Acts 1:18

Acts 1:18 prhnh.j geno,menoj

The enigmatic prhnh.j geno,menoj (literally “having become prone”; AV, ASV, and RSV “falling headlong,” NEB “fell forward on the ground”) is interpreted variously in the early versions.

(1) The Latin versions attempt to harmonize the account in Acts with the statement in Matthew that Judas “went out and hanged himself” ( Matthew 27:5). The Old Latin version current in North Africa, according to a quotation by Augustine in his contra Felicem, i:4, seems to have read collum sibi alligavit et deiectus in faciem diruptus est medius, et effusa sunt omnia viscera eius (“he bound himself around the neck and, having fallen on his face, burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out”). On the basis of this sole patristic witness Blass introduced kai. kate,dhsen auvtou/ to.n tra,chlon into his edition of the Roman form of the Acts, and Clark inserted the line kai. to.n tra,chlon kate,dhsen auvtou/ into his stichometric edition of Acts. Jerome, who may have known this rendering, reads in the Vulgate suspensus crepuit medius et diffusa sunt omnia viscera eius (“being hanged, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out”).

(2) A different tradition is represented in the Armenian version and the Old Gregorian version; these describe Judas’s end thus: “Being swollen up he burst asunder and all his bowels gushed out.” What the Greek may have been from which this rendering was made is problematical. Papias, who according to tradition was a disciple of the apostle John, described Judas’s death with the word prhsqei,j (from Epic prh,qein, to swell out by blowing). ⁶⁰

According to a conjecture of Eberhard Nestle, who compares Numbers 5:21-27, the word that stood originally in Acts 1:18 was either prhsqei,j or peprhsme,noj. ⁶¹

It has also been argued ⁶² that prhnh,j, besides its common meaning “prone,” had a medical meaning “swollen”; but the evidence for this specialized significance is disputed.

⁶⁰ Papias’s work, Exegeses of the Lord’s Oracles, is extant only in fragments; the text of this fragment is quoted in two forms by Apollinarius of Laodicea (see K. Lake in The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. V, pp. 23 f.). According to Bihlmeyer’s reconstruction of the text, Papias’s commentary read as follows: “Judas’s earthly career was a striking example of impiety. His body bloated to such an extent that, even where a wagon passes with ease, he was not able to pass; no, not even his bloated head by itself could do so. His eyelids, for example, swelled to such dimensions, they say, that neither could he himself see the light at all, nor could his eyes be detected by a physician’s optical instrument: to such depths had they sunk below the outer surface” (translated by James A. Kleist in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. VI [Westminster, Md., 1948], p. 119; the passage continues with other revolting details).

⁶¹ Expository Times, XXIII (1911—12), pp. 331 f.

⁶² See F. H. Chase, “On prhnh.j geno,menoj in Acts i 18, ” Journal of Theological Studies, XIII (1911—12), pp. 278—285, and 415; J. R. Harris, “St. Luke’s Version of the Death of Judas,” American Journal of Theology, XVIII (1914), pp. 127—131; and Alexander Souter, A Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (Oxford, 1916), s.v.