Last night I was watching a documentary series about untold "secrets" of the Bible.
I'm no scholar of Greek, but the way the documentary presents itself makes me skeptical they're providing anything useful or profound. It kind of sounds like those silly ancient aliens docs on the History channel.
Something that caught my attention is one scholar's belief that the word "betrayal" is a mistranslation of the word "paradidomi," which more accurately translates to simply "hand over." If this is true, it would follow that Judas, rather than betray Jesus, likely worked with him to make certain that Jesus would be crucified in order to facilitate God's plan for humanity. However, this theory does not account for the word translated as "traitor" in Luke 6:16, which could have been a mistake by the author of Luke or a copyist's error.
One thing we Westerners often forget is that the early Church operated mostly in Greek. Most of the attendees at the Council of Nicea were Greek speakers for example, with Latin speakers. The Greek Christians obviously can't mistranslate when reading words written in their own language, so the issue would have to be a question of misunderstanding the overall text. But if that's the case...
Judas's behavior (in the canonical texts) before and after the event isn't consistent with Jesus having colluded in it.
