Wikipedia on Judas, read with caution: Judas is mentioned in the synoptic gospels, the Gospel of John and at the beginning of Acts of the Apostles. Mark states that the chief priests were looking for a sly way to arrest Jesus. They decided not to do so during the feast since they were afraid that people would riot; instead, they chose the night before the feast to arrest him. In the Gospel of Luke, Satan enters Judas at this time. According to the account in the Gospel of John, Judas carried the disciples' money bag.He betrayed Jesus for a bribe of "thirty pieces of silver" by identifying him with a kiss — "the kiss of Judas" — to arresting soldiers of the High Priest Caiaphas, who then turned Jesus over to Pontius Pilate's soldiers. Death There are a few descriptions of the death of Judas, two of which are included in the modern Biblical canon: Matthew 27:3--10 says that Judas returned the money to the priests and committed suicide by hanging himself. They used it to buy the potter's field. The Gospel account presents this as a fulfillment of prophecy. The Acts of the Apostles says that Judas used the money to buy a field, but fell headfirst, and burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. This field is called Akeldama or Field of Blood. The non-canonical Gospel of Judas says Judas had a vision of the disciples stoning and persecuting him. Another account was preserved by the early Christian leader, Papias: "Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out." In 1838, Joseph Smith, Jr. reportedly told his followers that, contrary to the narrative of the New Testament, Judas was actually hanged by Simon Peter in retribution for having betrayed Jesus. The existence of conflicting accounts of the death of Judas has caused problems for scholars who have seen them as threatening the reliability of Scripture. This problem was one of the points causing C. S. Lewis, for example, to reject the view "that every statement in Scripture must be historical truth". Various attempts at harmonization have been suggested, such as that of Augustine that Judas hanged himself in the field, and the rope eventually snapped and the fall burst his body open, or that the accounts of Acts and Matthew refer to two different transactions. Modern scholars tend to reject these approaches stating that the Matthew account is a midrashic exposition that allows the author to present the event as a fulfillment of prophetic passages from the Old Testament. They argue that the author adds imaginative details such as the thirty pieces of silver, and the fact that Judas hangs himself, to an earlier tradition about Judas' death. Matthew's description of the death as fulfilment of a prophecy "spoken through Jeremiah the prophet" has caused difficulties, since it does not clearly correspond to any known version of the Book of Jeremiah but does appear to refer to a story from the Book of Zechariah which describes the return of a payment of thirty pieces of silver. Even writers such as Jerome and John Calvin concluded that this was obviously an error. More recently, scholars have suggested that the Gospel writer may also have had a passage from Jeremiah in mind, such as chapters 18:1--4 and 19:1--13 which refers to a potter's jar and a burial place, and chapter 32:6--15 which refers to a burial place and an earthenware jar. Raymond Brown suggested, "the most plausible [explanation] is that Matthew 27:9--0 is presenting a mixed citation with words taken both from Zechariah and Jeremiah, and ...he refers to that combination by one name. Jeremiah 18--9 concerns a potter (18:2--; 19:1), a purchase (19:1), the Valley of Hinnom (where the Field of Blood is traditionally located, 19:2), 'innocent blood'(19:4), and the renaming of a place for burial (19:6, 11); and Jer 32:6--5 tells of the purchase of a field with silver." Randel Helms gives this as an example of the 'fictional and imaginative' use by early Christians of the Old Testament: "Matthew's source has blended Jeremiah's buying of a field and placing the deed in a pot with Zechariah's casting of thirty pieces of silver down in the temple and the purchase of the Potter's Field. The story of Judas's actions after the betrayal is one of the most revealing examples of the early Christians' fictional and imaginative use of the Old Testament as a book about Jesus. "
