Category:Gospel of Barnabas (text)

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The Gospel of Barnabas (see [ Online Text]) is an "apocryphal" gospel.


The ancient Gospel of Barnabas

An ancient Gospel of Barnabas is mentioned in two independent lists of apocryphal work: the Latin Decretum Gelasianum (6th century), as well as the Greek List of the Sixty Books (7th-century). No extant portions or fragments of the document have been preserved.

The medieval Gospel of Barnabas

Manuscript tradition

A Gospel of Barnabas is attested by two late-16th-century manuscripts, one in Italian, one in Spanish. The relation between the two manuscripts is unclear; Istanbul is likely to be the place of origin of both manuscripts.

  • The Italian manuscript belonged to John Frederick Cramer who in 1709 lent it to Toland. The manuscript was transferred to the Austrian National Library in Vienna in 1738. This Italian manuscript formed the basis for the most commonly circulated English version, a translation undertaken by Lonsdale and Laura Ragg and published in 1907. The Raggs' English version was quickly re-translated into Arabic by Rashid Rida, in an edition published in Egypt in 1908.
  • The Spanish manuscript is now lost, its text surviving only in a partial 18th-century transcript, discovered in the 1970s at the University of Sydney's Fisher Library among the books of Charles Nicholson.

Content=

The Gospel of Barnabas contains a harmony of the four Canonical Gospels, but is strongly anti-Pauline and anti-Trinitarian in tone. In accordance with Islamic doctrine, Jesus is described of a prophet and his divinity is denied. The text also claims that Jesus escaped the crucifixion and Judas Iscariot was crucified in his place. Finally, Jesus predicted the coming of Mohammad.

The document however contains many details that are not in line with the Qur'an. Notably, in the Gospel of Barnabas Jesus denies that he was the Messiah.

Contemporary controversies

The document has been used in Muslim apologetics as evidence that the "original" Gospel of Jesus before its "corruption" conformed to the Islamic interpretation. The Gospel of Barnabas however is a 14th-17th century work and no connection has been proven between it and the ancient Gospel of Barnabas mentioned in earlier sources.

Media in category "Gospel of Barnabas (text)"

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