Did Judas hang himself or fall? Matthew 27 vs Acts 1

The passages

And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

Matthew 27:5

And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.

Matthew 27:7

Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

Acts 1:18

And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.

Acts 1:19

The problem

There are three differences. The manner of death: hanging in Matthew, a headlong fall and rupture in Acts. The buyer of the field: the chief priests in Matthew, Judas in Acts. The reason for the name "Field of Blood": the price of blood paid for it in Matthew, Judas's gruesome death in Acts.

What believers and scholars say

Both happened. The traditional harmony is that Judas hanged himself, the rope or branch gave way, and the body fell and burst. This is possible, and it has the advantage of using both texts as written. It requires an unstated step, and some readers find it a bit tidy.

The priests bought it with his money. Under Jewish law, blood money could not go into the treasury (Matthew 27:6). The priests used it to buy the field, so it was legally his purchase in the sense that his money paid for it. This explanation is common and reasonable.

Independent traditions. Many historians think Matthew and Luke (author of Acts) each received a different story about the end of Judas. A second-century fragment attributed to Papias gives a third, even more gruesome, account. On this view the New Testament preserves two of several competing memories.

Where this leaves it

If you want the two to be compatible, the harmony is available and not absurd. If you read them as separate reports, you have two early Christian communities telling the story differently within a generation or two of the event. The disagreement is on a side issue, since neither account disputes the betrayal, but it is a good test of how much weight a reader puts on the Gospels as precise eyewitness history.