In his debate with Peter Williams, Bart Ehrman said (48 min. mark):
I would like to know a single case in history where somebody was hanged and he died by going head first and his gusts opened up:
1. Ehrman has a simplistic notion regarding the role of evidence in historical reconstruction. Our evidence for ancient history is fragmentary. As a result, modern historians make educated guesses to fill the gaps. Imagine a modern historian trying to write a history of ancient Greece, Roman, or Egypt if he confined himself to direct evidence. That's not possible. The surviving records are too fragmentary. So when scholars reconstruct history, they must use their imagination to postulate scenarios that bridge the lacuna. They should, of course, admit that these are educated guesses. But there's nothing special about what Bible scholars do in that regard.
2. Matthew doesn't say where Judas hanged himself. Acts doesn't say where Judas hanged himself. It indicates where he landed. All it says (in Greek) is that:
He acquired a field from the reward of unrighteousness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his guts spilled out.
He may well have hanged himself in a different location above the Field of Blood, then his falling corpse landed in the Field of Blood. For instance, Mount Olivet has an elevation of 2684 feet while the adjacent peak (Mount Scopus) has an elevation of 2710 feet. If, say, he hanged himself on the branch of an olive tree high on the hillside of Mount Olivet, it's easy to imagine the falling body splattering over the field when it hit the ground.
It's possible that the tree was dislodged by seismic activity (Mt 27:51; 28:2).
It's possible that the tree was dislodged by seismic activity (Mt 27:51; 28:2).
I remember reading Gleason Archer's book on bible difficulties decades ago; he makes this point that the topography could have easily allowed for this depending on where Judas hanged himself. Unfortunately, Ehrman is too busy with trying to align himself with what "everyone thinks" and name-drop than to justify his crucial assumption that Judas hanged not far above the ground.
ReplyDeleteThis is a quote from an article on decomposition:
ReplyDelete"Eventually, the gases and liquefied tissues purge from the body, usually leaking from the anus and other orifices, and often also from ripped skin in other parts of the body. Sometimes, the pressure is so great that the abdomen bursts open." https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death
So decomposition itself can cause the abdomen to rupture. Even a short fall could either trigger or exacerbate this. This seems to be yet another case where Ehrman has not done his research properly. A bit like when he confidently declared that Jesus would not have been buried.
Good quotation!
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DeleteModern Jews don't use embalming fluid and try their best to keep the body intact without the mutilation of autopsies etc. Because of that, bodies decay more rapidly, and that's why they don't have open caskets. Presumably something similar was the case during the 1st century. In which case, they might have had methods of keeping abdomens bursting in public for all to see. If not, then maybe they prevented that from happening by just burying their dead quickly.
ReplyDeleteLuke's mentioning of Judas' bursting abdomen might be a way of emphasizing that Judas died the ignoble death of not being quickly buried by loved ones. Instead, his death went unnoticed long enough for his abdomen to burst open.
Also, does Ehrman think that Luke believed Judas fell from a standing or running position on a flat surface and his guts burst open? As YouTube "documents", people fall flat on their faces all the time and that never happens. If Ehrman says there might have been rocks on the flat ground that cut him open, then he would be using ad hoc imagination himself [which he denounces in Christians] because none of that is in Luke's account.
Luke doesn't specifically state that Judas' demise was a case of divine judgment. Even if it were, nothing in Luke's account suggests it was directly supernatural. So, Ehrman would seem to have to explain how doing a belly flop on the ground from a standing/running position would naturally [as opposed to supernaturally] cause a man's belly to burst open. It's more natural to think that that happened because some unnatural height was involved. Which is compatible with a hanging.
If Judas just died and slumped to the ground, or died while sleeping on the ground and his body burst open days later due to decomposition, then there would have been no point in Luke saying he fell headlong. The way Luke phrases it, it implies a connection between the falling and the bursting. Which again implies some abnormal height beyond the height of merely standing up.