Matthew 27:3

Matthew 27:3 is the third verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse returns to the story of Judas Iscariot who in the last chapter had accept payment to betray Jesus to the Jewish authorities. This passage begins the story of his remorse and death.

The original Koine Greek, according to Westcott and Hort, reads:

In the King James Version of the Bible it is translated as:

The modern World English Bible translates the passage as:

For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 27:3.

Matthew is the only Gospel to discuss the final fate of Judas, and this verse is not paralleled in either Mark or Luke. The passion narrative in the Gospel of Matthew follows very closely that of Mark, and this section on Judas is the largest deviation. As the two source hypothesis assumes Matthew was based on Mark, there has long been debate on the source of this material.

While not found in Luke, a variation on Matthew's material can be found at Acts 1:18-20. A third version appears in the early Christian writings of Papias of Hierapolis. The parallels between the different stories have some common but differ substantially in the details. One view is that this passage is not based on a written source, such as Q, but rather a separate oral tradition that was circulating in the early Christian community at the time the Gospel was written. The author Matthew shapes that tradition to conform to his interests, such as Old Testament parallels.

τοτε, then, is ambiguous as to the precise timing of these events. The author of Matthew places them here to make clear that the final condemnation of Jesus was that of the Sanhedrin. The last two verses, however, have the Sanhedrin ending its meeting and the leaders have conveyed Jesus to Pontius Pilate. It is thus possible that Judas' reversal is some time after the initial trial. By Matthew 27:8, the end of this Judas narrative, it is clear that the time being discussed is after the crucifixion.

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