Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (848 page)

^*
Vid. De Wette, in loc.

^†
In other parts of the N. T. also we find passages from this psalm messianically applied:

as v. 4, John xv. 25, v.
9; John ii. 17; and John xix. 28 f., probably v. 21.that they would let it lie waste as a land of blood; it is more probable that this name had another origin no longer to be discovered, and was interpreted by the Christians in accordance with their own ideas; so that we must not derive the application of the passage in the Psalms, and the naming of that waste piece of land, from an actual possession of it by Judas, but on the contrary, we must refer to those two causes the existence of the legend, which ascribes such a possession to Judas. For if the two psalms in question were once applied to the betrayer, and if in one of them the desolation of his
e
p
a
u
l
i
V
(LXX.) was denounced, he must have previously been in possession of such an
e
p
a
u
l
i
V
,
and this it was thought, he would probably have purchased with the reward of his treason. Or rather, that out of the above psalms the desolation of the
e
p
a
u
l
i
V
was a particular specially chosen, appears to have been founded on the natural presupposition, that the curse would be chiefly manifested in relation to something which he had acquired by the wages of his iniquity; added to the circumstance that among the objects anathematized in the psalm, the one most capable of being bought was the
e
p
a
u
l
i
V
.
This conception of the facts was met in the most felicitous manner by the
a
k
e
l
d
a
m
a
lying near Jerusalem, which, the less was known of the origin of its name and of the horror attached to it, might the more easily be applied by the primitive Christian legend to its own purposes, and regarded as the
desolate habitation,
e
p
a
u
l
i
V
h
r
h
m
w
m
e
n
h
,
of the betrayer.

Instead of these passages from the Psalms, the first gospel cites as being fulfilled by the last acts of Judas, a passage which it attributes to Jeremiah, but to which nothing corresponding is to be found except in Zech. xi. 12 f., whence it is now pretty generally admitted that the Evangelist substituted one name for the other by mistake.* How Matthew might be led by the fundamental idea of this passage- — an unreasonably small price for the speaker in the prophecy — to an application of it to the treachery of Judas, who for a paltry sum had as it were sold his master, has been already shown.
^†
Now the prophetic passage contains a command from Jehovah to the author of the prophecy, to cast the miserable sum with which he had been paid, into the house of the Lord, and also [
Heb. letters
]
el-hayyotser
, which, it is added, was done. The person who casts down the money is in the prophecy the same with the speaker, and consequently with him who is rated at the low price, because the sum here is not purchase money but hire, and hence is received by the person so meanly estimated, who alone can cast it away again: in the application of the Evangelist, on the contrary, the sum being considered as purchase money, another than the one so meanly estimated was to be thought of as receiving and casting away the sum. If the one sold for so paltry a price was Jesus: he who received the money and finally rejected it could be no other than his betrayer. Hence it is said of the latter, that
he cast down the pieces of silver
^*
Still for other conjectures see Kuinöl, in loc.

^†
§ 119.
in the temple
e
n
t
w
n
a
w
corresponding to the phrase [
Heb. letters
]
wa’ashliyk ‘otho
in the prophetic passage, although these very words happen to be absent from the extremely mutilated citation of Matthew. But in apposition to the [
Heb. letters
]
beyth yhowah
wherein the money was cast, there stood besides [
Heb. letters
]
el-hayyotser.
The LXX. translates:
e
i
V
t
o
c
w
v
e
u
t
h
r
i
o
n
, into the melting furnace;
now, it is with reason conjectured that the pointing should be altered thus:

and the word rendered:
into the treasury;
* the author of our gospel adhered to the literal translation by
k
e
r
a
m
e
u
V
potter.
But what the potter had to do here, — why the money should be given to him, must at first have been as incomprehensible to him as it is to us when we adhere to the common reading. Here however there occurred to his recollection the field of blood, to which, as we gather from the Acts, the Christian legend gave a relation to Judas, and hence resulted the welcome combination, that it was probably that field for which the thirty pieces of silver were to be given to the
potter.
As, however, it was impossible to conceive the potter as being in the temple when receiving the money, and yet according to the prophetic passage the pieces of silver were cast into the temple: a separation was made between the casting into the temple and the payment to the potter. If the former must be ascribed to Judas, if he had thus once cast away the money, he himself could no longer purchase the piece of ground from the potter, but this must be done by another party, with the money which Judas had cast away. Who this party must be followed of course: if Judas gave up the money, he would give it up to those from whom he had received it; if he cast it into the temple, it would fall into the hands of the rulers of the temple: thus in both ways it would revert to the Sanhedrim. The object of the latter in purchasing the ground was perhaps drawn from the use to which that waste place was actually appropriated. Lastly, if Judas cast away again the reward of his treachery, this, it must be inferred, could only be out of remorse. To make Judas manifest remorse, and thus win from the traitor himself a testimony to the innocence of Jesus, was as natural to the conception of the primitive Christian community, as to convert Pilate, and to make Tiberius himself propose in the Roman senate the deification of Christ,
^†
But how would the remorse of Judas further manifest itself? A return to the right on his part, was not only unattested by any facts, but was besides far too good a lot for the traitor: hence repentance must have become in him despair, and he must have chosen the end of the well-known traitor in the history of David,

^*
Hitzig, in Ullmann’s and Umbreit’s Studien, 1830, 1, s, 35; Gesenius, Wörterbuch comp. Rosenmüller’s Scholia in V. T. 7, 4, s. 320 ff
.

^†
Tertuli. Apologet. c.
xxi.
: Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse jam pro sua conscientia Christianus, Cæsari tum Tiberio nunciavit.
c. v
.
: Tiberius ergo, cujus tempore nomen Christianum in seculum introit, annunciatum sibi ex Syria Palæstina, quod illic veritatem illius Divinitatis revelaverat, detulit ad Senatum cum prærogativa suffragii sui. Senatus, quia non ipse probaverat, respuit.
For further details on this subject, see Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N.
T. s,p. 214 ff.,
298
ff
.;
comp. 2, p. 505.Ahithophel, of whom it is said, 2
Sam. xvii.
23:
a
n
e
s
t
h
k
a
i
a
p
h
l
q
e
n
—
k
a
i
a
p
h
g
x
a
t
o
, he arose, and went — and hanged himself
as of Judas here:
a
n
e
c
q
r
h
s
e
k
a
i
a
p
e
l
q
w
n
a
p
h
g
x
a
t
o
, he departed, and went and hanged himself.

A tradition referred to Papias appears to be allied to the narrative in the Acts rather than to that of Matthew. (Ecumenius, quoting the above collector of traditions, says, that Judas, as an awful example of impiety, had his body distended to such a degree, that a space where a chariot could pass was no longer sufficiently wide for him, and that at last being crushed by a chariot, he burst asunder and all his bowels were pressed out.* The latter statement doubtless arose from a misconstruction of the ancient legend; for the chariot was not originally brought into immediate contact with the body of Judas, but was merely used as a measure of his size, and this was afterwards erroneously understood as if a chariot in passing had crushed the swollen body of Judas. Hence, not only in Theophylact and in an ancient
Scholium.
^†
without any distinct reference to Papias, but also in a
Catena
with an express citation of his
e
x
h
g
h
s
e
i
V
,
we actually find the fact narrated without that addition.
^‡
The monstrous swelling of Judas, spoken of in this passage, might, it is supposed, originally he only an explanation of the displacing and protrusion of the viscera, and in like manner the dropsy into which Theophylact represents him as falling might be regarded as an explanation of this swelling: when, however, in Ps. cix., applied in the Acts to Judas, amongst other maledictions, we read: [
Heb. letters
]
watabo’ (qalalah) kammayim bqirbo
LXX:
e
i
s
h
l
q
e
n
(
h
k
a
t
a
r
a
)
w
s
e
i
u
d
w
r
e
i
V
t
a
e
g
k
a
t
a
a
u
t
o
u
,
so let it (cursing) come into his bowels like water
(v. 18): it appears possible that the
dropsical disease,
n
o
s
o
V
u
d
e
r
i
k
h
)
,
may have been also taken from this passage; as also one of the features in the monstrous description which Papias gives of the condition of Judas, namely, that from the enormous swelling of his eyelids he could no longer see the light of day, might remind us of