Christian fundamentalists talk of infallibility in a way that makes a problem for modern-day Christians. For example, Matthew 27:3-10 vs Acts 1:18-19 obviously contradict. Your response?

Posted on May 12, 2026 by Dr. John Oakes wrote in Anthropology, General, Supposed Inconsistencies in the Bible.

Editor’s Note. There is a follow-up question and follow-up answer below

Question:

Christian Fundamentalist church leaders have put the stamp of inerrant, infallible, perfect Divine Revelation on every last word of the entire collection of the Bible. This may have been necessary in the past in order to maintain Church discipline and to put down heresies, but it places modern day Christians in a bit of a bind because the Bible really and truly does have dozens of obvious minor difficulties and trivial discrepancies in its details. Note: For example, compare Matthew 27:3-10 with Acts 1:18-19 regarding the final fate of Judas Iscariot. These two accounts are materially different.
What’s your response?

Answer:

First of all, I agree that Christian fundamentalists have had a tendency to apply the idea of inerrancy in ways which are at times difficult to defend. Simplistic ideas of inerrancy have, at times, painted believers into a corner. There has been a tendency to over-literalize, especially when using apocalyptic texts such as Revelation and Zechariah. There has been the tendency to use Genesis as a scientific text, when it was not the intention of the authors of Genesis to write a scientific treatise. There has been the tendency of some fundamentalists to sweep under the rug issues such as textual variants, and interpolations (later additions). Another issue that Fundamentalists have created for us is their lack of understanding of the importance of genre in interpretation. For example, when David said “Against you, you only have I sinned,” he writing a poem expressing his emotion and is speaking in hyperbole. Technically, what he said there is not literally true! David sinned against Uriah and against Bathseeba. There are many difficulties in defending a wooden definition of infallibility, which Christians ought to be aware of and to be prepared to correct and even, in some cases, to defend against.

Having said that, however, I believe that there are no bona fide contradictions in the Bible. I have spent hundreds of hours tracking down many dozens of claims of inherent biblical contradictions, and I have found there to be no true contradictions. Literally, none. If you go to my website, and look in the “Supposed inconsistencies” section of the Q & A’s you will find hundreds of articles in which I carefully and systematically defend the Scripture against claims of contradictions. One principle I use there is that the benefit of the doubt should ALWAYS be given to the possible lack of contradiction. An apparent contradiction is not necessarily a true contradiction. For example, I have told some people that I was born in Fairfield, Connecticut. I have told other people that I was born in Norwalk, Connecticut. Both are true! I lived in Fairfield when I was born, but the actual birth took place in a hospital in near-by Norwalk. We do not always resolve all possible seeming contradictions in all of our statements. This is completely normal in human communication. Applying this basic concept, there is no contradiction between Matthew 27:3-10 with Acts 1:18-19. In fact, I have already responded to this claimed contradiction. Also, I have published a book in which I address many of the most common false claims of contradiction in the Bible in my book, “Field Manual of Christian Apologetics,” available at www.ipibook.com I am copying and pasting below:

Question:

I have found seemingly two different versions of Judas Iscariot’s death.

Version 1 in Matthew 27:3-6 NIV Judas Hangs Himself When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. 4 “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.” “What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.” 5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. Version 2 in Acts 1:18-19 NIV 18 With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.

I found that Luke and Matthew say different things about Judas’ death. Is this only a figure of speech? Your thoughts Dr. Oakes?

Answer:

The two accounts are readily seen to not be in contradiction. Apparently, Judas hanged himself (Matt 27:5). After his dead body hung for an undisclosed amount of time, his body was cut down. When it hit the ground it burst open and all his intestines spilled out (Acts 1:18). There is no contradiction between these two accounts. In fact, as is so often the case, the one passage explains the other, and the two in combination make more sense than either alone. Matthew 27:5 explains Acts 1:18. Normally, when bodies fall they do not split open, but the body of a person who has hanged himself and hung for a significant amount of time is far more likely to split open, as the body would swell significantly with time. The two Bible accounts simply supply different, but non-contradictory details. Either way, karma certainly had nothing to do with it. If a skeptic tries to point out a contradiction, you should give him this explanation (that he hanged himself and that his body split open when he was cut down).

John Oakes

Second Question:

Thank you very much for your response. It catches me completely by surprise because I did not actually put the question to you. I have an online article on the Koran and Islam which has generated many responses from Muslims over the years. The ‘question” put to you (most likely by one of the Muslims with whom I am in correspondence) is actually a ‘cut and paste’ snippet from my article at The Islamic Koran (Qur’an), the Jewish Torah and the Biblical Gospel.

The Islamic Koran (Qur’an), the Jewish Torah and the Biblical Gospel.

Brian Bloedel

An article that examines the Koran (Qur’an) according to Allah’s own claims and promises as it relates to Islam,…

Since there is no ‘cc’, this Muslim will not benefit from your excellent response.

If I may, I would like to clarify my statement regarding the fate of Judas. I was not suggesting conflictive contradiction but that the two accounts are significantly at variance in their details. In Matthew, Judas throws the silver coins back into the Temple and goes out to hang himself—presumably at the nearest convenient tree. There is no mention of buying property or his intestines spilling out, and no further information is given.

The normally detail-driven Dr. Luke is surprisingly spare in his account. Judas obviously kept the money received from betraying Jesus and bought the property with that ill-gotten money. As written, it is just as obvious that Judas was strolling his new property, tripped, his intestines spilled out, and Judas died on the spot from that medically bizarre event. There is no hint of Judas hanged from a tree in suicide.

From the point of view of a skeptic, do you see the problem here? Had either Matthew or Dr. Luke given the full story, then the lack of detail in the other account would be understandable and excusable. As written, however, these two accounts raise serious concerns in the minds of those who are doubtful of, or outright hostile, to the Bible.

Your explanation is almost certainly correct in fact and reality, but the variance in details in these two accounts is troubling, especially that of Dr. Luke.

Second Answer:

I believe you are making an incorrect assumption here, which is that Judas bought the field. It is very difficult to imagine why Judas would buy a potter’s field–especially at this traumatic moment in his life. But, speculation aside, we have the statement in Matthew about what happened to the money in Matthew 27:5-8. Judas threw the money into the temple–clearly NOT keeping it for himself! Then, the chief priests (not Judas) took the money and, because it was blood money, and could not be put into the temple coffers, used it to buy the potter’s field.

Of course, there is the mention in Acts 1:18, in a parenthetical comment by Luke that Judas bought the field. But, when I looked at the Greek interlinear, it is less clear that it is saying that Judas literally bought the field. It says, literally, “the man indeed then acquired a field out of the reward of unrighteousness.” There is no mention that the man who bought the field is Judas. That is the interpretation of some translators, but Judas’ name is not used in the sentence. The possible meaning here is that the money from the betrayal was used by someone not named by Luke, and that Judas fell headlong into this field. It is quite reasonable to imagine Judas, in his great grief for having betrayed his master to death, chose to take his life in the very field bought with the blood money by the teachers of the Law. I looked at more than a dozen translations of Acts 1:18 and only three of them mention that it was Judas who bought the field, but this is not a translation but an interpretation. In fact, all of the more literal translations do NOT mention Judas as the one who bought the field for the simple reason that his name is not anywhere in the text. If all I had was Acts 1:18-19, I would probably conclude that Judas bought the field his body fell into, but if I read Matthew 27, I realize that this is not the case.

For this reason, your speculation that Judas hung himself in the field he had bought is very likely incorrect. Tripping and falling is fantastically unlikely to produce the result of intestines falling out. I challenge anyone to produce a single example of this ever happening! However, the falling to earth of a dead and swollen body is far more likely to produce the grisly result described by Luke.

Does the Bible specifically state the string of events I propose? No it does not, but if we allow some very reasonable consideration of the related facts (the hanging and the split-open body), the proposal that the two accounts are consistent is very reasonable one, and it produces no reason to question either account at all. I believe that is the skeptic who must produce a more believable explanation of the split-open body than the one which is suggested by Matthew’s account. Your proposal that he simply tripped and fell seems to me to be highly unlikely, even if we ignore the details provided to us by Matthew. Again, I see no need for Christians to defend the two accounts to a skeptic. In fact, like I said, Matthew provides a perfectly reasonable explanation of Acts.

You say that the stories are “at variance in their details.” If I were to tell you what I did this morning, and later to tell you what I did this afternoon, of course, there would be variance in the details. But that is because they are descriptions of two things which happened in succession. Such is the case with Matthew 27 and Acts 1. The variance in details you mention is simply because Matthew told us what happened first, and Luke is telling us what happened second. We do not need to “explain” why the two authors chose to mention different details. They just did! Matthew chose not to mention the split-open body, and Luke chose not to mention the suicide. Perhaps they had slightly different purposes in what they chose to mention. I recall events to friends all the time, but I never tell them all the details. The details I choose to mention vary according to what I am trying to achieve with my story. Again, there is no contradiction at all! Full stop. This is a classic case of an apparent contradiction which is removed by simply asking how both could be true. When we do, we get a consistent and sensible account of what happened.

John Oakes