Judas' Death

[Didacus]

I can imagine Head-Long being symbolic in the sense that he willingly flung himself to his death - does any know the original text in latin and can verify translation?

Its the potter's field thing that confuses me a little. I can imagine he bougt (or forwarded the fund for the purchase of) the potter's field, then repented (in a matter of speaking) and returned 30 'different' pieces of silver to the temple.



Finally, the spirit behind the word is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but the words themselves are written by human in their imperfections.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' post='1180090' date='Jan 30 2007, 01:48 AM']
It doesn't matter. The Bible was not written to be a history book, a science text, nor a play by play biopic...it contains all the Truths necessary for our salvation.

Hanged, fell, whatever. The point is that Judas was so overcome with grief and remorse over what he had done, he was driven mad and took his own life. The manner of the taking is tertiary at best.

Always remember that the Gospels were not written from firsthand accounts (except maybe John), but from oral tradition. Sometimes the details may differ because of the background of the writer, the audience, or the intent of the writer. What never changes is the Truth inherent in the holy inspired Word of God. Concentrate on the Truth contained therein, not the literal words.

Sidenote: Good thing for fundys that the phrase 'it was raining cats and dogs' was not used by Paul...it would give 'em fits fitting THAT into Sola Scriptura
[/quote]
While I know your intentions here are good, parts of this post unfortunately seem to be flirting with some modernistic ideas about the Gospels.

While it is true that one should not become overly worried about ervery individual word, as the God used the human authors to tell the story each in their own way, we musn't assume that the events recounted in the Gospels were not in fact historically literally true.

While it's not totally clear what your trying to say here, the idea that what is literally stated in the Gospels is not important, but rather the spiritual truth they convey, can lead to a watering down of Gospel truth commonly found in Modernist interpretations.

The Gospels all too often become seen as mere fables or poetic metaphors for some supposed "spiritual" truth (often vague), which is often divorced from historical reality.
("It doesn't really matter if Christ really literally rose from the dead or not - what matters is that life has meaning which transcends physical death," or similar statements. This kind of thinking is actually quite common in "liberal Christian" circles.)

And the idea that the Gospels were written down much later from oral tradition, while it has become Modernist "orthodoxy," has no solid backing, and is contradicted by both the tradition of the Church and by recent archaelogical evidence (findings of fragments of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark dated well within the first century).

Matthew was a disciple of Christ and eye-witness, as was John (the "beloved disciple") who wrote the last Gospel in his old age (as testified in the Gospel itself). Mark was a disciple of Paul, who met likely Peter and other eye-witness Apostles of Christ. His Gospel likely used Matthew's as a source (contrary to modernist theory which claims the opposite). Luke also was likely in contact with eyewitnesses (which there is reason to beleive, as tradition teaches, included the Blessed Virgin).

Here's a good article on the subject:

[url="http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1994/9403fea1.asp"][i]THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOSPELS[/i], By BERNARD ORCHARD, O.S.B. [/url]