HACELDAMA. — Name of the field which the Sanhedrin (because the clay had run out?) bought from a potter with the 30 pieces Judas (v.) had received for his crime and which he then, in despair, threw into the Sanctuary (εἰς ναόν: the building alone). Thus Act. 1:19 relates (in fact, in the text of Mt. 27:8 the name H. is spurious, since it belongs only to the Vulgate and to a few manuscripts of the Itala [b, c]).
The form Ἀκέλδαμαχ is composed of the Aramaic name (foreign to the Hebrew language) ḥaqlā “field” and dēmā (Hebr. dam) “blood”; the final consonant is added as in Σειράζ (Eccli., proemio) and Ἰωαέζ = Ἰωαέ “Joseph” (Lc. 3:26), owing to the vulgar pronunciation of the consonant (G. Dalman, Grammatik des jüd.-paläst. Aramäisch, 2ª ed., Leipzig 1905, p. 202, n. 3).
Three errors must be avoided: a) the name H. is not connected with the Syriac verb dēmek “to sleep,” so that H. would mean “cemetery”; for this verb is found only in the Syriac language, nor does it have any meaning other than its original one, “to sleep”; b) A. Schulz (Biblische Zeitschrift, 7 [1909], p. 153 ff.) does not have in mind Christ’s blood, but Judas’s blood (shed together with his intestines); yet it is not known where the suicide took place; c) what St. Peter says—“this man (Judas) acquired possession of the field”—does not require that Judas, while alive, should have bought that property; metaphorically, in fact, a dead man may be called the owner of the place where his body is buried.
The authors of the first centuries provide information about the location of this property. According to St. Jerome, it is “on the southern slope of Mount Sion”; but Eusebius (III, 38, 21; 39, 26), whose text he translates, says ἐν βαρείοις τοῦ Σιὼν ὄρους, “to the north.” The Itinerarium Placentinum reads: “leaving Sion we came to the field, which was purchased with the price of the Lord” (26: CSEL, 39, p. 177, 10). Another recension says that the place is found “on leaving Siloe” (26: loc. cit., p. 208, 9). Adamnanus and Bede look for “illum agellulum, qui hebraice Acheldemach vocatur” on the western slope of Mount Sion (19: loc. cit., p. 243, 17; 307, 18). Modern authors agree: G. Dalman, Orte und Wege Jesu, Gütersloh 1924, p. 351; G. Perrella, I Luoghi Santi, Piacenza 1936, pp. 297–302.