I realize that this is a very minor point in the debates that have been going on here lately, but I wanted to address it, for some reason.

The supposedly contradictory accounts of Judas's death and the Field of Blood from Matthew 27:3-10 and Acts 1:18-19 are a typical example of an argument against the concept of a divinely inspired Bible. I find, though, that a lot of these arguments are poor, because they can quite readily be explained by a simple case of omission of detail.

I would like to start with an example of omission in a more neutral context. I have taken quotes from two posts and compared them.

From http://www.rinkworks.com/rinkforum/view.cgi?post=52885:

Gahalia then plied us with Junior mints, which I can only describe as a compressed After Eight mint. Which also means very delicious. I was reminded to buy Flake for Elly and Sosi for the RU this year.

From http://www.rinkworks.com/rinkforum/view.cgi?post=52883:

We exchanged traditional sweets, Gahalia giving us some stange things that claimed to be smarties, but weren't even slightly chocolaty. We bought Jaffa cakes and Fruit Pastilles. I think the Americans got the better half of the deal.

These two quotes, if taken as complete, are clearly contradictory; in one, Gahalia provided Junior Mints, and in the other, she provided Smarties. One could say that Gahalia could have provided more than just Smarties in the second quote, as it says "sweets were distributed", but the implication as it is written is that Gahalia gave only Smarties. If, however, we look at a third post, http://www.rinkworks.com/rinkforum/view.cgi?post=52882:

Sweets were distributed, including weird sugar-based Smarties. We responded by buying a round of 99s and then raided Tescos for Fruit Pastilles, Polos, real Smarties, and the elusive Cake of Jaffa. wm's smashing-orangey-bit radar helped a lot there.

We see here that the Smarties are mentioned specifically, but not attributed to Gahalia. The wording of this certainly leaves room for the Junior Mints.

I do realize that the scale and importance of the two examples I am comparing are vastly different. My point is simply that a difference in two different accounts of an event can come from a different emphasis in the author's mind on what was important, and that without a directly contradictory statement (like Gahalia provided ONLY Junior Mints) it is not arguable that two different accounts are contradictory.

The full version of the story that I have heard for Judas' death is that he died, either by hanging (as we mean in a modern context) or impaling (a practice referred to in Joshua as "hanging" in a time and place that the practice which we now call hanging was not in use). In the former case, it is generally taken that Acts 1:18 refers to when Judas' body was cut down or fell through decay; in the latter, it would have been a natural consequence of his chosen method of suicide.

Another issue raised is that of who purchased the field. Matthew 27:7 says that the priests decided to use the money to buy the potter's field, while Acts 1:18 says that Judas bought the field. Both accounts say that it was the 30 silver coins paid to Judas that were used to buy the field.

Matthew 27:6 talks about why the priests did not accept the return of the money; it was blood money. Since they didn't accept the money back, one could very well say that the money was still Judas's, and that he bought the field through the priests. I know it is stretching things, but I can't say for sure what the traditions of the times were, or what Luke meant when he was writing Acts.

As for how the field was named, there isn't even a dispute. Both passages use a pronoun to refer to the events just described as the reason for the choice of the name. Whether these events are the purchasing of the field with blood money or the messy end of Judas's corpse or both doesn't really matter.

I know that some would argue that my rationalizations for the consistency of these events are improbable. I disagree. Acts was apparently written by Luke, a very well-educated and intelligent man who wrote with a large vocabulary, careful word choice, and precise detail. He obviously believed in what he was writing, and based on the dating of the various manuscripts, it is very likely that he had read Matthew before writing Acts. I very much doubt that he would have written something that contradicted Matthew; more likely, he simply focused on the details that he thought were more important, just as Beasty wrote about the Junior Mints (which he liked) while wintermute and Matthew wrote about the Smarties (which they didn't).

Having said all of this, I have no doubts that Dave's choice of this particular (apparent) inconsistency was a matter of convenience, not a matter of it being the only inconsistency that he had ever heard about. While I agree that the burden of proof should fall upon the believer in a case such as this, I would like to ask: If no inconsistencies could be proven in the Bible, would it be fair to say that accepting the Bible as divinely inspired would be comparable to not accepting it, in terms of the reasoning process? Each side takes a basic hypothesis, but neither side can provide logical proof for their belief (that I know of, in any case). I'm asking this as a point of intellectual curiosity, mainly.

Don "Apologies to wintermute, Beasty, and Matthew for the gratuitous use of their work" Monkey