Akeldama

(Acts 1:19) (a Syriac word, meaning field or village of blood) occurs only in the cited passage, as the name of a piece of land bought with the thirty pieces of silver received by Judas for betraying the Savior and afterward returned by him to the Jewish high priests, who, however, considering it unlawful to put it into the temple treasury, since it was the price of blood, bought with it the potter’s field for the burial of strangers (Matt. 27:6–8). Hence its name: Akeldama. This place was located southeast of the Valley of Hinnom, south of Zion, and was originally called, as noted above, the potter’s field, since it yielded a kind of clay suitable for pottery-making.

Akeldama continued to serve as a burial place until relatively recent times. As late as the seventh century, Armenian Christians living in Jerusalem were buried here. In the Middle Ages it was commonly believed that earth taken from this field possessed the peculiar property of dissolving the bodies of the dead within a few days; for this reason, at that time, whole shiploads of Akeldama earth were brought for the cemeteries of the city of Pisa in Italy. In Akeldama there still stands to this day a stone structure, now half-ruined, with an arched roof, deeply sunk into the ground but without any entrance.

According to D. Stanley, it served in antiquity as a burial place for strangers. This ancient monument can be seen from afar, and appears to be partly of ancient and partly of more recent construction.