When it was morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate, the governor. (Mt. 27:1-2)
It is now early morning on Friday.
We can note two firsts here:
1. For the first time in Matthews account, Jesus is bound. He is now treated as a convicted criminal and led away to Pilate.
2. This is the first mention of Pilates name in Matthews Gospel.
The phrase, They . . . handed him over to Pilate is an ominous one. The prediction Jesus made earlier in Matthews Gospel has come true: The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles. . .
Judas started the handing overs. They will end when Pilate hands Jesus over to be crucified.
To hand over is the root meaning of tradition. It is also the root meaning of traitor. What I hand on consciously or unconsciously to my friends, my children, to anyone who might be influenced by what I do, can be good . . . or it can be not so good.
Whether I know it or not, I hand on light or darkness to anyone who is part of my life on a given day.
How have I done lately?
Spend some quiet time with the Lord.
Gospel of Judas
The apocryphal Gospel of Judas suggests that Judas was Jesus truest disciple. His betrayal, the document suggests, was part of an elaborate scheme in which Jesus asked Judas to betray him.
Its timeline begins a few days before Passover and ends with Judas handing Jesus over to the scribes.
The 26-page document was discovered in Egypt in the late 1970s.
About 180 A.D., Irenaeus (who was one of the fathers of the early Church) called the Gospel of Judas fictitious history." It was never considered to be a canonical Gospel on the par with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Apocryphal gospels are the more than 100 ancient writing about Jesus which the Catholic Church does not include in the New Testament.
Besides the Gospel of Judas, these include the Lost Letter of St. Paul, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Truth and the Acts of Pilate.