Barnabas

BARNABAS. - A distinguished collaborator of the Apostles, especially associated with St. Paul. His name was Joseph, and he was surnamed B. by the Apostles, that is, "son of prophecy" or "of preaching" (Aramaic bar nébhú'áh), thereby signifying his effective gifts as an "exhorter" in the nascent Church.

A Levite by tribe, Cypriot by birth, he was a cousin of Mark the Evangelist (Col. 4:10). He went to live in Jerusalem, where he owned a house, which he sold and handed over the price to the Apostles (Acts 4:16-17). He presented the newly converted Paul to the Apostles, supporting him with his authority (Acts 9:26-27). Because of the great esteem he enjoyed ("vir bonus et plénus Spiritu sancto et fide"; Acts 11:24), he was sent to Antioch to direct the Christian community that had arisen there. From there "he went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and having found him he brought him to Antioch" (Acts 11:25), where they worked together for a whole year with great fruit. With Paul he then went to Jerusalem to bring relief during the famine in the time of Claudius (Acts 11:10). On returning to Antioch, he was set apart together with Paul for the evangelization of the Gentiles (Acts 13:2).

They set out on a mission to Cyprus, whence they proceeded to Perga, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. At Lystra the people, enthusiastic over the wonder-working preachers, believed them to be two gods: the eloquent Paul was acclaimed as Mercury, and B., perhaps because of his imposing physique, as Jupiter (Acts 13-14).

On returning to Antioch, both were again sent to Jerusalem, where they consulted the Apostles about the obligation of circumcision (Acts 15:1-26). They then planned to return to Asia Minor to visit the communities founded on the previous mission. But Paul refused to take along Mark as well, B.'s cousin, who had abandoned them on the previous journey. So they separated; B. preferred to go with Mark to Cyprus, and Paul by land retraced the itinerary of the first mission (Acts 15:36-41). The harmony among the three remained unaltered, as appears from the kindly mentions that Paul always makes of B. and Mark in his letters.

The New Testament provides no further information about B. The accounts from other sources have little authority. His tomb is said to have been found in the time of the emperor Zeno (488), together with the Gospel of St. Matthew written by the hand of B. himself. The name of B. appears in the Roman Canon (Sacrament. Gelasianum), and in Rome there was an ancient church in his honor. In the liturgy he is almost equated with the apostles. In the East and in the West his feast is on June 11.

Vincenzo Cavalla

ACTS OF BARNABAS

Apocryphal book, composed at the end of the 5th century.

In 1698 D. Papebroch published for the first time, from Codex Vaticanus graecus 1667, the Acta et passio Barnabae in Cypro, with the corresponding Latin version by Cardinal Guglielmo Sirieto (Acta SS. Junii, II, ed. Antwerp 1698, pp. 431-36). The Greek edition of C. von Tischendorf, Acta apostolorum apocrypha, Leipzig 1851, pp. XXVI-XXXI, 64-74, also made use of Codex Parisien. 1470. But the merit of the critical edition, based further on 4 other codices, belongs to M. Bonnet, Acta apostolorum apocrypha, II, ibid. 1903, pp. xxvii ff., 292-302.

As the author of this Περὶδαι καὶ μαρτύριον τοῦ ἁγίου Βαρυάδα τοῦ ἀποστόλου, John Mark presents himself, a cousin of B., formerly an assistant of Cyril, the great priest of Jupiter, and, after his Baptism at Iconium, attached to the service of Paul, B. and Silas. After recounting the lively dispute between Paul and B. (cf. Acts 15:37-39), he goes on to extol the activity of B. in Cyprus. The latter was cruelly harassed by the Jews of the island, then burned alive. Mark managed to gather up and conceal his relics "together with the Gospel received from Matthew," then fled to Egypt, where he continued the work of evangelization. Baronio (Annales, ad annum 51, n. 51) severely called him a "nebulo." From the very precise topographical information one could perhaps infer the Cypriot origin of these Acts, toward the end of the 5th century.

Adalberto Metzinger

LETTER OF BARNABAS

New Testament apocryphon, probably composed toward the end of the 1st century.

1. Content

Its purpose (1, 4-5) is to lead the faithful to a perfect knowledge of Christianity. It comprises, besides the introduction (ch. 1) and the conclusion (ch. 21), two unequal parts, clearly distinguished by the author himself. The first (chs. 2-17) is didactic-polemical in character. It exhorts to the practice of the virtues, contrasting this with the sacrifices (ch. 2) and the fasts of the Old Testament, by then abrogated (ch. 3), since judgment is near (ch. 4). It then illustrates the redemption wrought by Christ through his passion (ch. 5), foretold by the prophets (ch. 6), prefigured by the symbols (sayings, deeds, rites, various prescriptions) of the Mosaic law, which the Jews wrongly understood literally (chs. 7-17). There follows a moral part: the doctrine of the two ways (ch. 18), very similar to that of the Didache (v.; chs. 1-5); the way of light, that is, of virtue (ch. 19), and the way of darkness, that is, of vices (ch. 20). In the concluding exhortation it recalls that the day of the Lord is near (ch. 21).

2. Author

It is attributed to B. by the manuscript tradition (principally the Sinaitic codex of the Bible, 4th century, and the Jerusalem codex of the Didache, 11th century) and by the ancient ecclesiastical writers: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Serapion of Thmuis, Eusebius of Caesarea (doubtfully). Today this attribution is generally rejected (it is upheld by J. D. Burger, in Museum Helveticum 1946, pp. 180-93, assigning it to 70-75), because the writing was not included in the canon of the New Testament, because it gives an exclusively allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, in contrast with the doctrine of St. Paul, whose companion B. was, and because it is later than B., who died probably not after 70. It is probably due to a Christian converted from Judaism who lived in the Alexandrian milieu, where biblical allegorism flourished. It was composed after 70, since it alludes to the destruction of the Temple, and before 170, when Celsus cited it implicitly (Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 63). The interpretation of a prophecy of Daniel, referred to the Roman empire (4, 3-10), leads the majority of modern critics to place the work under the reign of Nerva (18 Sept. 96-25 Jan. 98). According to L. Williams in Journal of Theol. Stud., 1933, p. 337 ff. it was composed before the year 100. Others (thus Stählin), on account of an allusion, understood literally, to the rebuilding of the Temple (16, 4), place it in 130. Cf. also Schoeps in Conject. Neotestamentica, VI, pp. 3, 18 (shortly after the revolt of Bar Kokhba).

3. Doctrine

As has been said, the pseudo-B. professes allegorism in biblical exegesis, not only discerning in the whole Old Testament types of Christ and of the Church, but denying the literal sense altogether (especially 47, 9-12). The divinity of Christ is clearly affirmed (4, 12; 5, 5, 10; 6, 12; 7, 2; 12, 10 ff.). On the redemption accomplished by the sacrifice of Christ to obtain for us the forgiveness of sins and new life, it expands throughout the first part. It speaks at length of Baptism. In eschatology, it affirms that the world will last six thousand years, that the end is near, that in the seventh millennium God will rest, and in the eighth another world will begin (4, 3; 15; 21, 3).

Michele Pellegrino

GOSPEL OF BARNABAS

Apocryphon, mentioned only in two collections of canonical and apocryphal books, as being of Gnostic origin.

The so-called Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis cites the Evangelium secundum Barnabam (Pl. 59, 162, 175 ff.; E. von Dobschütz [Texte und Untersuchungen, 38, IV], Leipzig 1912); the other mention is in a Greek list of 60 canonical books (T. Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, II, Erlangen 1890, p. 292). The common opinion is that no trace of it has survived; but some authors claim to have identified two short texts of it (e.g., E. Hennecke, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, 2nd ed., Tübingen 1924, p. 64, note 2).

From the 14th-16th century we have Italian manuscripts (in the libraries of The Hague and Vienna) that contain a Gospel of B., not to be confused with the ancient Gnostic one. The author is an Italian who, having passed from Christianity to Islam, in opposition to the doctrine of St. Paul wanted to prove by the authority of B. that Jesus was a prophet and precursor, not the Son of God, and that the true Messiah was Muhammad. «C'est un curieux monument d'un étrange état d'âme» (Rev. bibl., new series, 5 [1908], p. 300).

Adalberto Metzinger