The Gospel of Barnabas
Although none of today's officially accepted Gospels - or, for that matter, the Gospel of Barnabas, whose authenticity continues to be attacked by the established Church because its contents contradict official dogma on several fundamental issues - are capable of being objectively authenticated (instead it is sweepingly claimed that they are 'divinely inspired'), the Gospel of Barnabas does nevertheless remain interesting reading, especially since it appears to be, on the face of it, the only known surviving Gospel written by a close disciple of Jesus, that is, by a man who spent most of his lime in the actual company of Jesus, during the three years in which he was delivering his message.
Barnabas therefore had a direct experience and knowledge of Jesus' s teaching, unlike all the authors of the four officially accepted Gospels. It is not known when he wrote down what he remembered of Jesus and his guidance, whether events and discourses were recorded as they happened, or whether he wrote it soon after Jesus had left the earth, fearing that otherwise some of his teaching might be changed or lost. It is possible that he did not write down anything until he had retuned to Cyprus with John Mark.
As we have already seen, the two made this journey some time after Jesus had left the earth, after parting company with Paul of Tarsus, who had refused to make any further journeys with Barnabas on which Mark was also present. But no matter when it was written, and although it, too, like the four accepted Gospels, bas inevitably suffered from being translated and filtered through several languages, it is, at least on the face of it, an eyewitness account of Jesus's life.
Both those who have a vested interest in attempting to 'prove' that the Gospel of Barnabas is a 'forgery' and those who simply want to be able to establish the truth of the matter, whatever it may be, are quick to point out that although the early church fathers often referred to the Gospel of Barnabas in their writings, this does not necessarily mean that what appears to be a sixteenth century Italian translation of the Gospel in the Imperial Library in Vienna is a faithful translation of the early first century original. Any number of changes could have been introduced during the intervening centuries.
This observation, it should also be pointed out, applies almost equally to the four officially accepted Gospels, (of which the earliest surviving manuscripts on which today's text is based are writ ten in Greek - not Hebrew or Aramaic - and date from the 4th century AD, some three centuries after the late first century originals were probably written), although this possibility has never been too carefully considered by the established Church, since its authority would have been - and still could be - inevitably and seriously undermined as a result.
On the other hand, it can also be argued that if, on the balance of probabilities, the four accepted Gospels are more or less accurate, then this must also be more or less equally true of the Gospel of Barnabas, since much of its contents have very much in common with the four accepted Gospels and are often in complete agreement - although of course there are two very significant major differences between the Gospel of Barnabas and the four official Gospels, namely the account of just who it was who was crucified, and also the several specific references to the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him, which appear in the Gospel of Barnabas, but not in the other Gospels.
Ultimately any reader's assessment of the contents of any of the Gospels must be highly subjective. Either the words in any given verse ring true, or they do not - and the reaction of any particular reader will probably be different to that of any other reader.
As regards the various references to the Gospel of Barnabas which are known to have been made during the course of the last eighteen centuries or so - and which accordingly confirm that such a Gospel was written and did exist, even if it no longer entirely exists in its original form today - it has been well established that the Gospel of Barnabas was accepted as a Canonical Gospel in the churches of Alexandria up until 325 AD.
It is also known that it was being circulated in the first and second centuries after the birth of Jesus from the writings of Iraneus (130-200 AD) who wrote in support of the Divine Unity. Iraneus opposed Paul and his followers whom he accused of being responsible for the assimilation of the pagan Roman religion and Platonic philosophy into the original teaching of Jesus. He quoted extensively from the Gospel of Barnabas in support of his views.
It is also clear from relatively recent research - which has been conducted more in the spirit of genuinely trying to find out what actually happened, rather than with the intention of merely attempting to present further 'evidence' either for or against established dogmas and theories which are clearly untenable in the light of undisputed historical facts and blatant contradictions - that the conflict between the Unitarian followers of Jesus who belonged to the Tribe of Israel on the one hand, and the European followers of Paul who did not belong to the Tribe of Israel and whose lives were rooted in an entirely different culture and philosophical heritage, on the other hand, occurred at a very early stage in the history of the Christian Church - and even before the early Christians began to rely more on the written word than on what had been transmitted by word of mouth.
In his book, The Bible, the Quran and Science, Dr Maurice Bucaille refers to these two groups as the Judeo-Christians and the Pauline Christians. His overview of the origins of and the interaction between these two groups - an overview at which he clearly arrived only after extensive research and careful consideration and analysis - confirms that this conflict was, at least to begin with, not so much an ideological conflict as a behavioural one, as his summary of an article published by Cardinal Daniélou in 1967, including many quotations from it, indicates:
After Jesus's departure, the 'little group of Apostles' formed a 'Jewish sect that remained faithful to the form of worship practised in the Temple'. However, when the observances of converts from paganism were added to them, a 'special system' was offered to them as it were:
The Council of Jerusalem in 49 AD exempted them from circumcision and Jewish observances; 'many JudeoChristians rejected this concession'. This group is quite separate from Paul. What is more, Paul and the JudeoChristians were in conflict over the question of pagans who had turned to Christianity, (the incident of Antioch, 49 AD).
'For Paul, the circumcision, Sabbath, and form of worship practiced in the Temple were henceforth old fashioned, even for the Jews. Christianity was to free itself from its political-cum-religious adherence to Judaism and open itself to the Gentiles.'
For those Judeo-Christians who remained 'loyal Jews', Paul was a traitor: Judeo-Christian documents call him an 'enemy', and accuse him of 'tactical double-dealing', 'Until 70 AD, Judeo-Christianity represents the majority of the Church' and 'Paul remains an isolated case', The head of the community at that time was James, a relation of Jesus. With him were Peter (at the beginning) and John. 'James may be considered to represent the Judeo-Christian camp, which deliberately clung to Judaism as opposed to Pauline Christianity.' Jesus's family has a very important place in the Judeo-Christian Church of Jerusalem, 'James's successor was Simeon, son of Cleopas, a cousin of the lord'.
Cardinal Daniélou here quotes Judeo-Christian writings which express the views on Jesus of this community which initially formed around the apostles: the Gospel of the Hebrews (coming from a Judeo-Christian community in Egypt), the writings of Clement: Homilies and Recognitions, 'Hypotyposeis', the Second Apocalypse of James, the Gospel of Thomas.
(One could note here that all these writings were later to be classed as Apocrypha, i.e. they had to be concealed by the victorious Church which was to be born of Paul's success. It was to make obvious excisions in the Gospel literature and retain only the four Canonic Gospels.)
'It is to the Judeo-Christians that one must ascribe the oldest writings of Christian literature.' Cardinal Daniélou mentions them in detail.
'It was not just in Jerusalem and Palestine that JudeoChristianity predominated during the first hundred years of the Church. The Judeo-Christian mission seems everywhere to have developed before the Pauline mission. This is certainly the explanation of the fact that the letters of Paul allude to a conflict.' They were the same adversaries he was to meet everywhere: in Galatia, Corinth, Colossae, Rome and Antioch.
The Syro-Palestinian coast from Gaza to Antioch was Judeo-Christian 'as witnessed by the Acts of the Apostles and Clementine writings'. In Asia Minor, the existence of Judeo-Christians is indicated in Paul's letters to the Galatians and Colossians. Papi as' s writings give us information about Judeo-Christianity in Phrygia. In Greece, Paul's first letter to the Corinthians mentions Judeo-Christians especially at Apollos.
According to Clement's letter and the Shepherd of Hermas, Rome was an 'important centre’. For Suetonius and Tacitus, the Christians represented a Jewish sect. Cardinal Daniélou thinks that the first evangelisation in Africa was JudeoChristian. The Gospel of the Hebrews and the writings of Clement of Alexandria link up with this.
It is essential to know these facts to understand the struggle between communities that formed the background against which the Gospels were written. The texts that we have today, after many adaptations from the sources, began to appear around 70 AD, the time when the two rival communities were engaged in a fierce struggle, with the Judeo-Christians still retaining the upper hand. With the Jewish war and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the situation was to be reversed. This is how Cardinal Daniélou explains the decline:
'After the Jews had been discredited in the Empire, the Christians tended to detach themselves from them. The Hellenistic peoples of Christian persuasion then gained the upper hand: Paul won a posthumous victory; Christianity separated itself politically and sociologically from Judaism: it became the third people. All the same, until the Jewish revolt in 140 AD, Judeo-Christianity continued to predominate culturally.'
Who made up the doctrine of Trinity
From 70 AD to a period situated sometime before 110 AD the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were produced. They do not constitute the first written Christian documents: the letters of Paul date from well before them. According to O. Culmann, Paul probably wrote his letter to the Thessalonians in 50 AD. He had probably disappeared several years prior to the completion of Mark's Gospel.
Paul is the most controversial figure in Christianity. He was considered to be a traitor to Jesus's thought by the latter's family and by the apostles who had stayed in Jerusalem in the circle around James. Paul created Christianity at the expense of those whom Jesus had gathered around him to spread his teachings. He had not known Jesus during his lifetime and he proved the legitimacy of his mission by declaring that Jesus, raised from the dead, had appeared to him on the road to Damascus. It is quite reasonable to ask what Christianity might have been without Paul and one could no doubt construct all sorts of hypotheses on this subject.
As far as the Gospels are concerned however, it is almost certain that if this atmosphere of struggle between communities had not existed, we would not have had the writings we possess today. They appeared at a time of Herce struggle between the two communities. These 'combat writings', as Father Kannengiesser calls them, emerged from the multitude of writings on Jesus.
These occurred at the time when Paul's style of Christianity won through definitively, and created its own collection of official texts. These texts constituted the 'Canon' which condemned and excluded as unorthodox any other documents that were not suited to the line adopted by the Church.
The Judeo-Christians have now disappeared as a community with any influence, but one still hears people talking about them under the general term of 'Judaistic'. This is how Cardinal Daniélou describes their disappearance:
'When they were out off from the Great Church, that gradually freed itself from its Jewish attachments, they petered out very quickly in the West. In the East how ever it is possible to find traces of them in the Third and Fourth centuries AD, especially in Palestine, Arabia, Transjordania, Syria and Mesopotamia. Others joined in the orthodoxy of the Great Church, at the same time preserving traces of Semitic culture; some of these still persist in the Churches of Ethiopia and Chaldea,'
The 'official' confirmation of the 'victory' over the true followers of Jesus by Paulinian Christianity was enshrined, as we have already seen, in the outcome of the famous Council of Nicea which was held in 325 AD - when the Roman Emperor Constantine, who at the time claimed to be 'neutral' on the grounds that he was not a Christian, decided that the Paulinian version of Christianity represented the true teachings of Jesus, and that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John should become the officially accepted gospels, and that all other gospels, including the Gospel of Barnabas, were to be destroyed - along with whoever was found to have them in their possession - a decision which resulted in many of the early gospels being lost for good, and millions of Unitarian Christians being martyred in the years that followed.
It was also at the Council of Nicea, after over two centuries of debate, that Jesus was officially granted divine status, and, with the official instatement at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD of 'the Holy Ghost' as the 'third person', the doctrine of Trinity which had begun to emerge during the intervening period finally came of age, some three and a half centuries after the disappearance of Jesus.
Shortly after the Council of Constantinople, the Roman Emperor Theodosius made it a capital offence to reject the doctrine of Trinity, thereby laying the foundations for the Mediaeval and Spanish Inquisitions which were to flourish centuries later by which time the doctrines of the New Covenant, and of Original Sin, and of the Atonement and Forgiveness of Sins, and of the Trinity, had become so deeply embedded in the Christian psyche that no amount of reformations, ancient or modem, and however well-intentioned, could dislodge them.
Thus it is a matter of historical fact that it took several centuries for the doctrine of Trinity to be developed - as part of a long drawn out cultural and philosophical process, characterised by fierce conflict and at times often confused debate - which explains why the doctrine is never actually described in detail within any of the texts of even the official Paulinian version of the New Testament as being central to Jesus's teaching.
This can only be because the contents of the early Christian writings - both of the Judeo-Christians and of the Paulinian Christians - had already been finalised prior to the formulation of the doctrine, and were already too well-known to be tampered with too extensively, by the time that the doctrine had reached the stage where it was formally expressed in writing.
The most that the Paulinian Church could hope to achieve was the systematic and complete suppression of all the Judeo-Christian writings which clearly and unequivocally affirmed the Oneness of God as well as confirming the continuity of both teaching and behavior which existed between Moses and Jesus, peace be on them.
Once the doctrine of Trinity had been formally adopted and declared to be the official doctrine of the Pauline Church, one of the inevitable consequences of this decision was that out of the three hundred or so Gospels extant at that time, only the four which were selected as the official Gospels of the Pauline Church were permitted to survive. The remaining Gospels, including the Gospel of Barnabas, were ordered to be destroyed completely.
It was also decided that all Gospels written in Hebrew should be destroyed. Edicts were issued stating that anyone found in possession of an unauthorized Gospel would be put to death. This was the first well organized attempt to remove all the records of Jesus's original teaching, whether in human beings or books, which contradicted the doctrine of Trinity. In the case of the Gospel of Barnabas, these orders were not entirely successful, and mention of its continued existence has been made up to the present day:
Pope Damascus (304-384 AD), who became Pope in 366 AD, is recorded as having issued a decree that the Gospel of Barnabas should not be read. This decree was supported by Gelasus, Bishop of Caesaria, who died in 395 AD. The Gospel was included in his list of Apocryphal books. ' Apocrypha' simply means 'hidden from the people'. Thus, at this stage, the Gospel was no longer available to everyone, but was still being referred to by the leaders of the Church. In fact, it is known that the Pope secured a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas in 383 AD, and kept it in his private library.
There were a number of other decrees which referred to the Gospel. It was forbidden by the Decree of the Western Churches in 382 AD, and by Pope Innocent in 465 AD. In the Gelasian Decree of 496 AD, the Evangelium Barnabe is included in the list of forbidden books. This decree was reaffirmed by Hormisdas, who was Pope from 514 to 523 AD. All these decrees are mentioned in the Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts in the Library of Chancellor Seguier (1558-1672), prepared by B. de Montfaucon (1655-1741).
The writings of Barnabas - which include his Epistle as well as his Gospel' - are also mentioned in the Stichometry of Nicephorus as follows:
Serial No. 3: Epistle of Barnabas ... Lines 1,300 and again in the list of Sixty Books as follows:
Serial No. 17: Travels and teaching of the Apostles.
Serial No. 18: Epistle of Barnabas.
Serial No. 24: Gospel According to Barnabas.
This famous list was also known as the Index, and Christians were not supposed to read any of the books listed in it On pain of eternal punishment.
It is interesting to note in passing that a Greek version of the Epistle of Barnabas (which is mentioned by two of the most well known early church fathers, Origen (185-254 AD) and Eusebius (265-340 AD) in their writings) is in fact to be found in the Codex Sinaiiicus - perhaps the earliest Greek version of the New Testament known to be in existence today and dating from the 4th or 5th century AD - although it has been excluded from all modem versions of the Bible.
Although Christian polemicists have repeatedly attempted to allege not only that the ltalian translation of the Gospel of Barnabas is a mediaeval forgery, but also by implication that the Gospel itself is a forgery - written by a Muslim convert in the fifteenth or sixteenth century AD - this clearly cannot be correct, given the number of recorded references to the Gospel of Barnabas which were often made long before the coming of the Prophet Muhammad.
As regards other later references to the Gospel of Barnabas, the Gospel is also, recorded in the 206th manuscript of the Baroccian Collection in the Bodleian Library in Oxford which dates from the 6th or 7th century AD. Cotelerius, who catalogued the manuscripts in the Library of the French king, listed the Gospel of Barnabas in the Index of Scriptures which he prepared in 1789. There is also a solitary fragment of a Greek version of the Gospel of Barnabas to he found in a museum in Athens, which is all that remains of a copy which was burnt:
It is interesting to note that consistent with the observation by Grabe in Spicilegium Patrum, I, 302, Toland found that the 39th Baroccian manuscript contains a fragment that is an Italian equivalent to the Greek text. Thus Toland's conclusion was that the extant Italian translation of the Gospel of Barnabas was identical to the ancient Gospel of Barnabas. In the same year, Reland in De religione Mahommedica (1718) discovered that the Gospel also existed in Arabic and Spanish.
Mr. Johnson's conclusions regarding all the various references to the various versions of the Gospel of Barnabas are significant:
Grabe's knowledge of a Greek version of the Gospel and its equivalence to the later Italian manuscript makes it highly plausible that today's Gospel of Barnabas is in fact the Evangelium Barnabae listed by the Sixth century Gelasian Decretal and the Sixth or Seventh century Cod. Barocc, 206's list of 60 books. I say, 'highly plausible' because no early Greek manuscript is known to be in existence today.
However, it is equally certain that Christian claims that the Gospel of Barnabas is a forgery of some fifteenth or sixteenth century renegade Muslim, are simply vain attempts to dismiss a Gospel that strikes at the heart of contemporary Christian Christology. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians admitted the centrality of this doctrine to the entire body of Christian faith:
“Tell me, if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how is it that some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is void of content and your faith is empty too. Indeed, we should then be exposed as false witnesses of God, for we have borne witness before Him that He raised up Christ ... “ (I Corinthians 15: 12-15)
Clearly, if there is an early Greek or Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Barnabas in existence somewhere, then a comparison between it and the Italian translation would end the dispute as to the authenticity and reliability of the Italian version once and for all.
In the fourth year of the Emperor Zeno’s rule in 478 AD, the remains of Barnabas were discovered, and a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas, written in his own hand, was found on his breast. This is recorded in the Acta Sanctorum, Boland Junii, Tome II, pages 422 450, published in Antwerp in 1698. It has been claimed by the Roman Catholic Church that the Gospel found in the grave of Barnabas was that of Matthew, but no steps have been taken to display this copy. The exact contents of the twenty-five mile long library of the Vatican continue to remain in the dark.
The manuscript from which the current English translation of the Gospel of Barnabas was made, was originally in the possession of Pope Sixtus V (1589-1590). He had a friend, a monk called Fra Marino, who became very interested in the Gospel of Barnabas after reading the writings of Iraneus, who quoted from it extensively.
One day he went to see the Pope. They lunched together and, after the meal, the Pope fell asleep. Father Marino began to browse through the books in the Pope's private library and discovered an Italian manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas. Concealing it in the sleeve of his robe, he left and came out of the Vatican with it. This manuscript then passed through different hands until it reached 'a person of great name and authority' in Amsterdam, 'who, during his life time, was often heard to put a high value to this piece.' After his death, it came into the possession of J.E. Cramer, a Councilor of the King of Prussia. In 1713, Cramer presented this manuscript to the famous connoisseur of books, Prince Eugene of Savoy. In 1738, along with the library of the Prince, it found its way into the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, where it now rests.
Toland, a notable historian of the early Church, had access to this manuscript, and he refers to it in his Miscellaneaus Works, which was published posthumously in 1747. He says of the Gospel: 'This is in scripture style to a hair,' and continues:
“The story of Jesus is very differently told in many things from the received Gospels, but much more fully ... and particularly this Gospel ... being near as long again as many of ours. Someone would make a prejudice in favour of it; because, as all things are best known just after they happen, so everything diminishes the further it proceeds from its original.”
The following extract from the Gospel of Barnabas, for example, (which is taken from the translation of Lonsdale and Laura Ragg) describes what is alleged to have taken place immediately before the miraculous feeding of the five thousand - an account which, as well as furnishing an explanation as to why such a large crowd had gathered in the first place, cannot be found in the four officially accepted Gospels, and for obvious reasons, since it describes how Jesus publicly demonstrated that he could not possibly be identified with God, simply by comparing his human attributes with God's divine attributes:
“Accordingly the governor and the priest and the king prayed Jesus that in order to quiet the people he should mount up into a lofty place and speak to the people. Then went up Jesus on to one of the twelve stones which Joshua made the twelve tribes take up from the midst of Jordan, when all Israel passed over there dry shod; and he said with a loud voice: 'Let our priest go up into a high place whence he may confirm my words.'
Thereupon the priest went up thither; to whom Jesus said distinctly, so that everyone might hear: 'It is written in the testament and covenant of the living God that our God has no beginning; neither shall He ever have an end.'
The priest answered: 'Even so it is written therein.’
Jesus said: 'It is written there that our God by His word alone has created all things.'
'Even so it is,' said the priest.
Jesus said: 'It is written there that God is invisible and hidden from the mind of man, seeing He is incorporeal and uncomposed, without variableness.'
'So it is truly,' said the priest.
Jesus said: 'It is written there how that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, seeing that our God is infinite.'
'Sa said Salomon the Prophet,' said the priest, 'O Jesus.'
Said Jesus: 'It is written there that God has no need forasmuch as He eats not, sleeps not, and suffers not from any deficiency.'
'So is it,' said the priest.
Said Jesus: 'It is written there that our God is everywhere, and that there is not any other god but He, Who strikes down and makes whole, and does all that pleases Him.'
'So it is written,' replied the priest.
Then Jesus, having lifted up his hands, said: 'Lord our God, this is my faith wherewith I shall come to your judgement: in testimony against every one that shall believe the contrary.'
And turning himself towards the people, he said, “Repent, for from all that of which the priest has said that it is written in the book of Moses, the covenant of God for ever, you may perceive your sin; for that I am a visible man and a morsel of clay that walks upon the earth, mortal as are other men. And I have had a beginning, and shall have an end, and am such that 1cannot create a fly over again.”
The publicity which Toland gave to the Vienna manuscript made it impossible for it to share the same fate as another manuscript of the Gospel in Spanish which also once existed. This manuscript was presented to a college library in England at about the same time that the Italian manuscript was given to the Hofbibliothek. It had not been in England long before it mysteriously disappeared.
The Italian manuscript was translated into English by Canon Lonsdale and Laura Ragg, and was printed and published by the Oxford University Press in 1907. Nearly the whole edition of this English translation abruptly and mysteriously disappeared from the market. Only two copies of this translation are known to exist, one in the British Museum, and the other in the Library of Congress in Washington. A microfilm copy of the book in the Library of Congress was obtained, and a fresh edition of the English translation was printed in Pakistan. A copy of this edition was used for the purposes of reprinting a revised version of the Gospel of Barnabas thereafter,
The new English edition, understandably, has caused the present Christian Church a certain degree of irritation - for if the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas are true, then it clearly follows that most of the versions of Christianity which exist today - and accordingly the various Churches which promote them - do not have very firm foundations
This is because the Gospel of Barnabas confirms that Jesus was not God, nor the 'son' of God, and that he was neither crucified in the first place, nor subsequently 'raised from the dead' thereafter. As we have already seen, it was Paul himself who pointed out that if Jesus was neither crucified nor raised from the dead, then the bottom falls out of the Paulinian thesis:
“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead ...” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).
Accordingly virtually all the established churches, however near or far they are to each other, have united in their various efforts to discredit the English version of the Gospel of Barnabas by discrediting the Italian edition from which it was translated.
In a manner reminiscent of the way in which the Russian edition of The Protocols of the EIders of Zion has been constantly branded as ' a forgery' in order to discredit any translation of it into another language, so with the Spanish and English translations of the Gospel of Barnabas, it has been claimed that the Italian version is a forgery - and, by implication, that even the much earlier Hebrew and Greek versions which, as we have just seen, are known to have existed at a very early stage in the history of Christianity, must also have been 'forgeries'!
Perhaps the most sustained and scholarly attempt aimed at discrediting the English edition of the Gospel of Barnabas has been the book written by David Sox entitled, somewhat misleadingly, 'The Gospel of Barnabas'. Only a few lines of the English translation are actually quoted by him, and the underlying purpose of his book is clearly to put off as many people as possible from actually reading the Gospel of Barnabas itself and making their own minds up about its authenticity!
Given that David Sox's brief was to 'prove' that the Italian version of the Gospel of Barnabas is a forgery, his methodology is transparently clear:
Having ascertained that the binding of the manuscript in Vienna dates from approximately the 16th or 17th century - although not necessarily the manuscript itself, which may date from an earlier period and which could have been bound and rebound several times before ending up in its present binding for all we know, but certainly not an earlier manuscript from which it may have been copied, let alone an even earlier manuscript in Greek or Hebrew from which it may have been translated - David Sox then had to find a likely forger:
It had to be someone who was clearly familiar with both the Old and the New Testaments as represented in the Vulgate Bible - so that repeated references could be made to Old Testament events and prophecies whenever this was appropriate; it had to be someone who had converted to Islam, but who nevertheless would be 'clever' enough not to make the 'forgery' correspond too closely or entirely with what the Quran says about Jesus
(for example, describing the Prophet Muhammad as 'the Messiah' who would come after Jesus, whereas the Quran confirms that Jesus was the Messiah whose coming had been foretold by Moses; or, for example, confirming the traditional nativity story given in the officially accepted Gospels, rather than giving an account of the birth of Jesus which corresponded with the account which is given in the Quran; Or, for example, not mentioning various miracles of Jesus which, as we shall see in Chapter Eleven, are described in the Quran, but not in the officially accepted Gospels);
and it had to be someone who had the ability to ensure not only that the 'forgery' did not correspond exactly with what is in the Quran, but also that at least a third of the contents of the 'forgery' confirmed exactly what is in the other officially accepted Gospels, that at least another third expanded on what is in the other officially accepted Gospels without contradicting them, and that the remaining third - even if it contradicted what is in the other officially accepted Gospels - nevertheless appeared to be 'in scripture style to a hair', to use the phrase coined by Toland. It could not have been a particularly easy brief!
There was, however, one obvious possible candidate: According to the Preface to the Spanish translation of the Gospel of Barnabas, Fra Marino - the monk who is said to have stolen the Pope's copy of the Italian version - had subsequently embraced Islam. 'If we can only prove that he did not really steal the Pope's copy at all,' we can see David Sox thinking, 'but that in fact he actually wrote it himself - then we will have succeeded!' Naturally this hypothesis would depend heavily on establishing beyond any doubt that not only the binding, but also the Italian manuscript itself was written between approximately 1580 and 1600 any proof of which is very conspicuous by its absence.
Of course, short of having access to an authentic and voluntary confession by Fra Marino, it would be impossible to 'prove' such a thesis, some four centuries after the alleged event, even 'on the balance of probabilities', and let alone 'beyond any reasonable doubt', - as David Sox in a roundabout way himself accepts, when he admits that 'the reader is faced with a great amount of speculation' in his book. However he nevertheless attempts the impossible, perhaps in the hope that, by at least raising this possibility and making it seem plausible, any version of the Gospel of Barnabas might as a result be sufficiently discredited not to be taken too seriously by anyone who happened to come across it.
We are accordingly presented with the fruits of David Sox' s laborious searches through the official records for the period within which the Italian manuscript was probably bound to see if there is any mention of a Fra Marino who not only had the requisite talents to be able to produce such an interesting 'forgery', but who also would have had the necessary motive needed to sustain what would have been such a demanding and, if he were to be found out by the Inquisition, such a dangerous, task.
David Sox was only able to come up with one possible candidate: a former Inquisitor of Venice - who probably would have been more likely to have burnt the Gospel of Barnabas than written it! - who according to the records was officially reprimanded on two occasions for being too lenient with heretics, and who was subsequently demoted from his position and replaced.
From these scant details, David Sox concludes that Fra Marino was not only somehow driven to embrace Islam, but also must have decided to forge the Italian version of the Gospel of Barnabas as an act of revenge against his successor - although how such an act could have actually adversely affected his successor (who probably would have been delighted to burn the offending 'forgery' had he ever come across it) is never clarified.
This scenario is extremely tenuous, to say the least, especially when in fact the Italian manuscript receives hardly any publicity whatsoever for the next four hundred years - and not until the English version of it begins to be widely circulated some seventy years after the Italian version has been translated into English by Canon Lonsdale and Laura Ragg!
Unfortunately for David Sox there are no contemporary records which depict the successor of an ex-Inquisitor (who happens to be called Fra Marino) tearing his hair out in desperation as hundreds of gullible Italians inexplicably embrace Islam after reading the infamous Gospel of Barnabas.
Indeed there is no real 'proof' that the Fra Marino to whom the Preface to the Spanish version refers is none other than our ex-Inquisitor from Venice. In all probability there were literally tens, if not hundreds, of Fra Marinos in Italy during the time of Pope Sixtus V not all of whom would have been recorded in what few records have survived up until today, and any one of whom might have been the Fra Marino who stole the Pope's copy of the Gospel of Barnabas.
Furthermore, as regards the Fra Marino selected by David Sox, although it is recorded that he was an Inquisitor, and that he was reprimanded, and that he was demoted (but not dismissed), there is no record that he either subsequently embraced Islam, or that he was burnt at the stake for embracing Islam, or that he fled the country in order to avoid the clutches of the Inquisition after accepting Islam. If, as David Sox has attempted to argue, Fra Marino himself wrote the Gospel of Barnabas 'in revenge against his successor', surely the Gospel would have been publicised at the time, and surely there would have been a public outcry as a result. It appears that David Sox could find no such record.
Thus in spite of all his long hours of research, his carefully arranged footnotes and cross-references, and his lucid style, David Sox's hypothesis remains unlikely, implausible and unconvincing. It is highly unlikely that any impartial court of law today could possibly conclude, on the 'evidence' presented by David Sox, that the link needed to substantiate his allegation of forgery which he seeks to establish in his book has been proved.
Indeed one cannot help concluding that perhaps the main reason why he has gone to such great lengths in his attempts to prove the highly improbable, may well be that it is because the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas are in fact true.
It is however to his credit that in spite of all the farfetched speculation - of which, as we have already seen, he admits there is 'a great amount' - David Sox does have the intellectual honesty to admit that, 'The Jesus of the Gospel of Barnabas is on many occasions similar to that of the canonical Gospels,' - although he then adds, ' because, of course, the former book depends on material contained in the latter.' It is possible, however, that it is in fact the converse of that statement which is nearer the truth:
It is possible that the reason why there is in fact such a marked similarity between the contents of The Gospel of Barnabas and that of the other Gospels is that the Italian translation is not a 'forgery', but rather a faithful translation of a much earlier Greek or Hebrew or even Aramaic version, which was in existence long before the Quran was revealed, and on which the writers of the four officially accepted Gospels perhaps depended - for it is now generally accepted that the three earliest accepted Gospels, known as the Synoptic Gospels, were in part derived from an earlier unknown Gospel which today's researchers often refer to as the '0' Gospel, for want of a better name.
It is possible that this earlier unknown Gospel could be the original Gospel of Barnabas, although it is clear from the following analysis contained in Dr. Maurice Bucaille's book, The Bible, the Quran and Science, that the 'Q' Gospel may well have been a collection of different narrations, rather than one complete document:
The problem of sources was approached in a very simplistic fashion at the time of the Fathers of the Church. In the early centuries of Christianity, the only source available was the Gospel that the complete manuscripts provided first, Le. Matthew's Gospel. The problem of sources only concerned Mark and Luke because John constituted a quite separate case. Saint Augustine held that Mark, who appears second in the traditional order of presentation, had been inspired by Matthew and had summarised his work. He further considered that Luke, who comes third in the manuscripts, had used data from both; his prologue suggests this, and has already been discussed.
From the Fathers of the Church until the end of the Eighteenth century AD, one and a half millennia passed without any new problems being raised on the sources of the evangelists: people continued to follow tradition. It was not until modern times that it was realised, on the basis of these data, how each evangelist had taken material found in the others and compiled his own specific narration guided by his own personal views.
Great weight was attached to actual collection of material for the narration. It came from the oral traditions of the communities from which it originated on the one hand, and from a common written Aramaic source that has not been rediscovered on the other, This written source could have formed a compact mass or have been composed of many fragments of different narrations used by each evangelist to contradict his own original work.
Thus the question inevitably arises as to whether the Apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas is, in fact, either this missing Gospel or at least a part of the possible collection of different narrations.
It must be remembered that John Mark, whose Gospel is the earliest of the four accepted Gospels, was the son of the sister of Barnabas. He never met Jesus. Thus, what he related of Jesus's life and teaching in his Gospel must have been related to him by others.
It is known from the books of the New Testament that he accompanied Paul and Barnabas on many of their missionary journeys up to the point when there was a sharp conflict between them, resulting in Barnabas and Mark going to Cyprus together. It is unlikely that Mark relied on Paul as a source of information since Paul had never met Jesus either.
The only reasonable conclusion appears to be that he must have repeated what his uncle Barnabas told him about Jesus. It is said by some that he acted as Peter's interpreter and wrote down what he had learned from Peter. This may be correct, for Mark must have had some contact with the other apostles when he was not journeying with Barnabas or Paul. However, Good speed shows us from his research that anything he did learn from Peter was by no means comprehensive:
He had been an interpreter of Peter and wrote down accurately, though not in order, everything that he remembered that had been said or done by the Lord.
For he neither heard the Lord, nor followed him, but afterwards, as I said, attended Peter who adapted his instructions to the needs of the hearers, but had no design of giving a connected account of the lord's oracles.
Luke, who also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, never met Jesus. He was Paul's personal physician. Matthew, who also never encountered Jesus, was a tax collector.
It has been argued that Mark's Gospel might be the 'Q' Gospel and that Matthew and Luke used his Gospel when writing theirs. However, they record details which Mark does not, which implies that Mark's Gospel could not have been their only source. Some have said that this is not important, since it is known that Mark's Gospel was written in Hebrew, then translated into Greek, and the Greek translation then translated once again into Latin.
All the Hebrew and early Greek versions of Mark's Gospel have been destroyed, and people can only speculate as to how much of the Gospel was changed or altered during these transitions from one language to another, although it has now been generally accepted that the final section (Mark 16: 9-20) was tacked on to the end of the basic work at a later stage in order to round it off, which is why it is not to be found in the two oldest complete manuscripts of the Gospels, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus which are said to date from the late 4th or 5th century AD.
It is interesting to note in passing that there have even been attempts to return to the source by synthesising the Gospels, since the contradictions that arise between them have, at times, proved a little awkward for the established Church.
Titian attempted to synthesise the four accepted Gospels, which had already been earmarked by the Pauline Church as their official Scriptures during the second century AD. In this Gospel, Titian used 96% of John's Gospel, 75% of Matthew's Gospel, 66% of Luke's Gospel, and 50% of Mark's Gospel. The rest he rejected. It is significant that he placed little trust in the earliest Gospel and relied most heavily on the last Gospel to be written. His synthesised Gospel was not a success.
Thus it is debatable whether Mark's Gospel can be regarded as the common source of the three Synoptic Gospels, whereas most of the events recorded in these three Gospels are contained within the Gospel of Barnabas - although, as has already been remarked, there are some notable and deeply significant differences - which is why, according to the Introduction to the Gospel of Barnabas, Barnabas wrote his Gospel in the first place:
“Dearly beloved, the great and wonderful God has during these past days visited us by his Prophet Jesus Christ in great mercy of teaching and miracles, by reason whereof many, being deceived of Satan, under pretence of piety, are preaching most impious doctrine, calling Jesus son of God, repudiating the circumcision ordained of God for ever, and permitting every unclean meat:
Among whom also Paul has been deceived, whereof I speak not without grief; for which cause I am writing that truth which I have seen and heard, in the intercourse that I have had with Jesus, in order that you may be saved, and not deceived of Satan and perish in the judgement of God. Therefore beware of every one that preaches unto you new doctrine contrary to that which I write, that you may be saved eternally. The great God be with you and guard you from Satan and from every evil. Amen."
If the Italian version of the Gospel of Barnabas is a faithful translation of an earlier manuscript which actually did contain what Barnabas originally wrote - and there is no way of conclusively 'proving' this, just as there is no way of conclusively 'proving' that the contents of the four officially accepted Gospels which exist today actually contain what their original authors in fact wrote - then it does follow that the Gospel of Barnabas could well be the 'Q' Gospel, the common source of the synoptic Gospels, although as yet no one has ventured to make a verse by verse comparison between the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas and the contents of the four official Gospels in order to establish exactly which verses are shared and which verses are unique.
If the Gospel of Barnabas is the 'Q' Gospel, and given the manner in which Paulinian Christianity developed, it then makes it easier to understand why not only the manuscripts of all the other Gospels - which are known to have existed in the early years of Christianity and which were rejected at the Council of Nicea were destroyed, but also all the early manuscripts of even-the four official Gospels, probably after the original texts had been radically altered. It should be emphasised that as regards the four officially accepted Gospels, there are no versions in the original Hebrew or Aramaic, and that, as Dr Maurice Bucaille confirms, the earliest Greek versions date from after the Council of Nicea:
Documents prior to this, i.e. papyri from the Third century AD and one possibly dating from the Second, only transmit fragments to us. The two oldest parchment manuscripts are Greek, Fourth century AD. They are the Codex Vaticanus, preserved in the Vatican Library and whose place of discovery is unknown, and the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered on Mount Sinai and is now preserved in the British Museum, London. The second contains two apocryphal works.
According to the Ecumenical Translation, two hundred and fifty other known parchments exist throughout the world, the last of these being from the Eleventh century AD. 'Not all the copies of the New Testament that have come down to us are identical' however. 'On the contrary, it is possible to distinguish differences of varying degrees of importance between them, but however important they may be, there is always a large number of them. Some of these only concern differences of grammatical detail, vocabulary or word order. Elsewhere however, differences between manuscripts can be seen which affect the meaning of whole passages.' If one wishes to see the extent of textual differences, one only has to glance through the Novum Testamenturn Graece (Nestlé-Aland, Pub., United Bible Societies, London, 1971).
This work contains a so-called 'middle of the road' Greek text. It is a text of synthesis with notes containing all the variations found in the different versions.
Thus not only is it possible - indeed it is highly likely - that significant changes were made to the original texts which pre-dated the Council of Nicea and which have all been destroyed, but also even the texts which date from after the Council of Nicea do not fully agree with each other, cannot therefore be entirely accurate, and in fact have themselves been altered:
The authenticity of a text, and of even the most venerable manuscript, is always open to debate. The Codex Vatîcatlus is a good example of this. The facsimile reproduction edited by the Vatican City, contains an accompanying note from its editors informing us that, 'several centuries after it was copied (believed to have been in circa the Tenth or Eleventh century), a scribe inked over all the letters except those he thought were a mistake.' There are passages in the text where the original letters in light brown still show through, contrasting visibly with the rest of the text which is in dark brown.
There is no indication that it was a faithful restoration. The note states moreover that, 'the different hands that corrected and annotated the manuscript over the centuries have not yet been definitively discerned; a certain number of corrections were undoubtedly made when the text was inked over.' In all the religious manuals the text is presented as a Fourth century copy. One has to go to sources at the Vatican to discover that various hands may have altered the text centuries later.
One might reply that other texts may be used for comparison, but how does one choose between variations that change the meaning? It is a well known fact that a very old scribe's correction can lead to the definitive reproduction of the corrected text. We shall see further on how a single-word in a passage from John concerning the Paraclete radically alters its meaning and completely changes its sense when viewed from a theological point of view.
O. Culmann, in his book, The New Testament, writes the following on the subject of variations:
“Sometimes the latter are the result of inadvertent flaws: the copier misses a word out, or conversely writes it twice, or a whole section of a sentence is carelessly omitted because in the manuscript to be copied it appeared between two identical words. Sometimes it is a matter of deliberate corrections, either the copier has taken the liberty of correcting the text according to his own ideas or he has tried to bring it into line with a parallel text in a more or less skillful attempt to reduce the number of discrepancies. As, little by little, the New Testament writings broke away from the rest of early Christian literature, and came to be regarded as Holy Scripture, so the copiers became more and more hesitant about taking the same liberties as their predecessors: they thought they were copying the authentic text, but in fact wrote down the variations. Finally, a copier sometimes wrote annotations in the margin to explain an obscure passage. The following copier, thinking that the sentence he found in the margin had been left out of the passage by his predecessor, thought it necessary to include the margin notes in the text. This process often made the new text even more obscure.”
The scribes of some manuscripts sometimes took exceedingly great liberties with the texts. This is the case of one of the most venerable manuscripts after the two referred to above, the Sixth century Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. The scribe probably noticed the difference between Luke's and Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, so he put Matthew's genealogy into his copy of Luke, but as the second contained fewer names than the first, he padded it out with extra names (without however balancing them up),
Is it possible to say that the Latin translations, such as Saint Jerome's Sixth century Vulgate, or older translations (Vetus Itala), or Syriac and Coptic translations are any more faithful than the basic Greek manuscripts? They might have been made from manuscripts older than the ones referred to above and subsequently lost to the present day. We just do not know.
The truth of the matter is that there are no complete pre Council of Nicea manuscripts of any of the writings contained in the New Testament extant today - nor of the Gospel of Barnabas for that matter or if there are, then whoever has them has been keeping very quiet about them for a good many centuries, and probably for not the right reasons.
It must be emphasised therefore that the contents of the earliest Greek manuscripts of the four officially accepted Gospels are in fact just as capable of having been 'forged', albeit during an earlier period, as are the contents of the Italian manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas. We just do not know.
The converse possibility, however, is equally true, and although, to quote the Introduction to the Ecumenical Translation, 'there can be no hope of going back to the original text itself,' there is still the possibility that on the whole all the Gospels - including The Gospel of Barnabas - in their present form do contain a certain degree of accuracy and truth. It is possible to read all of these Gospels and find elements of what must be true in all of them - but it is impossible to claim that any of them are entirely accurate or to rely completely and unreservedly on any one of them.
Furthermore, the one Gospel which we do not have is the Gospel of Jesus, the original revelation that he received, in the original language in which it was revealed - so that the accuracy and authenticity of any translation of that original text could always be ascertained and assessed simply by referring back to that original text whenever the occasion might arise.
It is interesting to note, as has already been stated, in this context that according to the Gospel of Barnabas, the revelation which was given to Jesus – ‘The Ingeel’ - was never preserved as a written text at any stage, but was more in the nature of a well of wisdom which was placed in the heart of Jesus by the angel Gabriel, and from which he could draw as he needed:
Jesus having come to the age of thirty years, as he himself said unto me, went up to the Mount of Olives with his mother to gather olives. Then at midday as he was praying, when he came to these words: 'Lord, with mercy ...,' he was surrounded by an exceeding bright light and by an infinite multitude of angels, who were saying: 'Blessed be Cod.' The angel Gabriel presented to him as it were a shining mirror, a book, which descended into the heart of Jesus, in which he had knowledge of what God has done and what has said, and what God wills insomuch that everything was laid bare and open to him; as he said unto me: 'Believe, Barnabas, that 1know every prophet with every prophecy, insomuch that whatever I say the whole has come forth from that book.'
This account of the nature of the revelation which Jesus received is not contradicted by any historical record which states otherwise. There is no record of Jesus being presented with inscribed tablets as happened with Moses, for example, or of his receiving a series of revelations like Muhammad, blessings and peace be on all of them, with certain disciples being appointed to record these revelations as they occurred - but not any of Jesus' s own words - in order to ensure that the revelation was preserved exactly as it was revealed.
There can be no doubt, however, that Jesus was an illuminated being whose words contained a clarity and directness which reflected all the qualities of light - and which must have entered people's hearts and remained in them just as light does when it enters a room.
And when these words came to be recorded in writing, then surely at least some of these words - together with the accounts of the situations in which they were uttered - must have survived intact, even if the darkness in other people tried to cloud some of them up or shut them out by changing or removing them.
In spite of all the imperfections which exist in the present contents not only of the Old and the New Testaments, but also of The Gospel of Barnabas and other similar works, there can be no doubt that at least some of their contents must accurately record at least some of the words and actions of Jesus, peace be on him - although it will never be possible to actually differentiate between what is reliable and what is not with complete accuracy or certainty.
It does remain a great pity, therefore, that there is no complete original authentic text of the Gospel of Jesus, which has been verified beyond any reasonable doubt, in existence today.
It therefore follows that what David Sox says of the four officially accepted Gospels applies equally to the Gospel of Barnabas:
The differences, even the contradictions, between the Gospel accounts do not detract from the spiritual truths that they contain; if anything, they give us a better understanding of the world in which they were written.
Nevertheless, there is still the necessity - wherever fundamental contradictions between the various accounts do exist - of having to decide which account is the most accurate and the nearest to the truth of the matter:
Was Jesus a Prophet of God or a 'son' of God? Was it Jesus or Judas, or someone else, who was crucified? Did Jesus tell his disciples that there would be a Prophet who would come after him who would be called Muhammad, and are the references to the Paraclete in John's Gospel in fact references to him?
And the answers to these questions can only be sensed if the reader does indeed understand the world in which they were written - and accordingly the nature of the disagreement that dearly existed between the two groups of Christians whom Cardinal Daniélou termed the Judeo-Christians and the Pauline Christians, between those who sincerely followed the example of Jesus and those who followed Paul, putting words into the mouth of Jesus that he, peace be on him, never himself uttered, and granting him a divine status which he neither claimed nor possessed.
Even though none of the contents of either the New Testament or the Gospel of Barnabas are capable of being fully authenticated; and even though it is impossible to establish exactly what has been altered, or added, or removed, or allowed to remain intact; and whether or not the authors of the officially accepted Gospels, each with such a differing background, derived their knowledge from the same source or not; and if they did, then whether or not that source was in fact The Gospel of Barnabas, about Barnabas the commandment is: “If he comes unto you, receive him.” (Epistle to the Colossians 4:10).
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