Note 88 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

After thus witnessing the total failure of the attempts at reconciliation in relation to the first difference; we have now to inquire whether the other, relative to the acquisition of the piece of ground, can be more easily adjusted. It consists in this: according to Matthew, it is the members of the Sanhedrim who, after the suicide of Judas, purchase a field with the money which he had left behind (from a potter moreover—a particular which is wanting in the Acts); whereas, according to the Acts, Judas himself purchases the piece of ground, and on this very spot is overtaken by sudden death; and from this difference there results another, namely, that according to the latter account, it was the blood of the betrayer shed on the piece of ground, according to the former, the blood of Jesus cleaving to the purchase money, which caused the ground to be named the field of blood, ἀγρὸς or χωρίον αἳματος. Now here Matthew’s manner of expressing himself is so precise, that it cannot well be twisted so as to favour the other narrative; but the word ἐκτήσατο (he purchased or acquired) in the Acts presents inviting facilities for its adaptation to Matthew. By the reward of treachery, Judas acquired a field—such, it is said, is the meaning in the Acts—not immediately, but mediately; since by returning the money he gave occasion for the purchase of a piece of ground; not for himself, but for the Sanhedrim or the public good.88 But however numerous the passages adduced in which κτᾶσθαι has the signification: to acquire for another, still in such instances it is necessary that the other party for whom one acquires should be specified or intimated, and when this is not the case, as in the passage in the Acts, it retains the original meaning: to acquire for one’s self.89 This Paulus felt, and hence gave the facts the following turn: the terrible fall of Judas into a lime pit was the cause of this piece of ground being purchased by the Sanhedrim, and thus Peter might very well say of Judas ironically, that in death by the fall of his corpse he had appropriated to himself a fine property.90 But in the first place this interpretation is in itself strained; and in the second, the passage cited by Peter from the Psalms: let his habitation be desolate, γενηθήτω ἡ ἔπαυλις αὐτοῦ ἔρημος, shows that he thought of the piece of ground as the real property of Judas, and as being judicially doomed to desolation as the scene of his death.