paradidōmi

At its core this word is about a transfer of control. One party lets go of a person or thing and another party takes hold of it, so the same word covers a guard handing a prisoner to the next authority, a friend turning a friend in to his enemies, and a community committing someone into trusted hands. The act is neutral in itself; everything turns on who is being handed over, to whom, and for what.

That is why the New Testament can use one verb across such different scenes. Most of its weight falls on the path Jesus walks: he is handed from one set of hands to the next, from the disciple who turns him in, to the priests, to Pilate, to the soldiers, to the cross. The Gospels repeat the word like a refrain so the reader feels the chain of custody tightening around him, and the same verb names both Judas, who hands him over in treachery, and God, who hands him over in love.

The word can also make God the one doing the handing over in judgment. When people refuse him, he gives them up to the very desires and powers they have already chosen, a sentence carried out by release rather than by force. And in a quieter key it means to entrust: to commit a person or charge into safe and willing hands.

What all these share is the moment of release into another's power. The reader should not flatten that into a single English word; the surrounding scene tells you whether it is custody, betrayal, judgment, or trust.

Alongside the handing over of people and things, the word names the handing on of content: the careful passing of a teaching, a story, or a settled body of belief to those who come after. Here nothing changes hands physically; what moves is a trust, delivered intact so the next group receives exactly what was received before.

This is the sense behind the eyewitnesses who delivered the gospel accounts, behind Paul's insistence that he passed on only what he himself had received, and behind the faith once for all handed down to God's people. The stress falls on faithful transmission: the receiver is meant to guard and keep what was given, not improve on it.

The same word can carry a warning. Human traditions can be handed down too, and Jesus rebukes a tradition passed on in a way that cancels God's command. The act of handing down is only as good as what is handed down.