Put yourself in Peter's shoes for a minute. They saw Jesus do miracles for several years. Then Jesus is captured by the religious authorities - and Jesus tells Peter to put away his sword. Peter's idea of the Messiah, a political ruler, must have been destroyed by Christ's capture and trial. The jig was up, Peter thought. In this time of despair, I don't see Peter or the other apostles' cowardice as unwarranted, given the circumstances of their knowledge. We view things from AFTER the resurrection. The Apostles didn't. I would say that this cowardice was NOT the same thing as Judas' revealing to the authorities where Jesus' private spot was so that He could be arrested without the crowd's presence.
They are both sympathetic figures , I suppose. But Judas seems to have gotten the short end of the stick here.
All traitors to a particular cause get the short end of the stick. The people who are given the most venom are so-called "collaborators", those people on the inside who aid the "enemy". That is fact, whether you are looking at Judas, the French Vichy, or Hellenistic Jews of the Book of Maccabees. Those who we thought were are friends and then turn around to stab us in the back give us the worse pain to bear.
Judas has been associated with the Jews, and Peter with the Romans, perhaps that is why the Roman Church made Peter a saint and Judas a devil.
Judas AND Peter were both Jews. That Judas was a traitor has nothing to do with Peter going to Rome years later. What is interesting is that Peter AND Judas had sinned greatly - one asked for forgiveness, the other didn't. One is highly regarded in the Kingdom of Heaven, the other "would have been better if he had never been born". If this isn't a lesson on the necessity for seeking forgiveness, I don't know what is...
Regards
"Judas' revealing to the authorities where Jesus' private spot was so that He could be arrested without the crowd's presence."
But Jesus was not really hiding from anyone. The next time Jesus ministered in Jerusalem, he would certainly have been arrested by the Temple and/or Roman authorities to answer questions regarding His Beliefs.
If there had been a huge amount of Jesus' supporters nearby , so what? Jesus would have told them not to use violence to protect Him, just as he told his Disciples. That was what the glory of Jesus was all about.
The fact that Judas kissed Jesus in the garden is put in new perspective in the Gospel of Judas. From this view, it wasn't a kiss of treason, but a kiss of genuine admiration. Why else did not Jesus try to stop Judas from betraying Him? Most likely because He wasn't outraged by it, merely thought it was part of God's plan for him