Gospel of Barnabas - Textual History

Textual History

The earliest document mentioning a Barnabas gospel which is generally agreed to correspond with the one found in the two known manuscripts is reported to be contained in Morisco manuscript BNM MS 9653 in Madrid, written about 1634 by Ibrahim al-Taybili in Tunisia. While describing how the Bible predicts Muhammad, he speaks of the "Gospel of Saint Barnabas where one can find the light" ("y así mismo en Evangelio de San Bernabé, donde se hallará la luz"). The first published account of the Gospel was in 1717, when a brief reference to the Spanish text is found in De religione Mohamedica by Adriaan Reeland; and then in 1718, a much more detailed description of the Italian text by the Irish deist John Toland. Both Italian and Spanish texts are referred to in 1734 by George Sale in The Preliminary Discourse to the Koran:

The Mohammedans have also a Gospel in Arabic, attributed to St. Barnabas, wherein the history of Jesus Christ is related in a manner very different from what we find in the true Gospels, and correspondent to those traditions which Mohammed has followed in his Koran. Of this Gospel the Moriscoes in Africa have a translation in Spanish; and there is in the library of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a manuscript of some antiquity, containing an Italian translation of the same Gospel, made, it is to be supposed, for the use of renegades. This book appears to be no original forgery of the Mohammedans, though they have no doubt interpolated and altered it since, the better to serve their purpose; and in particular, instead of the Paraclete or Comforter, they have, in this apocryphal gospel, inserted the word Periclyte, that is, the famous or illustrious, by which they pretend their prophet was foretold by name, that being the signification of Mohammed in Arabic; and this they say to justify that passage in the Koran where Jesus Christ is formally asserted to have foretold his coming under his other name Ahmed, which is derived from the same root as Mohammed and of the same import.

Sale's translation of the Qur'an text became the standard English version; and through its dissemination, and that of the Preliminary Discourse, an awareness of the Gospel of Barnabas spread widely in scholarly circles; prompting many fruitless attempts to find the Arabic original to which Sale referred. However, in his description of the Gospel in the Preliminary Discourse, Sale was relying entirely on second-hand accounts (for example, contrary to Sale's notice, the specific terms paraclete or periclyte are not explicitly found in the text of either version; although the term periclyte is transliterated into Arabic in one of the marginal notes to the Italian manuscript). Subsequent to the preparation of the Preliminary Discourse, the known Spanish manuscript came into Sale's possession.