Gospel of Barnabas - Earlier Occurrences of A Gospel of Barnabas

Earlier Occurrences of A Gospel of Barnabas

A "Gospel according to Barnabas" is mentioned in two early Christian lists of apocryphal works: the Latin Decretum Gelasianum (6th century), as well as a 7th-century Greek List of the Sixty Books. These lists are independent witnesses. In 1698 John Ernest Grabe found an otherwise unreported saying of Jesus, attributed to the Apostle Barnabas, amongst the Greek manuscripts in the Baroccian collection in the Bodleian Library; which he speculated might be a quotation from this lost gospel. John Toland translates the quotation as, The Apostle Barnabas says, he gets the worst of it who overcomes in evil contentions; because he thus comes to have the more sin; and claimed to have identified a corresponding phrase when he examined the surviving Italian manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas in Amsterdam before 1709. Subsequent scholars examining the Italian and Spanish texts have been unable, however, to confirm Toland's observation.

This work should not be confused with the surviving Epistle of Barnabas, which may have been written in 2nd century Alexandria. There is no link between the two books in style, content, or history other than their attribution to Barnabas. On the issue of circumcision, the books clearly hold very different views, that of the epistle's rejection of the Jewish practice as opposed to the gospel's promotion of the same. Neither should it be confused with the surviving Acts of Barnabas, which narrates an account of Barnabas' travels, martyrdom and burial, and which is generally thought to have been written in Cyprus sometime after 431.

In 478, during the reign of the Emperor Zeno, archbishop Anthemios of Cyprus announced that the hidden burial place of Barnabas had been revealed to him in a dream. The saint's body was claimed to have been discovered in a cave with a copy of the canonical Gospel of Matthew on its breast; according to the contemporary account of Theodorus Lector, who reports that both bones and gospel book were presented by Anthemios to the emperor. Some scholars who maintain the antiquity of the Gospel of Barnabas propose that the text purportedly discovered in 478 should be identified with the Gospel of Barnabas instead; but this supposition is at variance with an account of Anthemios's gospel book by Severus of Antioch, who reported having examined the manuscript around the year 500, seeking to find whether it supported the piercing of the crucifed Jesus by a spear at Matthew 27:49 (it did not). According to the 11th century Byzantine historian Georgios Kedrenos an uncial manuscript of Matthew's Gospel, believed to be that found by Anthemios, was then still preserved in the Chapel of St Stephen in the imperial palace.