Did Judas hang himself or did he fall headlong?

5 throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he[Judas] departed, and he went and hanged himself.

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18 Now this man [Judas] acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.

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Judas hanged himself in the potter’s field (Matthew 27:5), and that is how he died. Then, after his body had begun to decay and bloat, the rope broke, or the branch of the tree he was using broke, and his body fell, bursting open on the land of the potter’s field (Acts 1:18–19). Note that Luke does not say that Judas died from the fall, only that his body fell. The Acts passage presumes Judas’s hanging, as a man falling down in a field does not normally result in his body bursting open. Only decomposition and a fall from a height could cause a body to burst open. So Matthew mentions the actual cause of death, and Luke focuses more on the horror surrounding it.

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