Expert: Tyler Eldred (formally known as DarkBlue) - 8/31/2009

Question
QUESTION: Acts and Mathew are in disagreement about some of the facts related to the death of Judas. Which one is correct?

What did Judas do with his reward? Who bought the Field of Blood? Why is it called the Field of Blood? How did Judas die?

Thanks for your time,
Kevin


ANSWER: Hello Kevin,
   I very much appreciate that you have chosen to entrust me with your question. I hope that I will not be disappointed to find I do not really have a direct answer to your questions. In considering myself a child of God, I try to do my best to receive what I have been given in scripture and to understand what our Lord is telling us from it. There are some great saint and theologians for which to whom God has given the insight to answer such questions absolutely and conclusively, but, not wishing to speak from knowledge outside of my authority, I will merely give different interpretations that can be used to analyze this apparent contradiction in scripture. I have created a list of the interpretations of the event's surrounding Judas' death that I think could be possible, which I have written in statement form below:
1. "Both the account in Matthew and the account in Acts are strictly literally and historically correct and the information that each contains were never meant to convey contradictory messages."
2. "The information contained in the two passages are not supposed to be taken as first hand accounts but rather a simple reports of the hearsay of time."
3. "Both accounts are true but in different senses: The account in Matthew is figurative embellishment while the account in Acts is literal and factual."
4. "Both accounts are true but in different senses: The account in Acts is figurative embellishment while the account in Matthew is literal and factual."
5. "The purpose of each account was never to give a historical account of what had occurred but rather explain the spiritual significance of Judas' death."
As you can see plainly, only one of these statements can be true. What follows is my explanation and discussion of each possible interpretation, so that we can best discern which of these, if any, it is.

Interpretation 1
   There are some people for which it would be a mistake to say that the scriptures do not take the role of a historical authority in this particular matter. Correspondingly the following explanation can be given for what had happened:
 Judas returned the silver to the chief priests and the elders. (Matthew)
 Judas hanged himself. (Matthew)
 The chief priests and the elders bought the potter's field with the silver. (Matthew)
 There was a transcription error in the word "Jeremiah" in Matthew, the original author had or had meant to put "Zechariah," referring to Zec 11:12-13. (an inference)
 The word in Acts 1:18 where it says "this man 'bought' a field"('' marks added) is best translated as acquired, or obtained, since clearly Judas was dead at the time. (an inference)
 From the place where Judas hung himself (Matthew), he fell headlong, and his entrails burst forth from his middle and spilled upon the field (Acts) that the chief priests and elder bought. (Matthew)
 Because of the Blood of Jesus for which the silver was paid for (Acts), and because of the death of Judas that occurred there (Matthew), the field was known as the field of blood.
The transcription error of Jeremiah versus Zechariah was often conjectured by early fathers of the Church, and supposing this was the case would not necessarily take from the inerrancy of the Bible. Possible reason for the Acts account seeming to imply that Judas physically bought the field include: because it was money that belonged to Judas, because it was bought for Judas, because it was in Judas' name, and because it would forever become associated with Judas and his death. On the part of Judas falling headlong from where he hung, we could suppose that the rope broke and that in the process of Judas falling, his body rotated from feet first to head first, and that his middle burst open as the result of the fall. This seemingly unlikely event might be thought of as more probable if we consider that a) if Judas hung himself after good Friday, then it would be a Saturday, meaning that no Jew would take his body down, since it was the Sabbath, perhaps allowing for time for the rope to get weaker, and his body to become more fragile, b) for an event so closely connected to the destiny drive quality to Jesus' life, very improbable things are still possible if that's how God willed it, and c) it would be possible for Judas to have hung himself from one location which overlooked another, adding a possible additional factor of height, and not necessarily implying that the chief priest and the elder bought the field that Judas hung himself at. The question we would ask to doubt this interpretation is why were the two accounts both incomplete in telling the full story and why did they take parts that made the two stories sound contradictory, if both Matthew and the writer of Acts (who might be Luke) had known the full story (perhaps they didn't) and if the two passage did indeed contain no errors of any kind?

Interpretation 2
   This interpretation, which regards one or more of the passages to be a second hand account based on what was said of Judas' death at the time, is motivated by examining the way in which we understand the books of Matthew and Acts were written. Although the date at which Matthew and Acts were each written is ultimately unknown to us, the vast majority of scholars argue for a date between 50 and 100 AD for both of them. Whether the people who had witness the events in the Gospel were alive at the time that the books are written or not, it is though that at that time all stories, to include historical events were preserved by a oral tradition of precisely retelling accounts from person to person and from generation to generation. Such an oral tradition may have been described in the beginning of Luke (which is conjecture to be written by the same person who wrote Acts) when it says "Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received." So the idea here is that if Acts or Matthew or both were written in from a variety of first and second hand sources carried by oral tradition, than maybe the source were reliable or distorted over time, and therein lies the difference in accounts of Judas' death. In that case, it could be that the source that went into Matthew was incorrect, the source that went into Acts was incorrect, both, or that the true story was a combination thereof, with each source being distored a little. Some possible stories that represent hybrids of the two: 1) Judas returns the money, then hangs himself in a field, and the Jews, feeling guilty, buy the field were Judas died, or 2) While Judas is in the field, bought either by himself of the chief priest and the elders after he return the money, he falls headlong and dies with his guts spewing out, and it is assumed that his death was not from accidental falling but by him hanging himself. The plausibility of the claim that the sources were only hearsay would be helped by the fact that possibly no one else saw exactly how Judas died when he died, that among humans sources, only a source from the chief priest and elders would be able to tell of Judas' return of the money and the purchasing of the field, and that Judas' death, unlike most of the rest of Matthew and Acts, perhaps does not contain very much significance to the message of salvation sought to be preserved and shared by the early apostles. If this were the case, the writers of Acts and Matthew were simply giving a report of what happened to Judas as they had heard it, not knowing, or not being able to know, or not being concerned about what had happened exactly, and never meaning to convey that they were reporting these facts with absolute certainty. In this scenario, Matthew could have been simply noting a correspondence between what he had heard and the prophecy of Zechariah, or the writer of Acts could have been simply giving a hearsay account to help the reader understand that Judas had died, since some translations even put that story in parenthesis. An argument to the contrary would be that if it were important at all to the writer that we have the exact details of Judas' death, he could have been given this information by God, since the scriptures are understood to be a direct part of God's plan.

Interpretation 3
   If we take the account in Acts to be literal, then we could perhaps say that the incident of Judas trying to return the money and Judas' killing himself were intended as a rhetorical commentary only. The account of Judas' attempt at returning the money maybe have been employed to reinforce his regret and the irreversibility of his actions, perhaps corresponding to a small interchange between Judas and the chief priests and elders wherein Judas wanted to give the money back, but was unable to do so. The verb "to hang" could be referring to a mood or disposition which Judas' placed himself in, or it could be emphasizing a the broader point that Judas' demise was ultimately the result of his own doing. Such a non literal interpretation of Judas' hanging would not be too surprising if we consider that if Judas' did hang himself, then the repentance that Matthew describes Judas having earlier in the passage would not be true repentance, but something like regret or despair. And since often Matthew wrote of parallels prophecies linking the Old Testament to events occurring at the time, he could have include this account of Judas' death for merely that reason: either he saw the events surrounding Judas' death as described in Acts as a fulfillment of the prophecy and his purpose was to describe how he saw Judas' death as a fulfillment of it or from reading this section of the Old Testament, he was proposing that this is how Judas' death had happened. While this interpretation is possible, there does not seem to be enough motivation for taking Luke's account of Judas' death as figurative as of yet.

Interpretation 4
   Taking into account that Matthew's account would seem to be a fulfillment of a prophecy, we might suppose that it is the factually accurate one, and that Judas' purchase of the field, Judas' falling headlong, and Judas' insides spilling forth are figurative descriptions of those other factual events. By Judas' purchase of the field, the author of Acts could mean that Judas' treachery made the way for the purchase, whether or not it was his money at the time or not. Judas' falling headlong could mean that we was falling into a deadly despair that lead to his suicide, and that his inside splitting could be figurative language for either his guilt or inner corruption. The problem that would seem to be with this interpretation is that such figurative language would seem out of place in Acts, where extraordinary things are recorded in factual ways.

Interpretation 5
   One thing we know of all scripture is that it is a help to us in some way, for the purpose of scripture is be a guide in wisdom of God and knowledge about Him. Some scripture is our help by telling what had happened and how, such as scriptural account of the resurrection. Suppose we say though, that the death of Judas is not a part of scripture which is to help us by giving an exact account, but nevertheless scripture useful for our understanding as children of God. In that case, the two accounts would be different precisely because they emphasize slightly different spiritual messages for us to hear. Both stories emphasize the destructive nature of sin and the necessity of repentance. In Matthew, betrayal of Jesus, which is what sin is, we are shown how going against God will always be something we regret, both because of the absolute innocence of the Lamb whom we betray and the bottomless demise characteristic of the path away from God. In Acts, Judas' fall depicts the futility of trying to act apart from God, and the spewing of his insides demonstrates how integral our life in God is. One apparent drawback to this interpretation would be that while certainly Judas' death happened somehow, there would now no information to tell exactly how. One thing that helps to soothe this concern is that differences in the events would seem contingent on the actions willed by Judas and the chief priests and the elders, thus making the truth of one story or another depend on how Judas' executed his free will, for we could certainly say there either scenario could have been possible.

   As you can see, there are a variety of viable interpretations such that the exact answers to these questions are non-obvious to us. For myself, I have not yet found sufficient reason for believing on aspect of the two accounts as opposed to another, but the spiritual significances discussed in interpretation 5 comprises all of my current interest. May our Father in Heaven grant you the wisdom and understand that you have been looking for.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for your very interesting answer regarding the death of Judas. I appreciate that you took all the possibilities and examine them one at a time.
I do have a few follow-up questions.
You wrote, “There are some people for which it would be a mistake to say that the scriptures do not take the role of a historical authority in this particular matter.”
Yes, some say that everything in the Bible is literally true. On what do they base this assumption? In the original version of the bible was there some publisher’s note that clarifies how this collection of writings by various authors is all divinely inspired and therefore all factual?

“…if Acts or Matthew or both were written in from a variety of first and second hand sources carried by oral tradition, than maybe the source were reliable or distorted over time, and therein lies the difference in accounts of Judas' death. In that case, it could be that the source that went into Matthew was incorrect, the source that went into Acts was incorrect, both, or that the true story was a combination thereof, with each source being distored a little.”
Isn’t divine inspiration supposed to mean we can be sure that the stories are not distorted because they are approved by God?
If ,” Matthew's account would seem to be a fulfillment of a prophecy,”  then is that prophecy in the OT and if so, where? And wouldn’t this make Mathew more likely to be the fiction writer, since he made up the facts to fit the prophecy?
You wrote, “Some scripture is our help by telling what had happened and how, such as scriptural account of the resurrection. Suppose we say though, that the death of Judas is not a part of scripture which is to help us by giving an exact account, but nevertheless scripture useful for our understanding as children of God.” Here you have introduced the concept of two types of scripture. When reading the Bible, how do we know which is which?  

Answer
Hi Kevin,
   Thank you for your continued interest the study of scriptures, and I apologize for such a long delay. Because these scriptural passages about the death of Judas seem to present a contradiction, like all apparent contradictions in the Bible, they bring up issues about how the Bible should be interpreted. This is because a contradiction that would count as a harmful by one Biblical interpretation does not count as harmful by another in some instances. In my previous response, I focused mainly on different ways to resolve this apparent contradiction, but with each interpretation I ended up using different standards for contradictions in scripture, which would obviously make a discussion on interpretations of the Bible necessary. So, while before I did not discuss what different interpretations Bible are, and where they come from, it nevertheless an essential topic for making decisions about encounters with apparent scriptural contradictions. So what follows in this response is I) Our motivation as Christians for believing in the Divine characteristic of scripture, and where the difference of opinion falls among most Christians II) A specific address to some of your questions, III) Scriptural passages talking about interpreting scripture, IV) Discuss of the Bible role with respect to the Church, and V) Conclusive remarks regarding the interactions between different interpretations scripture in general and the issues pertaining to the apparent contradiction of Judas' death.
I
   So where does this idea of scriptural as a vessel of truth come from? We could observe that many other religions have a practice of extreme reverence for the writings concerning their religion and about their God. We could cite our belief that this sort thing had been establish by God before the New Testament, with the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses, and the sending of prophets to become messengers of God's words. These ideas would help us to make sense of the concept of the truth of scripture, but these are not enough to demonstrate its truth, and certainly not the degree that we mean it when we say that all scripture is divinely inspired. In my opinion, the whole concept consists of chiefly at least two ideas.
   The first is that we have an understanding that the Bible was put forth by God, that is, that He thought of, planned, and desired its creation and that it was by His initiation and His guidance it was constructed and propagated, so that we would read it, comprehend it's meaning, receive knowledge and wisdom, and respond accordingly to its truth. We observe that this is the case in a very literal way when we entrust that Jesus actually and historically exists, that His followers actual and historically existed and witness that Gospel that Jesus brought to this earth, that these followers were lead by God not only while our Lord walked among them but also following His Ascension and Pentecost (i.e. through the Holy Spirit), and that the message of the Gospel that Jesus had brought to this earth and intended to be put forth in scripture were the ones that was written down in and eventually compiled into the Bible (and that this compilation happened as God had willed it as well). This idea does not merely contain historical roots, however, as it may be observed in different ways. Perhaps you have read a verse of the Bible and felt as though God had specifically meant for you read that passage for you at that particular time. Well, such a thing could not happen unless God willed that that Gospel message be placed into the Bible for you to read, which would indicate a larger intention about God's purposeful usage of scripture.
   Our second way of understanding scripture about the significance of scripture can be put very simply as follows: we have the ability to recognize truth when we see it. This need not imply that our ways of knowing are without error (for certainly man is capable of making mistakes in sensory perception, reason, and the like), but simply that the potential for recognizing truth exists, and that it is our comprehension that in the case of the truths presented in scripture, we have judged correctly. We might also make a special type of exception based on spiritual characteristic of the content we perceive, such that we say that our knowledge of the truths of scripture goes beyond say, our ability to judge what time of day it is based on looking the position of the sun in the sky. For example, if someone asked you how do you know that God exists, or how you knew that the teachings of Jesus are true, one answer that you might give is that you simply 'know in your heart' that it is true. Well certainly when we speak this way, we would maintain that it is inaccurate to say, that people "'know in their heart' when they are hungry," for physical hunger is not found in the heart, but rather the stomach. What we are referring to here when we say that we know of the Love of God in our heart, what we are attempting to describe is a type of contact with God that transcendent of the physically observable world. So we might say that the Truth that we assent to in our prayer and our worship we also find in scripture. But the recognition of scripture as truth may occur in more ordinary ways, such as our use of reason to find correspondences between what scripture describes and what we find in the rest of the world. Intelligent Design thinkers, for example, might claim that such correspondences exist between the apparent design found in the scientific study of organisms and the account in the Bible that the Universe was created by God. I myself have been countless times amazed at the beauty and wisdom of the morality described by the Bible's account of Christianity and deep meaningfulness and authority that can be found whenever it is seen instantiated by others. So these two matters, God's direct intention working through the Scriptures and the sheer truth that we discover in it, constitute in my mind both our account for thinking that scripture is a vessel of truth, and what we mean when we are trying to describe the Divine characteristics we recognize in it. (I should mention here that these two points can be phrased in terms of each other: we have the ability to recognize that God directly worked to bring scripture about, and because God personally instantiated His precepts in scripture, we are able to recognize them in scripture.)
   Accordingly, I find that these two points are also instrumental in describing the perceived damage of from apparent scriptural contradictions and others things of that nature. If scripture contains valid falsities, either by deception or error, then it would necessarily be the case that any of such falsities cannot be either truth intended by God for us to know, or a statement that can be recognized as truth. Thus we acknowledge that if there exists beliefs we hold to be truths in the Bible that turned out to be false, it would severely change the way we look at the Bible, if not our Christian faith as a whole. When we express our belief that these things in the Bible are indeed truths, and that the Bible does not contain such falsities, we call this belief Biblical Infallibility. Most all Christians believe in the Infallibility of the Bible, which again, just simply means that they believe that the Bible does not contain lies, inaccuracies, errors, or contradictions that act as evidence against the divine character we see in the Bible- namely, God's express work behind it and that which we recognize as truth. People who call themselves Biblical Infallibilists, though, generally do so to distinguish themselves from those that believe that in the Biblical Inerrancy of the Bible. Biblical Inerrancy is distinct from them  
in two ways: 1) Biblical Inerrantists believe that there are no falsities of any kind in the Bible, to include all geographic, historic, and scientific statements from literal interpretations and 2) Biblical Inerrantists believe that if there were falsities of any kind, even with a literal translation, then this would be evidence against God’s presence scripture. So to reiterate, in the mind of a Biblical Infallibilist, there might be some parts of the Bible that should not be taken literally because the literal translations would convey information which a) God isn't trying to show us through scripture, and/or b) may not be true. Yet for a Biblical Inerrantist, no such parts of the Bible exists, because a) God's is teaching us all of the statements in the Bible as truth, and/or b) every part and every aspect of it can be recognized as truth. I should add here that it typically isn't the case that a Biblical Inerrantist holds that every translation of every transcription of the original documents of the Bible are without error, for certainly copy or translation errors are possible. Other than section II which gives some direct answers to some of your questions, most of the rest of this response will focus on the reasoning behind the Biblical Inerrantist position, (though I myself would probably consider myself an Infallibilist.)
II
   From your follow-up question I detect five specific questions other than this general question about the reasoning behind the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy. I will answer them here. "In the original version of the bible was there some publisher’s note that clarifies how this collection of writings by various authors is all divinely inspired and therefore all factual?" Certainly there was nothing exactly like a publishers note.  In the following section we will look at the scripture associated with the divine inspiration behind the Bible. In general, the attitude taken by Peter in acts and taken by Paul in his epistles is that the Gospel message, especially the Death and Resurrection of Christ was that this was indeed factually true, that it should not be ignored, and that it was their duty to uphold its truth, and to spread it throughout the world. Other than perhaps the scriptural passage that we look at later, there is very little said by the authors of the New Testament about how it should be interpreted. As for the early Church fathers (from, say, 100AD to 400AD), we see a very early acceptance of the letters of Paul and an acceptance of the four Gospel as being authentic and useful for teaching and instruction on matters of the Christian faith. In debates with Jewish theologians, though, the typically practice was to demonstrate how Jesus was a fulfillment of the prophecies in the Old Testament. A big concern in the early days of the Church was combating heresy- that is- making an argument as to why the Gospel message that we see in what is now the New Testament is correct, and not other competing Gnostic accounts and ideologies that could have become part of the Bible or part of Christian doctrine. For these heresies, a combination of both appeals to Old Testament sources and philosophical reasoning was used, and generally speaking, the Gnostic texts always took the role as "newcomer," as for after about century or so texts such as Paul letters were already seen as the Orthodox interpretation, at least certainly in what was the mainstream Christian community at the time. So the focus in those days, up until the compilation of the early Bible vulgates, was which texts were true, not whether they were literal translations or not. In their teaching, Church Fathers would use both literal and allegorical interpretations, of the Bible. It would seem that St Augustine of Hippo was the first major Christian theologian to explicitly encourage Biblical scholars to look beyond the literal translation of scripture and the first among them to say that wherever science would point to a different explanation than the literal translation of the Bible implies, to interpret the Bible in non-literal way that conforms with the findings of science, but he came about 350 year later than when the New Testament was written.
   "Isn’t divine inspiration supposed to mean we can be sure that the stories are not distorted because they are approved by God?" So it is not difficult to see ways where an interpretation such this could be falling short of understanding the Bible as divine inspiration. I certainly do not mean to suggest that the writers of Matthew and Acts were not authoritative sources in every aspect of the Gospel, but just simply that there might be something different with this particular part since, as I said before, possibly no one was around other God and Judas at the time that Judas died. Now with regards to those specific events, according to an Infallibilist system, if they were distorted in ways that were not factual, but nevertheless chosen by God (i.e. they were chosen form their spiritual content,) then perhaps it would be okay that either or both of the accounts contain didn't happen exactly that way, since the facts of the story were never intended to be conferred to us. Or perhaps one or more of the stories was never to be taken as what happened but only as what was purported to have happened. Entire chapters of certain books of the Old Testament, for example, take this form "The letter [person A] wrote to [person B]: [transcription of the letter]."One thing I was suggesting that one of the authors could have been taking a similar approach in their account of Judas, that is, a simple transcription of a particular type of historical resource (in the case of Judas, the story given by the Jerusalem people.) You may be thinking that these possibilities are too outlandish to consider seriously. I was merely presenting this as an option for two reasons: 1) If for some reason, you saw something in of the passages that I didn't see, or if the Holy Spirit moved you to assent to this, I would certainly would want to have presented the idea to for that occasion, 2) If, (though it may never happen), irrefutable archaeological evidence suddenly indicates a story contrary to one or both of these scriptural accounts, we now have a way of understanding how it could be that these authors had presented a different story. In any case I don't expect such a thing to happen, and I myself am hesitant to believe this interpretation for the reasons that you mentioned.
   "Is that prophecy in the OT and if so, where?" There is some dispute as to which prophecy Matthew is referring to, actually. Matthew refers a prophecy made by Jeremiah. Jeremiah 18 could be the verse he is talking about, but since it mentions a) repentance, and b) a potter. I have heard, however, that some manuscripts say Zechariah instead of Jeremiah, and that even before these manuscripts were discovered, it was thought by thinkers such as St Augustine and John Calvin that this was a transcription error to Jeremiah. The much more relevant seeming verse in Zechariah is Zechariah 11:12-13, which says, "I told them, "If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it." So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said to me, "Throw it to the potter" - the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter."
   "Wouldn’t this make Mathew more likely to be the fiction writer, since he made up the facts to fit the prophecy?" I agree. Of course we don’t know that he did make up the facts to fit the prophecy, and certainly other prophecies that were fulfilled that Matthew mentioned are thought to be true, but it is a natural question to wonder to what physically explicit degree was this prophecy fulfilled. For this reason, if I were to pick between interpretation 3 and interpretation 4, I would definitely pick interpretation 3. However, since I didn't know that interpretation IV was not true, I thought I would present a case for that it as well.
   "When reading the Bible, how do we know which is which?" I see all historical accounts in one or three different ways, which basically describes my policy for the literal versus non literal interpretation of scripture. The first is recognition of dogma that this account is historic. An example of this is the Resurrection. This type of historical account contains two properties that other historical accounts don't: a) it is sternly maintained elsewhere in the Bible that did happen, b) to suppose it was false would produce impossibly false consequences about the nature of Christianity and the nature God. The second type is of those in which it is no concern to me as to whether or not it was historical. The couple described in Song of Songs could indeed have been two historically existing figures, but it would not be of any significance to me if they were not, since to me the spiritual rhetoric behind the dialogue in Song of Songs is what of value there, not the historical factualness of their existence. The third type would be accounts that I happen to believe actually happened, but would be willing to believe that it did not if I ever discovered evidence or argument to the contrary. The story of the Tower of Babel is like this for me. Given the passage of scripture that explains what had happened, I think that it rational for me to believe that it did historically occur, but if archaeology were somehow able to rule out the possibility of the Tower of Babel ever actually existing, it would not undermine my faith in any way, it would simply require of me to understand the story in terms of its spiritual content only. I would say that most historical accounts in the Bible speak spiritual messages to me rather than historical facts. Ultimately, however, the answer is to discern with the Holy Spirit, for without the working of God in our lives in some way, we are hopeless to understand the truths of the scriptures, and so if there is ever any passage that you do not know whether it should be taken literally or not, I would encourage you to pray about it.
III
   The real instrumental Bible verse used to explain the inerrancy of the Bible is 2 Timothy 3:16-17: "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work." Some translations of this verse have "adequate" instead of "competent," which would be making a stronger statement about scripture in that some meanings of the word "adequate," would be 'complete,' 'sufficient,' or 'lacking nothing.' In this case, to say "All scripture" could be thought of as 'every part and every aspect of scripture,' and part of the "teaching" for which it is adequate could include historical considerations, since no other document would be necessary, since the Bible is adequate. Here we also see the origin of the phrase "inspired by God" to describe scripture. An alternate translation of the phrase reads "God-breathed." Another argument for inerrancy comes up here, since we might say that because scripture is "God-breathed" and God is perfect, similarly scripture will be perfect in that it will contains no literal falsities. There is some discussion about references to "the Word of God" use frequently in the Bible, and whether they should count as evidence towards inerrancy. For example, in reply to the first temptation in the desert Jesus says to Satan “it is written: man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. Generally most theologians agree that the Word of God describes something larger than scripture only, but that scripture is the Word of God. So when verses refer to the Word of God, the Inerrantist would make the argument that a direct reference to scripture is intended here, as opposed to talking about some higher concept only. One passage in the spirit of this contention (though it doesn't use the exact phrase "Word of God") is Psalm 19:8-12, where it makes statements like "The law of the Lord is perfect,/ refreshing the soul." It would seem possible that a statement about the inerrancy of scripture is intended by a verse such as this.
IV
   There are certain Catholic mind frames and certain Protestant mind frames both that look at the history of the Church with respect to scripture as guidelines for understanding the role of scripture in the Church, and both of them make for very intriguing ideas, and these viewpoints are at times used as arguments for Biblical Inerrancy. I'll start with the Catholic Church first. A big theme in theology concerning the establishment of the Catholic Church is the notion that Jesus personally and intentionally instantiated the Church. Catholics say that St Peter was our first Pope, and that the Apostles were our first Bishops. Indeed, in theory, every Pope, Bishop, and Priest in the Catholic Church could trace their ordination back to these first Apostles of Christ. So, given that, an additional association of the Bible being part of this deliberate establishment is not difficult. The Catholics would see authors of the New Testament such as Paul as early theologians the establishment of this Church, and they would recall the early saints that fought for the doctrines we have today and combated the heresies of competing accounts of the Gospel. Indeed the first Bibles were compiled by what is thought of as what became the Catholic Church. So from this, a Catholic Inerrantist would say that the Bible in so deeply intertwined with the Church, that it would only make sense that these documents be inerrant.
   For many Protestants, emphasis on scripture goes back to the age of the Protestant Reformation. The term "sola scriptura," meaning "by scripture alone" is a doctrine used to distinguish itself from "prima scriptura," meaning "by scripture first," concerning where authoritative Christian doctrine should originate. While prima scriptura may include but is not limited to tradition, conscience, reason, revelation in prayer, divine intervention, and, of course, scripture, sola scriptura, as the name implies, requires that the doctrine originate in scripture. Sola scriptura is not intended to stipulate that any doctrine that originate from other sources is automatically invalid, but only that the truths revealed this way should be found in scripture before they can be regarded as certain. Sola scriptura is closely associated with leaders of the Protestant Reformation, specifically Martin Luther and Lutheranism, but includes other Christian reformers such as John Wesley, a founder of Methodism. Some Protestant denominations, such as Anglicanism, reject the doctrine of sola scriptura, and Anglicans and Roman Catholics are typically associated with prima scriptura, though not formal statement has ever established either firmly as such. We should also note that the Reformation coincided with the rise of the printing press, and that a significant dynamic in the spread of the denominations of Protestant leaders, as well as the creation of new denominations came from the translation, mass production, and mass distribution of Bibles. For some, then, these events might be regarded as a sequel to the deliberate establishment of the Bible that occurred with the writing of the New Testament by the early Apostles: first God pushed the Gospel message into writing, and then He ensured that as many people had access to it as possible. At this particular time, personal ownership of the Bible was discouraged by the Catholic Church, it was to be read, interpreted, and shared with only by those ordained to do so. We could add here the larger point that if this were the case, then the Bible takes a foundational role in the Church as God intended it, that would be- that the Bible was given specifically so it could be used as a source of doctrine and a check against false doctrine, perhaps to include historical facts.
   In both the Catholic and the Protestant case, these perspectives do not necessarily require that the Bible be seen as inerrant (the doctrine of sola scripture may be independent of Biblical Inerrancy, for example), but they do help explain the concern and to motivate why someone might think this is the case. My understanding is that some Fundamentalist rhetoric comes from notions such as these. Instances where this important emphasis does exist but the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy does not would involve inclusion about the role of the Holy Spirit in these instances as well. For instance, we might say, "it was only by the guidance of the Holy Spirit that the Catholic Church was established, and our consult of scripture should acknowledge that our spiritual roots therefore transcend scripture" or "the true substance of all the faithful, Christians of all denominations is not scripture, but the Holy Spirit, and accordingly, we look for the Holy Spirit to lead us even when scripture cannot." In which cases, we would be making a statement whereby an Infallibilist position would sound more reasonable, relatively speaking.
V
   We should now be in a better position to clarify what would count as a valid interpretation of the death of Judas according to both the Inerrantist and the Infallibilist viewpoints, and why. An Inerrantist might think something like this:
 It would seem that the information contained in the Matthew and Acts accounts of Judas' death each present historical information, therefore, historical information is intended for our comprehension by God via these two sources.
 If this historical information is intended for our comprehension by God, then the information cannot be erroneous, misleading, or imperfect in any way.
 If there exists historical information in one account that is contradictory to information in the other then one of those pieces of information must be false.
 Therefore, there must not exist any historical information in Acts that is contradictory to the historical information of Matthew (or vice versa) regarding the death of Judas in the case that the information presented in each account of Judas' death is historical.
Such analysis would only allow for something like interpretation 1 to be true, and the other interpretations would be unacceptable, unless, of course, there is some information in either Matthew or Acts (or elsewhere in the Bible) that indicates that either or both of these accounts not to be taken as accounts of historical fact (for certainly an Inerrantist would agree that some parts of the Bible don't present historical information, although all historical information in the Bible is free from error). An Infallibilist might think something like this:
 There exists information which God desires that we understand that has been placed in the Bible.
 Possibly some, but not necessarily all, parts of the Bible that contain historical statements contain information that is intended for us as historical.
 Any information desired for our understanding by God cannot be false at all.
 If there exists historical statements in one account that is contradictory to historical statements in the other and if these statements both contain information desired for our understanding by God as historical, then one of those pieces of information must be false.
 Therefore, there must not exist any historical statements in Acts that are contradictory to the historical statements of Matthew (or vice versa) if both of the statements contain historical information desired for our understanding by God, but there can exist historical statements in Acts that are contradictory to those of Matthew (and vice versa) if either of the statements do not contain historical information desired for our understanding by God.
Such analysis would allow interpretations 1 maybe 2 to be true, and interpretations 3, 4, 5 to be true if it were the case these accounts were not intended by God as sources of historical information. So it can be seen that the allowance of these other, non-literal, interpretations would hinge on a) whether or not there are any statements in the Bible that would indicate that either or both of the accounts are not intending to present historical statements (Inerrantist or Infallibilist), and b) whether or not God desired for us to draw historical information from these historical statements. I've done my very best to try to explain the distinction between those who read take the Bible literally and those who don't. Hopefully I've portrayed both viewpoints fairly. Please continue to ask me any other questions that come to your mind, and thank you for entrusting these questions to me. May God bless you and grant you peace.