HACELDAMA. — Name of that field which the Sanhedrin (since the clay was finished?) bought from a potter with the thirty silver coins that the traitor Judas (q.v.) had received for his crime and which, in despair, he then threw against the Sanctuary (eis vavò: the only building). So narrates Acts 1:19 (in fact, in the text of Matt. 27:8 the name H. is spurious, being proper only to the Vulgate and a few manuscripts from Italy [b, c]).
The form *AxeAaxaax* is composed of the Aramaic name (foreign to the Hebrew language) *haqla* ‘field’ and *dema* (Heb. *dam*) ‘blood’; the final consonant is added as in *Σεποχά* (Ecclus., prologue) and *’Iωσέχ* = *’Iωσέχ* (Joseph) (Luke 3:26) for the vulgar pronunciation of the consonant (G. Dalman, *Grammatik des jüd.-paläst. Aramaïsch*, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1905, p. 202, n. 3).
Three errors must be avoided: a) the name H. is not connected with the Syriac verb *demek* ‘to sleep’, so that H. would mean ‘cemetery’; this verb is found only in Syriac and has no other meaning than the primitive one of ‘to sleep’; b) A. Schulz (*Biblische Zeitschrift*, 7 [1909], pp. 153 ff.) does not think of the blood of Christ, but of the blood of Judas (shed with his entrails); yet it is unknown what the place of his suicide was; c) what St Peter says: “this man acquired possession of the field” does not require that Judas, while alive, bought that estate; metaphorically, indeed, a dead man may be said to be the owner of the place where his body is buried.
Early authors inform us about the location of this field. 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 *εφεσχος τοῦ Σιδου φους*, “to the north.” The *Itinerarium Placentinum* reads: “going out from Sion we came to the field, which was bought with the price of the Lord” (26: CSEL, 39, p. 177, 10). Another recension says to find the place “going out from Sion” (26: loc. cit., p. 208, 9). Adamnan and Bede seek “illum agellulum, qui hebraice Achieldemach vocitatur” 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.