@article{ref1,
title="The death of Judas in Matthew: Matthew 27:9 reconsidered",
journal="Journal of Biblical Literature",
year="2018",
author="Hamilton, C.S.",
volume="137",
number="2",
pages="419-437",
abstract="The account of Judas's death in Matthew's Gospel yields opposite readings. In the traditional reading, Judas's death is damning: his suicide enacts his self-exclusion from the salvation promised in Jesus. More recently, scholars have sought to rehabilitate Judas. Far from cementing his condemnation, Judas's death is a sign of his repentance, even heroism, and points toward redemption. Matthew's use of Scripture is, I propose, illuminating for the debate. Matthew 27:9 applies to the episode a quotation from Zechariah attributed (famously) to Jeremiah. Scholarly attention has focused on the problem of (mis)attribution. I argue, rather, that the &quot;mistake&quot; is useful: in calling up both Zech 11 and Jeremiah, Matthew sets the death of Judas within a particular scriptural history. A close reading of Jer 19 together with Zech 11 reveals a dense interweaving of vocabulary and themes, an intertextuality that informs Matt 27. Themes of innocent blood and defilement emerge in all three, and Judas's problematic &quot;repentance&quot; finds in LXX Zechariah's use of 'Greek passage' a precursor that opens up the debate. Against this scriptural background, Judas's death unfolds as a story not of one man only but of a people and a land, a story set within Israel's larger story in which both devastation and hope-indeed restoration-may, in the blood of Jesus, be true. © 2018 Society of Biblical Literature. All rights reserved.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0021-9231",
doi="10.15699/jbl.1372.2018.188412",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1372.2018.188412"
}