The writings of St Barnabas

The Codex Sinaiticus includes the Epistle of
Barnabas under the heading ΒΑΡΝΑΒΑ ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗ

Like many of the early Christian leaders, Barnabas sought to transmit the faith he had inherited from his own teachers. To those ends, he wrote to other Christians.

 

The Letter of St Barnabas

From the earliest years of the Christian era—and certainly within a couple of decades of the death and Resurrection of Jesus—Christians have known about and discussed the Letter of St Barnabas. It is often referred to as ‘the ‘Epistle’ of St Barnabas’, which means the same thing. We do not know an exact date when this letter was written, but it was seems to have been about 70 ad so, if genuine, was written by Barnabas or a close follower.

The text of the Epistle of St Barnabas has never been under discussion. It says little that adds to our knowledge of early Christianity, which probably explains why the Church authorities chose not to include it in the canon of the Bible. Therefore, while useful, it should not be regarded as uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.

 

The Acts of St Barnabas

The text of the Acts of Barnabas says it was written by ‘John Mark’ the close com­panion of St Paul.

We do not know when the Acts was written but its language and the internal ecclesiastical politics It describes suggest the fifth century. In context, in 431 ad the First Council of Ephesus granted independence to the Church in Cyprus the Church based in Antioch. This edict was confirmed by Emperor Zeno in 488 ad, but was widely ignored.

The Acts of Barnabas says the island of Cyprus was the site of St Barnabas’ grave (which is quite likely) but that it was also an ‘apostolic foundation’. The author was therefore writing to promote the independence of the Church in Cyprus, and its bishops. The Acts is therefore a pious fake.

The first major translation of the Acts into English was that of M R James, and his version remains the standard English text.

     

The Gospel of St Barnabas

The Gospel of St Barnabas is a very different document from either the Epistle or the Acts.

This Gospel describe the life of Jesus, and claims to be the work of Jesus’ disciple Barnabas, who in this work is one of the twelve apostles. In no other document contemporary with early Christianity is Barnabas described as an ‘apostle’.

Two manuscripts of the Gospel of St Barnabas are known to have existed. Both date from the late sixteenth century and are written in Italian and Spanish. The Spanish manu­script is now lost, so its text survives in an incomplete eighteenth-century version.

This ’Gospel’ is enormously long and is about the same length as the four Canonical gospels put together (the Italian manuscript has 222 chapters!). Jesus’ ministry occupies the bulk of the book, much of it harmonising with accounts in our four gospels.

Strong circumstantial evidence says the ‘Gospel’ was written in the 1100s by a man refused entry into the Franciscan order and converted to Islam. Which explains why, in a great many key respects, the Gospel of Barnabas conforms to an Islamic interpretation of Christian origins and thereby contradicts the New Testament teachings of Christianity.

Cooperation is a fruit of the Spirit

Just before he was killed, Jesus described himself as the vine with his disciples as the branches (John 15:1–8). It should be a powerful meta­phor but its substance gets lost a little when few of us properly under­stand agriculture, so let’s start at the beginning: we must drink if we are to live. If we live in a hot, arid country, then we can’t drink the local water because there may be none, or microbes make it unsafe. So we drink ‘wine’—fruit juice that has fermented slightly to stop it going off. And if we need wine, we need grapes; and if we need grapes: we need vines, and lots of them, to live. When Jesus says he is ‘the vine’ he is a saying he is vital to life. In contest, he clearly means spiritual life.

It gets better. He is the vine and we can be the branches, meaning he offers his spiritual life to us. To extend the spiritual metaphor further, his spiritual life can flow through us but, to do so, requires that we become a part of him. He therefore talks about ‘ingrafting’, which was widely performed in the Middle East during the first-century, particularly in the vine­yards, because it increased the yields of fruit, increased the amount of wine produced, and ensured that more people could live.

Next, we recognise how Jesus speaks of one vine but with many branches, so one Lord Jesus but several offshoots. Those many branches can each bear fruit only if the sap of life courses through their fibres, hence Jesus talk of ‘abiding in him’.

We can also remember how in response to his New Commandment, Jesus notes how the world will know we are disciples if we have love one for another (John 13:34). That ‘love’ is a translation of agapé, which is always a costly form of love for it is always giving of self. It typically looks outward, which explains why some older Bible translations render it as caritas—hence ‘charity’. And in translating this agapé love as ‘charity’ explains why Christianity is so rarely lived in solitude, or at least is difficult to live successfully when alone. This time think of St Paul’s later concept of ‘the body of Christ’ which collects disciples together and lets them cohere as a spiritual entity.

These jig-saw pieces can fit together in many ways, but the picture on the box generally looks like unity.

As a life-giving vine, Jesus supplies the spiritual goodness needed by all but, in a local context, the branches that help distribute his life-giving goodness are congregations. A few definitions: ‘congregation’ here means a group of people wanting to serve Jesus. They may convene in buildings (‘churches’) but may not; they may serve a single denomination or many or neither; they may, in fact, seek the Kingdom but come from an altogether different faith, or have none.

One simple question can act as a litmus test of whether a local congregation honestly wants to act as one of those branches as it distributes spiritual goodness from Jesus’ one, true vine: when it seeks to build the Kingdom of God, it asks, ‘Is this congregation willing it share its vision, members, resources, itself, with other local congregations?’