Acts 1:12-26
Last week we as began our study of the Acts we learned that it contains a history of how the Christian church got its start. We also learned that the history recorded for us in Acts is very well established as accurate, so accurate that stories are often told of historians being converted merely by studying the book of Acts alone. This week we will be turning our attention back to the eleven disciples that we previously followed through the Gospel of John.
Our study this week picks up right after Jesus has ascended back to his throne, and the very first group of Christians is heading back to Jerusalem. The text tells they traveled a “Sabbath’s day journey,” and then went into the upper room of some house. The expression “Sabbath’s day journey” refers to a distance of a little more then a half mile, which was as far as a Jew was allowed to travel on the Sabbath.
The group we see here, while made up of the same men and woman, is a radically different group of people then we saw in our study of the Gospel of John. When we saw this group in the Gospels they were constantly looking to see how they could use their closeness to Christ to get better positions over each other (for an example see Mark 9:33) and right after the death of Christ they were hiding from the Jews behind locked doors. This not a group that one would expect to be world changers, and yet that is exactly what Jesus was planning them to be.
Now after the ascension of Jesus, this changes dramatically. They came out of their hiding and were continually in the temple worshiping and praising Jesus (Luke 24:52). We also read of them coming together for prayer in this private upper room, and later will read that they were of one mind. The group now has a unity and courage that defies all comparison to their previous selves. This was not some slow and gradual growing process, this change came upon them very quickly.
In Luke 24:45 we can see the reason for this change. There we read that Jesus opened their minds to the scripture. This would have allowed them to see all the fulfilled prophecy in Jesus coming, death and resurrection and that gave them the confidence to throw off their fear and selfish desires for rank. This same understanding is what gave Peter the insight to interpret the Old Testament scriptures and understand that someone need to replace Judas, the traitor. (Acts 1:20)
It is in this section that we run head long in to a common complaint of non-Christians about the Bible. That is, they claim the Bible is full of contradictions. The interesting thing about those who have in my presence made that claim have never been able to name even one. See most people have not actually read the Bible, nor researched out the claims of those that say there are contradictions, so much so that when pressed on it the best that they can claim is “they say that there are umpteen thousand contradictions…” and can not even point to one.
The truth is that there are definitely, with out question, some contradictions in the counts of people and armies in the Old Testament. In addition there are some passages that on first pass often sound like clear contradictions. There are also some passages that we believe were added or removed from the text over the generations. It is because of this that there is an entire field of study developed around locating and fixing these kinds of problems. None of this takes away from the Bible as the word of God, and none of it makes it unreliable for Christians to model their life after.
The problems with the counts can be attributed primarily to errors it the coping and recording of the numbers. The verses that were added and removed often fall in to the same situation. Keep in mind that some of the text of the Bible was written three and four thousand years ago, and while it has been remarkably well persevered over all that time, far better then any other text in all of history, some known errors have crept in.
Some would use this to attack the Bible, but the interesting thing about these errors is that even if all of them completely removed from the Bible would not change any major theology or doctrine. In other words all of the errors are in non-critical parts of the Bible, such as the counts of David’s census. Think about it this way, does it really matter how many people where in David’s kingdom? Does it affect your life today? Of course not, however David’s great several times over grandson Jesus died to save you, and that does matter.
When those trivial cases are set aside it becomes apparent there are no real contradictions anywhere in the Bible. We do however still have the cases where text only appears to be in conflict, such as our current verse. In Matthew 27:5 we have recorded for us that Judas “went and hanged himself.” Here in Acts 1:18 it says “he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out.” While that sounds like two different accounts of his death, there really is not enough information recorded to determine how he died. When Matthew says, “went and hanged himself” we assume he got a rope, tied it around his neck and hung himself from a tree, and died. That is a modern day assumption, and not found in the text. A careful reading of Matthew will make it apparent that the text does not even claim he died as a result of hanging himself. Again that is something we assume happened and add to the text but is not there.
One option is that he could have planted a spear or sword in the ground, threw himself on it. That would fit both descriptions well if you allow yourself to open your mind to “hanging on a spear” to be a way to commit suicide. Before you say that is a stretch, turn to 1 Sam 31:4-5 and read how Saul commits suicide.
Another possible explanation given in many commentaries is that he did hang himself as modern people think of the term, and then fell when the rope or branch broke and either burst from dissention or landed on a farm implement which split him open and that also fits both descriptions well.
A third option that I have seen detailed out is that he went to hang himself, and for some reason was either not able to do it, changed his mind or failed. Then he killed himself, or even was murdered in such a way as to fit the description in Acts.
All three of the above options fit the text. The point is that there is simply is not enough information given in the text to know how Judas died, never mind enough to cause a contradiction. It is only when we add our modern assumptions to the text that we come up with something that looks like a contradiction.
Obviously I am only dealing with one such issue here, and there are many other texts that fall in to this same case where a modern day reader of their native language translation thinks they find a contradiction but careful logical analyses always dispels it. Where the problem usually comes in is that people in general seem to accept any claim against the Bible as true with out checking into it themselves. This seems to be true even of Christians who end up having their faith in the Bible weakened by all kinds of falsehoods the world throws at them. Christians can shield themselves from these falsehoods merely by spending time some reading the Bible, and further more prayerfully studying it. If they do not, they are easy pray for Internet forums, websites, and other anti-Christian propaganda that claim all kinds of wild things about the Bible.
So where does this leave us? It leaves us with the clear need for careful study of the Bible. If you have not yet read the Bible from cover to cover, I encourage you to approach it as you would a novel, and just start reading. You need this first pass to help see the big picture themes. Once you have completed that, you should then go back and re read it and start filling in the details through slow careful study.
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