Matthew has Judas hanging himself, while Acts says he fell over and busted his guts open. So which is correct?

Here are the explanations to be considered:

The standard explanation given by harmonists is that Judas hanged himself, and then his body fell and broke open. This has some promise: Judas hanged himself on Passover and before a Sabbath, and no Jew was going to touch the hanging corpse (touching a dead body caused defilement; it would have been work to take it down on the Sabbath; added to that, death by hanging was especially a disgrace; and hoisting a dead body isn't an attractive vocation if it isn't on your property), so it is safe to assume that Judas hanged himself and that the branch or rope eventually broke.

Polhill in his Acts commentary notes that the phrase translated "becoming headlong" (prenes genomenos -- translated as "falling headlong" in the KJV) is a mere transcription error away from being "becoming swollen" (presthes genomenos). The latter may well be what was originally written, and as such might describe Judas' body swelling up after hanging for a while. This reading is found in later Syriac, Georgian and Armenian mss.

While some may question whether such a combination of events could happen and be reported differently, Eddy and Boyd in The Jesus Legend have discovered an almost exactly analogous case involving the lynching of two brothers in 1881. Two different witness accounts indicated that the brothers were hanged from two different places: a railroad crossing, and a pine tree. Historians would have concluded that there was a contradiction until researchers found photographs proving that both accounts were correct: The brothers had been hanged in both locations, having been apparently first hanged from the crossing, and then later taken down and hanged on the pine tree.

Another explanation is that Matthew does not even describe Judas' death at all. The Greek word translated "hanged himself" is the word apanchomai which is used in Greek literature to mean choking or squeezing one's self as with great emotion or grief. In English we have a similar expression when we say that someone is "all choked up." We do not mean that they have died. We mean that they are overcome with emotion. Judas cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and left doubling himself over with grief. A check of the lexicons shows that such a meaning is indeed possible, but the vast majority of the meanings given were for a physical hanging.

However, a more likely idea is that this is an example of Matthew's creative use of an OT "type". Audrey Conrad, in "The Fate of Judas" notes that Matthew's unique words "departed" and "hanged himself" are found in combination in another place in the LXX:

> 2 Samuel 17:23 And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.

Rabbinic interpretation of Ps. 41:9 thought that Ahithophel was the traitor David was describing -- and of course this same verse was applied by Jesus to Judas (John 13:18). Matthew is indeed alluding to the traitor Ahithophel in this passage, and is therefore highlighting the typological fulfillment of Ahithophel by being a traitor who responded with grief and then died. Matthew focuses on this theological reality, while Luke's "swelling up" or falling stands as a specific physical description of what happened.

It makes no sense for the author to tell us that Judas' guts burst without telling us why it happened. Spilling out of guts because of swelling is such a rare event that surely if Luke believed that this extraordinary thing actually happened to Judas, he would have made certain to provide the extraordinary explanation for its occurrence.

This objection assumes that ancient authors would provide full explanations for every unusual event. Neither Luke nor any person could have been able to "provide the explanation" without knowing why it happened. Unless Luke or some other physician had access to Judas (not likely) they could not so much as mount a guess as to "why".

Matthew says the priests bought the field, but Acts says that Judas did. So who did it?

The word used by Matthew for "bought" is agorazo -- a general term meaning, "to go to market." It means to purchase, but also to redeem. It is a verb that refers to the transaction of business. Luke uses ktaomai, which means to "get, acquire, obtain, possess, provide, purchase." This word has the connotations of ownership that agorazo does not. Matthew says that the priests transacted business for the obtaining of the field, but they did not thereby have possession of the field. The money they used was Judas' and the field was bought in his name; the field was technically and legally his. (Levites were technically not allowed to own property, so they had to make someone else owner of the field.)

It seems too much of a coincidence, that the priests managed to buy the exact same field that Judas died in.

Not at all. Once Judas died in the field, the land became defiled by his corpse. Hence it would become perfectly suited to become a full-time cemetery. In this ancient collectivist society, the gossip would readily get around as to where and how Judas died and it would not be a burden for the decision to be made to purchase the field in Judas' name to turn into a cemetery.

If Judas threw the money away, it wasn't his anymore, it belonged to the priests.

This is where our social factor comes into play. Note that the money cannot be put in the treasury -- it cannot be made to belong to the temple again -- because it is blood money. Keener observes in his Matthean commentary:

> Ancient Eastern peoples regarded very seriously the guilt of innocent blood, sometimes viewed in terms of corporate responsibility. Like Pilate the priestly officials wanted nothing further to do with the situation, and likewise understand that the blood was innocent...

The money was profaned and tainted by the way it was used. By ancient thinking, it was ritually unclean. Now it follows that when they transacted the business of the field for the temple, to avoid association with ritual uncleanness, the priests would have to have bought it in the name of Judas Iscariot, the one whose blood money it was. The property and transaction records available to the public and probably consulted by Luke would reflect that Judas bought the field -- or else Luke is indeed aware of what transpired and is using just the right verb to make the point.

Matthew says the name 'Field of Blood' came because it was bought with blood money. Luke says it was because Judas split his guts all over. So which is it?

This objection assumes that what was "known unto all the dwellers" was Judas' gut-bust episode, but it would seem that the phrase modifies all that precedes it: "Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out."
Judas' gut-burst would hardly warrant a "field of blood" designation for the whole property. The "Field of Blood" name was derived -- even as Matthew says -- from the act of purchase with the reward of Judas' iniquity -- the betrayal of innocent blood. Matthew relates the origins of the "field of blood" name without any reference to Judas' guts blowing out. Matthew gets the etymology from the payment to Judas being "blood money" -- a payment for turning Jesus over. And Luke relates that episode in his own gospel. So the reference to blood doesn't "come out of nowhere" at all; it alludes to the prior account Luke provided of Judas being paid for his treachery.

If one finds it strange not to connect Judas' death in Luke with a lot of blood, it is important to remember that Luke himself didn't mention blood gushing from Judas, and he didn't say it became known as the "Field of Spilled Intestines." It is clear enough that it wasn't the blood that caught his attention. People of the time knew what "blood money" was. They would recognize that Judas took blood money. Luke's readers would also know what blood money was. So they too would know what Luke meant even if Luke never explicitly used the phrase "blood money". If someone falls to their death and their body bursts open, there is an obvious implied presence of blood, but while the spilled guts become an incredible illustrative irony, their presence is secondary and likewise illustrative of the acceptance by Judas of blood money. Luke made it quite clear that Judas had betrayed innocent blood -- his story of the trial of Jesus makes that abundantly clear to a first century audience familiar with the Roman justice system. Modern readers often mistakenly assume that everything needs to be spelled out explicitly. Drawing examples from entirely different cultural settings ignores the fact that those settings were not "high context societies" and did not produce allusive references to the same degree as the Biblical authors did.

In verses 27:8 and 28:15, Matthew refers to conditions in 30 A.D. that are still as they are 'to this day.' Critics suggest that this means a late date. But how long can we wait before saying 'to this day'? Would not 30 years (a 60 date for Matthew) be sufficient? Or even 20 (a 50 date)? We are only 18 years, as of this writing, past the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and it is hardly incoherent to say that it remains destroyed 'to this day.'