Dear Mr. Editor,
In your number for March there is a question from J. N. D. as to ναόν and ἱερόν, together with your answer. I do not think the matter of the least importance. Whatever was the fact, the chief priests and elders and Judas were wicked enough to do anything to accomplish the death of our blessed Lord; but seeing that the scribes and Pharisees would not go into the judgment hall, “lest they should be defiled,” (John 18:2828Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. (John 18:28)) when they were, at the same time, crying out for the blood of Jesus, and seeing that they would not put the money, which Judas returned, into the treasury, “because it was the price of blood,” and would therefore defile it, it is hardly likely that they would admit Judas himself into the temple, ναόν, when they would not admit his money into the treasury. Surely blood was upon him, as well as on his money.
I should suppose therefore, that he came to the gate of the temple, and cast down the money to the priests inside—the more so, as it does not say that he went in; it says, “he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, see Matt. 27:33Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, (Matthew 27:3). Ἰούδας.... μεταμεληθεὶς ἔστρεψεν τὰ τριάκοντα ἀpγύpiα.... καὶ ῥιψας τὰ ἀργύρια ῤν τῷ ναῷ, ἀνεχώρησεν, &c, Casting the money down ἐv τῷ ναῷ—not; going in—and I further come to this conclusion from the contemptuous answer of the chief priests and elders τί πρὸς ἡμᾶς; σὺ ὄψη.
I believe that they were wicked enough to have allowed Judas to come into the temple, ναόν, to have secured the death of Jesus, just as they said “we have no king but Caesar;” but, having accomplished their purpose, they had done with their “defiled” tool, and would hardly have allowed him to come in then—on the contrary, dismiss him with the contemptuous words, “what is that to us? see thou to that.” So that I think that we have the text, and the probabilities against his going in. X. Y.