Why did Judas die twice in the Bible?

Question

WTF, dude, he hung himself, and then later he fell over a rock and his guts spilled out?!

Matthew 27:1 -- Judas hangs himself.

Acts 1:15 -- Judas falls down and his guts spill out.

15In those days Peter stood up among the believers[a] (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) 16and said, "Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus— 17he was one of our number and shared in this ministry."

18(With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.
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Matthew 27
3When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. 5So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.
7So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners.

Answer 1

Look, just stop reading it, its a bunch of hearsay, its packed full of contradictions!

Answer 2

To understand this you have to go back to the writings of the OT. And then look at the surroundings and the steps that took place before the death.

I will divided these up into Two Deaths:

1. Hanging 2. Falling

1. Hanging~ It says here that He threw the money at the pharasees and then went and hung himself

2. Falling~ Said he bought a field and then fell headlong and his bowels gushed out.

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These are two seperate deaths as the manner and the words that are used in the explanation. Number one is a physical death, and number two is the spiritual death

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The hint that the second is a spiritual death is based on two things. 1. His bowels gushed out, and 2. The money

See he threw the money back so then how is it that he bought a field of blood with the money? See what this is saying here is that when he accepted the money, he bought the field of blood (death) and even tho he gave the money back, by accepting it and all he bought not only the death of Jesus but also himself. And then that brings us to Bowels Gushed Out, and falling Headlong. After some reading of the OT you will find that the words used in the description of the death were used in the OT as falling from God. In other words His spiritual death as he fell from God. and eternity. do u see? See the words are key in each scripture... the falling headlong and his bowels gushing out are his spiritual death

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The first one is the death from the natural world (physical) he gave the money back and hung himself.

See this is describing to seperate deaths for the same person, one was physical one was spiritual.

I put that as simple as i could. if it was confusing then i am sorry, but sometimes i have to sound confusing

Answer 3

That's a question that others have asked, and there is an answer.

Judas hanged himself, according to the Gospel of Matthew (27:5). However, in the book of Acts (1:18), it is written than he fell "headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out."

Bowels don't 'gush out' when you fall 'over a rock', as you suggested had happened. It has been put forth that Judas hanged himself, and at some point (days later?) his body fell and his putrifying insides came out (we're dealing with a rather hot climate, remember?).

When you consider that the writer of the book of Acts, Luke, was a physician, you can see how this event might be more graphic and descriptive, unlike Matthew's matter-of-fact statement.

Lots of neat stuff in the Bible like that.

Answer 4

You can say that when he hanged himself he fell foward and his guts burst out.
But that does seem very forced, doesnt it.
You know that Acts was written several decades before Matthew. More likely the author of Matthew was unaware of that which the author of Acts had written, and could not confer with his text to corroborate it, and thus there are two versions.
By the way, when Matthew retells the story, he mentions a supposed fullfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah. There is no such prophecy in Jeremiah at all. Even if you put together various prophecies from through the book of Jeremiah, you could not come up with this prophecy at all. And part of this prophecy is based on what is written in Zechariah. Well, it is not uncharacteristic of Matthew's author to make such blundering errors. As I said- he probably just had no way to corroborate the event as the author of Acts decided to write it down, so he made up his own version of the story.

Answer 5

fuzzi is right. This is not a contradiction, as others have said. He hung himself, and later fell from the tree onto the rock. Maybe the rope was weak and couldn't handle the strain...but in any case, no contradiction on the Bible's part, just a different description of what happened since they were given by different authors.

Answer 6

This is just a simple guess...

Either he didn't die from the hanging and proceeded to jump off of a cliff, or he fell down a cliff got cut across the abdomen his guts all spill out and by some chance he managed to hang himself before he died of blood loss.

Either way he didn't have much fun committing suicide... Then again I'm not sure many people do...

Answer 7

It says he died by hanging, so obviously he must have fallen on the rocks and split open when he was eventually cut down.

Answer 8

As a result of the hanging hit hit the rock, then... I fell asleep in church after the rest

Answer 9

You know the Thundercats guy might have it right.

BD

Answer 10

He did a bad job hanging himself?