ancient historical figures are ‘occluded’ to some extent. What’s your point? I think it’s once again “I don’t like Jesus being so influential, and want to find some way around the unavoidable conclusion that he was.”
Augustus became a god after his death too. Best as I can tell, subsequent emperors never really bothered themselves too much worrying about how he would have done this or that–his memoirs were lost to history. We have basically nothing written by him (and he was certainly literate), nor was his version of the Empire very long-lasting, nor did he found Rome, and of course his title ‘Caesar’ rightly belonged to his great-uncle. So not a very influential fellow, I take it?
And how about Socrates? Influential? Even though we have nothing written by or about him except for fictionalized dialogues written by two of his pupils, and a satiric play mocking him as a con man? His primary achievement in life was to teach young men who tried to overthrow Athenian Democracy (which we’re told he despised).
This is fun. Let’s continue a while. 🙂
Stephen said
the most influential human who ever lived…On the contrary the life and career of the historical Jesus was almost completely occluded until modern times. The most influential person was the Christ that was invented by the post-Easter Church. Even Paul writing only twenty years after Jesus’ death has little interest in Jesus the man.
To say that Jesus was the most influential person who ever lived, we must be more precise with the term “influential.”
A very accepted definition in the Anglo-Saxon world is:
“Having a lot of influence on someone or something.”
There is no doubt that Jesus, the originator of Christianity, has had a great influence on humanity. Just keep in mind that today there are about 2.4 billion people who declare themselves Christians, even if only as a general cultural label and not specifically religious.
However, there are many other people who can be as or more influential than Jesus. I give Isaac Newton as an example. The entire humanity has been benefiting from Newton’s laws of motion for centuries. It can be said that all mankind depends greatly on Newton’s discoveries in his day to day.
Another example: James C. Maxwell, who formulated the laws of electromagnetism. Today there are only small groups of inhabitants of the earth who do not depend on electricity and telecommunications.
More modestly, it is estimated that Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch have saved more than 2,700 million human lives with the invention of synthetic fertilizers.
It happens that to be influenced by Jesus, to enjoy the music of Mozart, Beethoven or Verdi; to admire Michelangelo’s masterpieces, you have to know who these persons are and their works. But to benefit from the achievements of Newton, Maxwell or Haber you don’t have to know their names and less, their history.
The contribution to economic progress and to the development of the well-being of humanity of these scientists is far superior to that of Jesus, be it the historical character or his myth and legend.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
godspell said
I’d view with great skepticism any claim that the place now venerated as Jesus’ tomb is where he was buried, if he was buried. There’s considerable doubt among present-day scholars that Jesus was buried at all.
What I have always found shocking is that, according to Paul and other disciples of Jesus, his resurrection is a fundamental pillar for Christianity, there is no trace of – as far as I know – that a cult, worship and veneration of early Christians arose from the beginning of Christianity in the place where his grave was according to the testimonies that appear in the gospels.
It may be that this grave did not exist and that the dead body of Jesus was thrown into a mass grave with other executed.
This would fit the article I have given the link in a previous comment: “the earliest memory of the tomb seems to recall it as the site of the dishonourable burial of a man executed as an enemy of the Roman imperial system.” Then, all the history that appears in the gospels on the empty tomb is pure legend, pure invention of the authors of the gospels.
It is well known that today there are two places where the tomb of Jesus was supposed to be. The oldest tradition is that of Catholics and Orthodox, that is, in The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, ordered to be built by Constantine around the year 326, curiously in the place where the pagan temple Jupiter Capitolinus was located.
The so-called Garden Tomb that Protestants venerate, it is a fairly recent tradition of 1894. The Protestant rejection of the situation of the tomb of Jesus in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher was due to the fact that at that time it was believed that this church was located within the walled precinct of the ancient Jerusalem, and that was historically impossible
However, contemporary scholars, such as Professor Dan Bahat, one of Israel’s leading archaeologists, have concluded that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is located in an area which was outside the city walls in the days of Jesus and therefore indeed constituting a plausible location for the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.
Too many doubts about the real situation of something as basic for Christianity as the so-called “empty tomb”.
godspell said
Honestly, I find it a rather trivial issue. On a par with educated Greeks and Romans going to see Sibyls. Or believing a single word Richard Carrier ever writes. 🙂
Good joke!
Early Christians have nothing in common with educated Greeks and Romans. Therefore, this example is not valid.
In what you say about Richard Carrier, I think you exaggerate. You will agree with me that when he signs his books and articles, you have to believe at least those two words: his name and surname.
I don’t have such a bad opinion about Carrier as you do, but it’s certainly not my cup of tea.
And about the triviality of my curiosity, I would appreciate you giving me arguments and not emojis.
There are several ‘papers’ of experts in the NT who ask the same question as me.
Re: my last comment on September 5, 2019, “The empty tomb”.
Also, I am surprised that you speak of triviality when you yourself wrote: “I’d view with great skepticism any claim that the place now venerated as Jesus’ tomb is where he was buried, if he was buried. There’s considerable doubt among present-day scholars that Jesus was buried at all. “
By the way, I think for myself that emojis dirty a forum as interesting, knowledgeable and fun as this one.
No human who ever lived had nothing in common with any other human who ever lived. (And clearly there were educated early Christians, or we wouldn’t have much reading to do. Was Socrates educated? Left us no writings at all.)
I would certainly like to believe I’ve nothing in common with you, but alas, “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”……..
I’m not at all surprised you talk about scholarship, then blithely dismiss the opinions of most scholars.
If you don’t like the emojis, take it up with Bart, since he enabled them both here and the main blog’s comments section.
Oh and lest I forget.
😀
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