Matthew 27 and Acts 1 give differing details about Judas's death

The two accounts

Matthew 27:3-5

Matthew gives the account in the context of Jesus’s trial before Pilate, immediately after Jesus is condemned. The full passage (BSB):

When Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was filled with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. “I have sinned,” he said, “by betraying innocent blood.” “What is that to us?” they replied. “You bear the responsibility.” So Judas threw the silver into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

Matthew continues in 27:6-10 with what happened to the silver:

The chief priests picked up the pieces of silver and said, “It is unlawful to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.” After consulting together, they used the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on Him by the people of Israel, and they purchased the potter’s field, as the Lord had commanded me.”

Matthew’s account:

• Judas hangs himself
• The chief priests use the returned silver to buy the “potter’s field”
• The field is called “the Field of Blood” because it was purchased with blood-money

Acts 1:18-19

Acts gives the account in the context of the apostles’ deliberation about replacing Judas with Matthias. Peter is speaking. The full passage (BSB):

With the reward of his wickedness Judas bought a field; and falling headfirst, he burst open in the middle, and all his intestines spilled out. This became known to all who lived in Jerusalem, so they called that field in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.

Acts’s account:

• Judas himself bought a field with the reward of his betrayal
• Judas died by falling headfirst, his body bursting
• The field is called “Akeldama, Field of Blood” — implicitly because of the violence of his death

The differences

Both accounts agree on:

• The disciple Judas betrayed Jesus
• The amount was thirty pieces of silver (Matthew specifies; Acts implies)
• A field came to be called “the Field of Blood” / Akeldama
• The events occurred in connection with Jesus’s death

They differ on the three points listed above.

How interpretive traditions have responded

Christian commentators across the centuries have proposed harmonisations of the two accounts. The most common attempt:

Judas hanged himself (Matthew). The body remained for some time, possibly until the rope or branch broke, at which point the body fell — perhaps from a height, given the rocky terrain around Jerusalem — and burst open (Acts).

A complementary harmonisation handles the silver:

Judas threw the silver into the temple (Matthew). The priests, unable to put it in the treasury, used the money to buy the field — which the silver had been Judas’s, was effectively bought “with” Judas’s reward (Acts uses agency loosely).

Both harmonisations are plausible imaginative reconstructions. Neither is stated in either text. Each requires reading details into both accounts that neither account itself supplies.

Some critical scholars argue that the two accounts represent two distinct early Christian traditions about Judas’s death, preserved in two different communities and crystallised in two different ways. The Matthew tradition foregrounds Judas’s remorse and a death by hanging; the Acts tradition foregrounds Judas’s continued ownership of the betrayal money and a more graphic violent death. Both made it into the canonical New Testament.

Why this matters

The two accounts of Judas’s death are one of the clearer examples of internal variation within the New Testament — variation that the canonical text preserves rather than smoothing over. Different Christian traditions handle this variation differently:

• Harmonising readings — both accounts describe the same event from different angles, and the apparent differences can be reconciled with imaginative reconstruction.
• Two-tradition readings — the two accounts represent distinct early Christian memories, both authentic to their communities of origin, both preserved in the canonical text without forced harmonisation.

We document the texts as they stand. The harmonisation question is interpretive; the texts themselves contain what they contain.

Related entries

• The number 666 in Greek manuscripts — another case of internal textual variation
• The two creation accounts (Genesis 1 and 2) — internal variation in the Hebrew Bible