5. The question has often been agitated whether Judas was present at the first celebration of the Lord's supper, or left the assembly before the institution actually took place ; but with no very decisive result. The conclusion reached on either side has very commonly been deter- mined by doctrinal prepossessions rather than by exe- getical principles. The general consensus of patristic commentators gives an affirmative to the question of his partaking of the commemorative meal, that of modern critics a negative answer (comp. Meyer, Comm. on John xiii, 36). Of the three synoptic evangelists, Matthew and Mark represent the charge of an intention to betraj' on the part of Judas as being brought against him be- tween the paschal feast and tlie supper, while Luke does not mention it till both feasts were finished ; yet none of them say precisely when he left the chamber. From this surely it may be inferred that nothing very mate- rial depended on the circumstance. If Judas did leave before the commencement of the supper, it was plainly not because he was formally excluded, but because he felt it to be morally impossible to continue any longer in such company. As, however, it seems certain, from John xiii, 30, that he left the moment Jesus brought home the charge to him, and gave him the sop, and as it is next to certain that the feast then proceeding was not that of the supper, the probabilities of the case must be held to be on the side of his previous withdrawal. The requisitions of time, too, favor the same view ; since, if Judas did not leave till so late as the close of both fecstSj it is scarcely possible to conceive how he should
have had time to arrange with the chief priests for pro- ceeding with the an-est of Jesus that very night. The matter in this shape came alike on him and on them by surprise; fresh consultations, therefore, required to be held, fresh measures to be adopted ; and these necessari- ly demanded time, to the extent at least of some hours.
G. A Ikyed Discrepancy as to the Afode of Judas's Suicide. — We have in Acts i another account than the above of the circumstances of his death, which some have thought it difficult to harmonize with that given by IVIatthew. There, in words which may have been spoken by Peter (Meyer, following the general consensus of interpreters), or may have been a parenthetical notice inserted by Luke (Calvin, Olshausen, and others), it is stated,
(1) That, instead of throwing the money into the Temple, he bought (t/cr;';(Toro) a field with it. As to this point, it has been said that there is a kind of irony in Peter's words, " This was aU he got." A better ex- planation is, that what was bought with his money is spoken of as bought by him (]Meyer, ad loc).
("2) That, instead of hanging himself, " falling head- long, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out." On this we have two methods of recon- ciliation: (n) That cnrtiy^a-o, in Jlatt. xxvii, 5, in- cludes death by some sudden spasm of suffocation (an- fjina pectoris^), such as might be caused by the over- powering misery of his remorse, and that then came the fall described in the Acts (Suicer, Thes. s. v. aTia-yx^ ! Grotius, Hammond, Lightfoot, and others). By some this has even been connected with the name Iscariot, as implying a constitutional tendency to this disease (Gill). (b) That the work of suicide was but half accomplished, and that, the halter breaking, he feU (from a fig-tree, in one tradition) across the road, and was mangled and crushed by the carts and wagons that passed over him. This explanation appears, with strange and horrible ex- aggerations, in the narrative of Papias, quoted by (Ecu- menius on Acts i, and in Thcophylact. on Matt, xxvii. It is, however, but a reasonable sujiposition that (Ju- das being i)erha])S a corpulent man), the rope breaking or slijiping, he fell (probably from some elevated place, see Hackett, Illn.<tra. of Script, p. 2GG) with such vio- lence that his abdomen burst with the fall.
(3) That for this reason, and not because the priests had bought it with the price of blood, the field was call- ed Aceldama. But it may readily be supposed that the potter's field which the priests had bought was the same as that in which the traitor met so terrible a death.
See ACKLDAMA.
7. On the question of Judas's final salvation, it is dif- ficult to see how any dispute could well arise in view of his self-murder (comp. 1 John iii, 15). But aside from this, two statements seem to mark his fate in the other world as distinctly a reprobate one.
(1.) His unmitigated remorse, as expressed in Matt, xxvii, 5. This passage has often been appealed to as illustrating the difference between jxiTaytXda and juto- voia. It is questionable, however, how far the X.-Test. writers recognise that distinction (compare Grotius, ad loc). StiU more questionable is the notion that Mat- thew describes his disappointment at a result so differ- ent from that which he had reckoned on. Yet this is nevertheless clearly an instance of '• the sorrow of the world that worketh death" (2 Cor. vii, 10). See Re- pentance.