Note 93 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

Instead of these passages from the Psalms, the first gospel cites as being fulfilled by the last acts of Judas, a passage which it attributes to Jeremiah, but to which nothing corresponding is to be found except in Zech. xi. 12 f., whence it is now pretty generally admitted that the Evangelist substituted one name for the other by mistake.93 How Matthew might be led by the fundamental idea of this passage—an unreasonably small price for the speaker in the prophecy—to an application of it to the treachery of Judas, who for a paltry sum had as it were sold his master, has been already shown.94 Now the prophetic passage contains a command from Jehovah to the author of the prophecy, to cast the miserable sum with which he had been paid, into the house of the Lord, and also ‏אֶל־הַיוֹצֵר‎, which, it is added, was done. The person who casts down the money is in the prophecy the same with the speaker, and consequently with him who is rated at the low price, because the sum here is not purchase money but hire, and hence is received by the person so meanly estimated, who alone can cast it away again: in the application of the Evangelist, on the contrary, the sum being considered as purchase money, another than the one so meanly estimated was to be thought of as receiving and casting away the sum. If the one sold for so paltry a price was Jesus: he who received the money and finally rejected it could be no other than his betrayer. Hence it is said of the latter, that he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple ἐν τῷ ναῷ corresponding to the phrase ‏וַאַשְׁלִיךְ אֹתוֹ בֵּית יְהוָֹה‎ in the prophetic passage, although these very words happen to be absent from the extremely mutilated citation of Matthew. But in apposition to the ‏בֵּית יְהוָֹה‎, wherein the money was cast, there stood besides ‏אֶל־הַיוֹצֵר‎. The LXX. translates: εἰς τὸ χωνευτήριον, into the melting furnace; now, it is with reason conjectured that the pointing should be altered thus: ‏אֶל־הַיוֹצָר‎, and the word rendered: into the treasury;95 the author of our gospel adhered to the literal translation by κεραμεύς potter. But what the potter had to do here,—why the money should be given to him, must at first have been as incomprehensible to him as it is to us when we adhere to the common reading. Here however there occurred to his recollection the field of blood, to which, as we gather from the Acts, the Christian legend gave a relation to Judas, and hence resulted the welcome combination, that it was probably that field for which the thirty pieces of silver were to be given to the potter. As, however, it was impossible to conceive the potter as being in the temple when receiving the money, and yet according to the prophetic passage the pieces of silver were cast into the temple: a separation was made between the casting into the temple and the payment to the potter. If the former must be ascribed to Judas, if he had thus once cast away the money, he himself could no longer purchase the piece of ground from the potter, but this must be done by another party, with the money which Judas had cast away. Who this party must be followed of course: if Judas gave up the money, he would give it up to those from whom he had received it; if he cast it into the temple, it would fall into the hands of the rulers of the temple: thus in both ways it would revert to the Sanhedrim. The object of the latter in purchasing the ground was perhaps drawn from the use to which that waste place was actually appropriated. Lastly, if Judas cast away again the reward of his treachery, this, it must be inferred, could only be out of remorse. To make Judas manifest remorse, and thus win from the traitor himself a testimony to the innocence of Jesus, was as natural to the conception of the primitive Christian community, as to convert Pilate, and to make Tiberius himself propose in the Roman senate the deification of Christ.96 But how would the remorse of Judas further manifest itself? A return to the right on his part, was not only unattested by any facts, but was besides far too good a lot for the traitor: hence repentance must have become in him despair, and he must have chosen the end of the well-known traitor in the history of David, Ahithophel, of whom it is said, 2 Sam. xvii. 23: ἀνέστη καὶ ἀπῆλθεν—καὶ ἀπήνξατο, he arose, and went—and hanged himself, as of Judas here: ἀνεχώρησε καὶ ἀπηλθὼν ἀπήνξατο, he departed, and went and hanged himself.