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Good catch! ;-) My somewhat limited Greek forced me to the lexicon for this one, but apegxato looks like it translates close enough to "choked himself" for my taste. Still, it's a fair inference, again harmonizing the passages, that he choked himself via hanging, as it is both intuitively more efficient and fits better with the necessity of his being over some precipice and falling hard and fast to the ground.

Actually you don't need to hang yourself from a tree to hang yourself. All you need to do is take a rope, tie a slip knot and wrap it around your neck and then tie it to your feet with your legs bent and then straighten your legs. If you were to do this on a sloped precipice you would ensure your death. When you lost consciousness, your body would fall off the precipice. I suspect this is exactly how Judas did it.

We don't know if it was the hanging or stangulation that killed him or being squashed on the rocks. I suspect the latter since in hanging you don't really die until about 5 minutes after you black out.

I think the main problem with with this story is the confusion some translators have created by saying "Judas bought a field" in Act 1:18. This seems to contradict Matthew 27:5 where the Greek says, [And having cast down the pieces of silver in the temple he withdrew and having gone away hanged himself.] verse 6-7 in plain English, [The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is against the law to put this money into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners.]

The Greek in Acts 1:18, is describing what happened to his body after he hangs himself: [This indeed(Peter speaking of Judas)then got a field out of the reward of unrighteousness, and having headlong fallen burst in midst and gushed out all bowels his.]

So Judas did not buy a field....he instead threw the money back into the temple and went and hanged himself. See also Zechariah 11:12-13. After hanging himself, and his body neglected and ignored by most....it rotted, and fell from the noose and upon hitting the ground, literally burst open in its rotted condition.....and his insides came flowing out. He indirectly bought the field with his efforts.