Introduction page |
Introduction The exquisite library of Prince Eugene of Savoy is in the grand hall
(Prunksaal) of the Hofburg, Vienna's massive palace-fortress of the Habsburgs. The Austrian royal library was established in the fourteenth century, and with the addition of the prince's collection in 1738, constituted one of the most important accumulations of manuscripts outside the Vatican. One of those manuscripts was the reason I went to the library in February of this year. Like many of Prince Eugene's books, the one I came to see is kept in a box container which was constructed to appear as a book and is ornamented with his coat of arms. Like most of the volumes, it bears little trace of being much used by the connoisseur. Unlike his other books, this one has been singled out as a literary fraud - and a most unusual one at that.
I was allowed to examine The Gospel of Barnabas in an adjoining room which has the appearance of a laboratory. There was the musty smell of old paper, and efficient attendants in white coats made certain the few visitors used pencils instead of ballpoint pens in writing their notes. Plastic covers were placed over the manuscripts while they were viewed. My first impression of Codex 2662 was of its small size and good condition; outside its 'box' it measures roughly six inches by five. The gospel is a thick quarto of 255 leaves bound in thin but stiff boards covered with blackish-green leather.
The codex, with its steady and meticulous script, certainly did not appear the object of harsh polemical debate.
Today The Gospel of Barnabas is basically unknown in the West except as a footnote in the more comprehensive accounts of Islamic studies or New Testament apocrypha. In sections of the Muslim world, it is another matter: Barnabas has become a major polemical tool as a challenge to the authenticity of the Gospel tradition and the foundations of Christian theology.
Christian spokesmen in Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Egypt have been made aware of its
significance to Muslim polemicists - it is impossible for them to ignore it.
I first became aware of Barnabas while writing about the interest a Muslim sect, the Ahmadis, had shown in the Turin Shroud. The Ahmadis were impressed by the speculation of certain observers that the image on the relic might indicate that Jesus had survived death on the cross. Following that experience, I came across mentions of the gospel in a number of Muslim tracts and finally, and more importantly, in several serious analyses in academic journals. The influence of Barnabas appeared difficult to dismiss.
In part, this book is a study in polemics, the now unfashionable art of theological disputation.
At one time, polemics was a recognised branch of theology devoted to the refutation of errors; now the word reeks of inquisitional tactics and heresy hunts of a bygone age. Its more respectable theological sister, apologetics, the defence of the faith on intellectual grounds, is also generally played down in the ecumenical climate of the modern Church, receiving little of the attention it once had on the curricula of theological colleges.
Many Christian priests and teachers exercising their ministry in Muslim countries (we used to call them missionaries!) are being forced to react to The Gospel of Barnabas because of its popular use by their Muslim counterparts. It seems to me that the realities they face - which more and more are being brought to the attention of the West - should be better known to the general reading public.
Like it or not, the new vigour in Islam is making itself felt, and not only in political and economic areas. Islam and Christianity are both woefully ignorant of each other in many respects. In the aftermath of events in the Lebanon, Egypt and especially Iran,
Christians still operate with rather medieval assessments of Islam, and Muslims see no value in better understanding a religion which theirs has overtaken.
The polemics surrounding The Gospel of Barnabas present a strong attack upon the very corner-stone of the Christian faith Jesus' death and Resurrection - and the Church's authority to decide what scriptures are to be accepted as the revealed Word of God. The Dutch scholar Jan Slomp has taken a keen interest in Barnabas, but to other Western scholars the book remains so repugnant that they refuse to make any comment on it. Slomp is a noteworthy example of the Christian participant in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims who doggedly tries to keep it open and honest and is not blind to the more unpleasant aspects which
need to be aired. He believes in the continued importance of apologetics, which is still 'useful in clearing the ground for dialogue on the real issues at stake'.! It is this feeling which, in part, has led me to write this book. The dispute over Barnabas in many areas of the Muslim world clouds far more important issues which both
Christians and Muslims need to come to grips with.
There are other reasons for an examination of the Vienna manuscript in a book aimed at the general reading public. A little digging reveals facets of the document which have gone basically unnoticed and present some fascinating possibilities. Just why was it written?
I give a possible scenario for authorship which asks for future exploration into the murky scene of the Inquisition in Venice and the inscrutable figure of Sixtus V. I have a hunch there is more to the story than I was able to uncover.
In Chapters 5 and 6 problems are discussed which justify the need for a new approach in koranic studies in the West - and by a breed not afraid to cross swords with established authorities. I have found scholars in the field of Islamic studies, and even more so in that of Gnosticism - especially in my native America - to be remarkably unco-operative to any one outside their cliques. The koranic denial of the Crucifixion has fascinated a number of scholars, and the reader of Barnabas - if he survives the first twothirds of its 222 chapters — is struck by the portrayal of Judas taking
Jesus' place in the story of the Passion. Barnabas makes graphically clear what the Koran intimates, and its presentation is remarkably evocative of that given by early Muslim interpreters; in a dramatic sense, it takes us back to a polemic that is as old as the formation of Islam itself. Christian converts to Islam wrote in a remarkably similar manner.
Any serious discussion of Barnabas cannot avoid the larger issue of the respective ways in which Muslims and Christians handle their scriptures. Christians wearily accustomed to literary dissection and 'demythologizing' are suprised to discover that Muslims have never approached the Koran in this manner. This is a major difference between the two religions - fundamentalist Christianity excepted, of course!
Attempts have been made by Western scholars to discover the roots and sources in the Koran. Some have been rather heavyhanded, as we shall see, and a number of scholars have given a Christian reading which, though irenical in intent, ends up being more offensive than the straightforward polemical attacks.
Fundamentalist Christians continue the approach used by missionaries a
century ago. Though they would deny it vehemently, Muslim and Christian fundamentalists have much in common.
It is the fundamentalists of Judaism, Christianity and Islam who are experiencing the greatest success in winning new souls to their faiths in the Near East, Africa and the West. One is inclined to agree with Peter Nichols' comment in The Pope's Divisions: "There will be a lot more religion in the future, much of it of an unpleasant kind.'?
Such terms as 'fundamentalist' and 'revival' are specifically American Christian in origin, and I, like many other writers, use them for want of better ones. In Western usage they have negative connotations and suggest a certain type of religiosity which is at times emotional and anti-intellectual; such a description is not always applicable to Muslim forms.
Simply as a historical curio, The Gospel of Barnabas presents great fascination: none of the 'modern apocrypha' has had a 'longer run', none has been approached with more polemical fury, and none possesses a more interesting historical background. With Barnabas, we enter a world of extraordinary individuals who have either been named in or involved with its pages: a pope who was formerly a father inquisitor in Venice; a Christian monk who turned
Muslim and seems the most likely candidate for creating the spurious gospel; a Jewish expert who sees it as a link with early
Jewish Christianity; a sheikh of Islam's most prestigious university who used it in his religious instruction to Muslim youth; the most listed writer in the Index of Prohibited Books from whose library in Amsterdam it surfaced in the eighteenth century; and the remarkable English clergyman and painter of 'tree-portraits' who with his wife translated the gospel over a four-year period 'in small hotel rooms, and far from books of reference'.
Arabic words are translated in a variety of fashions, and I have used a highly simplified form. I have also generally employed N. J.
Dawood's usage of koranic terminology, and his translation of the Koran? because of its accessibility. I have followed popular spellings of 'Muhammad', 'Muslim' and 'Koran' but also continued sources' preferred spellings in quoted accounts. The designation The Gospel of Barnabas creates a certain problem. As we shall see, there are a few pages of a manuscript of Barnabas known through a particular writer, and the listing of a 'Gospel under the name of Barnabas' in ancient listings. I think it is clear that most of the time Barnabas is mentioned we are referring to the Italian manuscript; the title Pseudo-Barnabas appears to me somewhat
redundant. The New English Bible has been used except when otherwise noted.
I am indebted for the early stages of my interest in this work to two scholars.
Firstly, Geoffrey Parrinder, professor of the comparative study of religions at the University of London and author of the invaluable Fesus in the Qur'an,' has patiently answered many inquiries and offered wise advice. I used his book extensively in Chapter 7, and I find his general approach both objective and timely. Secondly, Albert Hourani, Fellow of St. Antony's, Oxford, supplied me with useful material; also, his Europe and the Middle
East' is an illuminating volume portraying Christian-Muslim relations and polemics over the centuries, and I refer to it often in Chapter 8.
Jan Slomp's critical analyses of Barnabas and wise words on the Christian—Muslim dialogue have been extremely useful, and I quote from his writings often and concur with his judgements in many respects. From 1964 to 1977 Dr Slomp was on the staff of the Christian Study Centre at Rawalpindi in Pakistan, and he is now in charge of a centre concerned with Muslims in Dutch society. Dr
Slomp kindly offered many suggestions and improvements to my original manuscript.
Paul Grendler helped indirectly with the authorship problem discussed in Chapter 4 because his book The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1604° so comprehensively covers an area heretofore largely neglected by scholars writing in English.
Professor Grendler offered some helpful insights in personal correspondence.
Despite the passage of time, the Raggs' volume on The Gospel of Barnabas' remains the authoritative work on the subject. It isa pity it is not more readily available, and I am appreciative that their publisher, the Clarendon Press, has given me permission to quote from their translation and findings. I also thank Hofrat University professor Dr Otto Mazal, director.of the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, for allowing me to examine the Italian manuscript and for the photographs of it he made available.
The director of the state archives in Venice, Dr Maria Francesca Tiepolo, allowed me to study the Holy Office file on Fra Marino and answered several important inquiries concerning it. I am sorry that the Franciscan centre in Venice was unable to uncover any more information concerning Fra Marino, and hope that a future writer might be able to discover more about him. I suspect there are
a number of surprises which might be uncovered in time.
Good friends, the Rt Revd John A. T. Robinson and Dom Sylvester Houedard, have also given good insights and access to library materials. Gavin Ryan of Trinity College, Cambridge, kindly translated many portions of the Holy Office file from the Venetian archives; and I am also appreciative of the help of Jennifer
Brooke of the American School in London and Roberto Partarrieu Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown University, in translating Spanish and Latin materials. Jerome Lawrence has given me permission to quote from Inherit the Wind, copyright 1955 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
He that sides with a Party is adjudged to Hell by the Rest; and if he declares for none, he receives no milder Sentence from all.
John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696)
PART ONE The Muslim Gospel of Barnabas
CHAPTER ONE
'This Strange Book'
Sixteenth Century In the latter part of the sixteenth century, a Christian monk called
Fra Marino had accidentally met with a writing of the Church father Irenaeus which spoke against St. Paul, alleging as his authority The Gospel of Barnabas. The monk became exceedingly desirous to find this gospel. One day he was with his friend, Pope Sixtus V, in the latter's private library. The pontiff fell asleep, and Fra Marino looked around for something to read: the first book he laid his hand on proved to be the very gospel he had been searching for.
Overjoyed at the discovery, he hid his prize in the sleeve of his robe, and when the pope woke up the monk was gone - with the gospel.'
Fra Marino's gospel contained a complete history of Jesus Christ from his birth to his ascension; but, this one, unlike the four canonical Gospels, had Judas taking Jesus' place on the cross and the Lord foretelling: 'He it is whom the nations look for, to whom the secrets of God are so manifest that, when he cometh into the world, blessed shall they be that shall listen to his words ... He is
Muhammad, the Messenger of God.'
Due to this experience Fra Marino became a convert to Islam.
The gospel passed through different hands until it reached 'a person of great name and authority' in Amsterdam at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The celebrated connoisseur of books
Prince Eugene of Savoy received the manuscript in 1738; and along with the rest of his library it found its way into the imperial library of Vienna (now the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek), where it is still kept.
Montague James's The Apocryphal New Testament, first issued in 1924, is described by its publisher as 'the first book to supply the English reader with a comprehensive view of the apocryphal literature connected with the New Testament'. James believes the existence of a 'Gospel under the name of Barnabas' to be "most doubtful ... The extant book under that name (ed. Ragg, 1907) is in Italian, a forgery of the late fifteenth or sixteenth, by a renegade from Christianity to Islam.'?
In 1907, Canon Lonsdale and Laura Ragg published their translation of the Vienna Codex number 2662, 'The True Gospel of Jesus according to the description of Barnabas his apostle'.'° The Anglican missionary and scholar W.H. Temple Gairdner of Cairo was among the first to reply to the renewed Muslim interest in the work created by the translation. Writing only months after the Raggs' book appeared, he stated:
The name (though not the contents) of this strange book had long been known in India, and was not unknown in Egypt, though it was but a name, it has been freely cited in these countries by interested parties, who showed their slender respect for truth by citing a book they had never seen or read, and almost certainly never would have read of but for a chance mention of it in Sale's
Introduction to the Qur'an ... Now, however, an easily accessible edition has been given to the world, and there are many signs that the interest in this book is to be quickened, especially in the Moslem East. Translations are appearing both in India and Egypt, and the wildest talk is being indulged in as to the historical value of the book ... We believe that when honest men throughout the East know the contents of the book, they will assign its true historical value - which is exactly nil.!!
1940s Cairo's thousand-year-old al-Azhar University, the oldest in the Muslim world, has been a centre for religious higher education for Muslims from all over Africa and Asia, and its sheikhs are among the important spokesmen in Islam. In the 1940s one such sheikh,
Professor Abu Zahra, used The Gospel of Barnabas in his religion
classes and addressed an appeal to Christians: 'The most significant service to religion, and to humanity, would be for the Church to make an effort to study it [ the Gospel of Barnabas] and to refute it, and to bring us the proofs on which it supports its refutation.'!?
14 June 1966, Shlomo Pines, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, read a lecture entitled 'The Jewish Christians
According to a New Source' which was later published by the Hebrew Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the 'new source' created a stir among scholars around the world.!> In the Excursus II to his lecture, Pines made reference to The Gospel of Barnabas, speculating about connections between it and Islamic or Ebionite texts. The Ebionites were a sect of Jewish Christians which flourished in the early centuries of the Christian era and stressed the binding character of the Mosaic law.
Pines felt that the Raggs' evaluation of the gospel was 'rather onesided' and did not take into account 'the complexities of the work'.
He noted that passages which 'appear to attest the Ebionite character of the gospel are quite numerous'. The scholar also presented a 'tenable hypothesis' that a gospel of B. lam. s. mentioned by the great eleventh-century scientist al-Biruni and related to the Ebionites' gospel 'may have been an early form of the Gospel of Barnabas'.
In February 1976 Muammar el-Qaddafi hosted a Christian-Muslim dialogue in Tripoli. The official Vatican delegation found that the 700 participants had been allocated a large number of copies of the Koran and, as its 'Christian' counterpart, of The Gospel of Barnabas.
No bibles were to be seen: no New Testament, not even a single portion of the canonical Gospels. The Vatican delegates protested and Barnabas was removed; but no bibles came to replace it. One of the Catholic participants said later that Qaddafi had asked him when the pope in Rome would at last produce the true Gospel,
Barnabas, which he had been trying to hide for centuries.
From 21 to 27 March 1977, a Second International Muslim-Chris-
tian Congress was held in Cordoba, which'had served as the capital of Moorish Spain. Although 200 participants from twenty countries took part, most of the Arab delegations failed to come at the last moment because of the opposition of a sheikh of al-Azhar, who saw no useful purpose in the congress 'as long as the official
Church did not change its attitude toward Islam and Muhammad'.
According to the conference record, 'one of the moments of crisis' occurred following an address by Dr Maurice Borrmans on 'Christian Reaction to the Islamic Presentation of Jesus'. Among the 'strong reactions in the ensuing debate' were a series of questions presented by the Libyan Director of Religious Affairs,
Professor Raja Sassi, on the Crucifixion and Paul's understanding of it, and on 'the importance of the Gospel of Barnabas'.!*
In the autumn of 1979, the Muslim Information Services of London issued Muhammad 'Ata ur-Rahim's Jesus, A Prophet of Islam with publicity which included advertisements in the city's underground. This book, published 'under the auspices of the Presidency of Shariah Courts and Islamic Affairs, Doha' was aimed at 'English language readers, especially those who profess the Christian faith'. The author's chief ammunition for arguing that the original Christian faith has been perverted by St. Paul and his theological successors was The Gospel of Barnabas, 'the only known surviving Gospel written by a disciple of Jesus, that is, by a man who spent most of his time in the actual company of Jesus during the three years in which he was delivering his message'. According to 'Ata ur-Rahim, The Gospel of Barnabas was accepted as a canonical gospel in the churches of Alexandria up until AD 325. It is known that it was being circulated in the first and second centuries after the birth of Jesus from the writings of Irenaeus ... who accused Paul 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 supporting his views.!°
In 1981, the Lahore publishers Al-Kitab issued a new edition of
The Gospel of Barnabas. The cover asserted that Barnabas was 'the only Gospel which preached pure and unmixed monotheism' and that it had been dismissed by the Christians as apocrypha; not withstanding the fact that it was as old as Christianity itself and had remained prevalent in Spain, Egypt, and Syria etc. until it was banned in AD 325. It remained in oblivion for about 1500 years until it was discovered in the eighteenth century. But no sooner it was published than it was made to disappear. It is being published again. Barring a few interpolations about matters not religious
(and even the canonical Gospels are not free of interpolations) we leave it to the reader to judge by going through its contents whether it is a forgery, a literary fraud or the revealed word of an inspired Prophet ... If we accept it as a forgery, as the Christian scholars say, then the most surprising fact which baffles explanation is how a man of such remarkable and superb talent forged this Gospel has remained unknown to this day.'®
In conjunction with the London-based Union of Muslim Organisations in 1981 a handsome little volume for English-speaking
Muslim children was published entitled The Prophets. The prefatory 'Letter to Muslim Parents and Children' states: "This book has been written for your children so that they may know something about our great prophets'. Chapter 9 deals with Isa
(Jesus). Under the section 'Isa (peace be on him) Is Taken Up', we read:
Some of the Israelites did not believe in Isa (peace be on him).
They were jealous. They reported lies to the Roman governor against him. At last Judas, one of those disciples who were with him, decided to betray him. Saint Barnabas, one of his closest friends, has written about this. Isa (peace be on him) was staying in a disciple's house. Judas had told the Roman soldiers that they should catch the man whom he would kiss on the cheek. He went and kissed Isa (peace be on him). But the whole room became dark and there was confusion. When the room became bright, the soldiers caught Judas because Allah had changed his features. He looked like Isa (peace be on him). He protested. He appealed. But the soldiers laughed. They put a crown of thorns on him and said,
thinking he was Isa (peace be on him), "Now you are the King of the Jews.'
He was taken to the gallows and crucified.
Most of the disciples of Isa (peace be on him) were either confused or believed that it was Isa (peace be on him) who was crucified. Some of them went and buried him. Later on some of them dug up the grave and took away the dead body and told people that he had gone to Heaven.
But Allah had lifted him up at the time and the Roman soldiers had come.
Saint Barnabas, one of his nearest disciples, says in his written account, that he was not crucified and that he was alive. He came in the company of angels in order to tell his mother that he was alive so that she could get some peace of mind.!"
All the world loves a mystery, and there is something about the idea of a 'suppressed, lost or secret' gospel which attracts instant attention. There are a host of so-called apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles and apocalypses with similarities to the several types of writing in the canonical New Testament. Early in the Church's history, the authorities were vexed as to which books outside the canon (the authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture)
. might have merit, or had been rejected in accordance with rather arbitrary decisions.
The use of the term 'apocrypha' is unsatisfactory and confusing.
It comes from the Greek meaning 'hidden' or 'secret', and soon acquired the connotation of 'spurious' or 'false'. Currently, the term is applied to a variety of biblical writings. Foremost amongst these is the Apocrypha, Jewish writings which Catholics, Anglicans and certain other Christian groups place between the Old and New
Testaments. This includes such texts as Judith, Ecclesiasticus and the two Books of the Maccabees.
The so-called 'New Testament apocrypha' is a fascinating collection of works of which the New Testament scholar M.S. Enslin has said: 'Many of them are trivial, some are highly theatrical, some are disgusting; nonetheless, they may be properly styled religious.'!8
The collection includes Gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Philip; Acts of John, Paul, and Andrew; Epistles of Christ and Abgarus, and Lentulus; and Apocalypses of Peter, Thomas and Paul. The gamut of New Testament literature is presented. This apocryphal New
Testament is in no way analogous to the Jewish writings referred to above, for the former was never regarded as acceptable by orthodox
Christians; it was produced by and for schismatic or heretical groups, especially the Gnostics. Many of the New Testament apocryphal books served as heretical substitutes for canonical writings.
St. John's Gospel contains two passages which present a spirit that would seem to elicit new scriptural material: 'There were indeed many other signs that Jesus performed in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book' (John 20.30); 'There is much else that Jesus did. If it were all to be recorded in detail, I suppose the whole world could not hold the books that would be written' (John 21.25). As the New Testament scholar Robert Grant has put it, 'Gnostics and others may have proceeded to test this hypothesis.'!? Even though the Church fathers roundly rejected the apocryphal gospels, sayings they contained that were attributed to Jesus were often accepted and used by them. Apparently, as Grant says, they felt there might be 'a little gold' in the 'mud' of the apocryphal material.
The books of the apocryphal New Testament have received regular serious scholarly attention, but not so the extremely spurious grouping known as 'modern apocrypha'. Of this collection
Enslin says, 'without exception (they) are worthless trash and the rankest forgeries'.2? This assortment includes such books as The Aquarian Gospel, The Twenty-Ninth Chapter of Acts, The Confessions of Pontius Pilate and The Gospel of Fosephus.*! Many of these works regularly reappear in bookshops as 'new and startling revelations', and most of them attempt to present 'the lost years of Jesus', those from his infancy to the time of his ministry at around age thirty. St. Luke's is the only canonical Gospel which includes a mention of Jesus' boyhood days: his questioning of the teachers in the temple at Jerusalem when he was twelve (Luke 2.40-52). It is this period of 'lost years' where fancy has been most active at churning out new gospels. A nineteenth-century document, The Unknown Life of fesus Christ, is perennially being resurrected most recently in The Fesus Mystery by Janet Bock" and A. FaberKaiser's fesus Died in Kashmir.?? These books take a line that is encountered in a number of popular Muslim polemical works, especially those of the Ahmadis. In The Unknown Life, Jesus spent the 'lost years' wandering with a caravan of merchants, and studying at the feet of the great Buddhas and brahmins in India.
Edgar Goodspeed analysed The Unknown Life in his book Strange New Gospels,* noting the attention it received in 1895 and 1926. In 1887 a Russian war correspondent, Nicholas Notovitch,
visited India and then Tibet, where at the lamasery of Himis he said he learned of the Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men.*? The influential philologist and religious writer Friedrich Max Muller argued that Notovitch's document did not appear in any of the great collections of Tibetan literature, and inquiries he presented to monastery authorities had indicated that the writing was a fraud.
Despite the critique of Max Muller and others, the work continues to have a modest popular hearing."° The Crucifixion of Jesus, by an Eye-Witness,*' probably the work of a nineteenth-century rationalist, has been used by Muslim polemicists looking for proof that Jesus did not die on the cross.
This is the story of Jesus as an Essene monk: everything concerning his ministry is explained by his being a part of this Jewish ascetic sect. The angel of annunciation was an Essene, as was Christ's father, Joseph. It was the Essenes who carried Jesus away after the Crucifixion and revived him with a special potion, the 'myrrh and aloes' of the Gospel story. The Ahmadi Muslims have been especially attracted to the account, and use it to fortify their contention that Jesus completed his ministry in the company of the lost tribes of Israel in Kashmir.
Goodspeed thinks the author of The Crucifixion of fesus was a rationalist writer repeating ideas advanced by scholars like Heinrich Paulus and Karl August Von Hase, who believed Jesus did not suffer death on the cross but was later resuscitated.?8
Aside from the occasional popular appeal, none of the 'modern apocrypha' are taken seriously by scholars today. Two gospels noted in Muslim apologetics which have attracted continued scholarly attention are those of Peter and Judas. Tabari, the tenthcentury historian of Baghdad, maintains the view that a number of early Christians believed that Judas assumed the likeness of Jesus and was crucified in his stead.?? Fragments of the second-century
Gospel of Judas give a favourable evaluation of the traitor. Judas' betrayal is treated as a meritorious action delivering man from the power of the demiurge, the Gnostic subordinate deity who created the material world. Judas' behaviour made him the 'perfect
Gnostic'. According to Irenaeus, the Judas gospel was used by the Cainites, a Gnostic sect which regarded the God of the Old
Testament as responsible for the evil in the world and exalted those who withstood him - men like Cain and Esau.
There was a reluctance on the part of some early Christians to believe that Jesus, the Son of God, could really die. The secondcentury Bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, said that some Christians
taught that Jesus 'suffered in semblance'. Jesus only 'seemed'
(dokein) to die physically (the Docetic heresy): either the crucified body was a phantom form or someone else took his place. Another
Bishop of Antioch, Serapion, was asked his opinion about a certain Gospel of Peter being used in his diocese. According to Robert
Grant, he at first settled the issue rather hastily by giving his permission for the book to be read.*° Following a more careful analysis of a copy he was able to obtain from some Docetists, he withdrew his approval. Theodoret, fifth bishop of Cyrrhus, wrote that the Nazarenes (or Nasoreans), Jewish Christians claiming descent from Jesus' first disciples, used the Gospel of Peter.
Until 1886, the existence of Peter was known only from a few references; then, in the winter of that year, a fragment of it was found at Akhmin in Upper Egypt in the grave of a Christian monk.
Edgar Hennecke, an expert on New Testament apocrypha, feels it contains 'no articulated Gnostic theology but ... indicates that such a theology is already on the way'.*! Two items point in that direction: the account it gives of the Crucifixion casts doubt on the reality of Christ's sufferings - when crucified 'he held his peace, as though having no pain' - and the only utterance coming from him on the cross was 'My power, my power, thou has forsaken me.'
An intriguing possibility, which will be a point of inquiry in this book, was touched upon by Leonard St. Alban Wells in his discussion of the Gospel of Peter: 'It contains the germ, but not the fruit of the later Docetic heresy as seen at the full in the Qur'an and in the Gospel of Barnabas.'>* Unfortunately, Wells does not elucidate the point; but in more recent times two scholars have seen in The Gospel of Barnabas traces of early Jewish Christian apocryphal material.
Luigi Cirillo with Michel Frémaux produced in 1977 the first complete French translation of Barnabas.??
Cirillo made a strenuous effort to trace its possible origins and backgrounds and indicated a layer of apocryphal material that was distinct from the obvious medieval layer of the gospel. He felt the former originated from one literary unit which was used by the medieval writer. The idea that 'Fra Marino' used some primitive text has been suggested by a number of observers, as we shall see.
The Hebrew University expert on early Christian history, Shlomo Pines, suggested the 'milieu of Jewish Christianity' for a primitive text of Barnabas (see page 11).*4 Jewish Christian history is complicated by the existence of considerable political pressures and a myriad of sectarian divisions. The tension between Christians
and Jews relaxed somewhat when James, Jesus' brother, took over as the head of the Church in Jerusalem. James was anxious to have good relations with the Jewish leaders as his own convictions were strongly legalistic; and he was embarrassed by Paul's presence in Jerusalem because of the latter's strong contacts with Gentiles and concessions to their way of life. Until AD 62, when James was put to death by the Sanhedrin, the Jerusalem' Christians zealously demonstrated their loyalty to Judaism. This was also when the Nazarenes were said to have been driven from Palestine after a quarrel with other Christians.
The Jewish revolt against Roman occupation in the years AD 66-70 made the position of the Church in Jerusalem increasingly difficult; and a generation later, during the reign of Hadrian, a second revolt (ap 132-135) was attempted. On the emperor's orders, the city of Jerusalem was levelled and a pagan city called Aelia Capitolina built on the site. Circumcised Jews were barred from entrance to the new city. Apparently, just before the Roman siege began, Christians decided to flee to a place of safety; and the fourth-century Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea writes that they went to the Gentile city of Pella, east of the Jordan.
There Jewish Christians, fastidious about maintaining separateness from Gentiles, remained scattered and isolated from the general life of the Church and drifted into a variety of curious practices and heresies. Writers in the second and fourth centuries tell of various groups who are probably survivors of that exiled Jewish Christianity.
It has been suggested that the Ebionites ('poor' in Hebrew), who were mentioned earlier, were directly related to the Jerusalem community which also called itself 'the poor'. Epiphanius, the fourth-century Bishop of Salamis, described and attacked in his
Panarion every heresy known to him from the beginning of the Church. His catalogue includes the Nazarenes, whom he says continued to obey much of the Jewish law and used a version of the Gospel in Aramaic known as the 'Gospel according to the Hebrews'.*° Under the influence of unorthodox Jewish sects in the Jordan region, Jewish Christian groups engaged in the wildest kind of elaboration of the faith. Early in the second century a prophet named Elkesai appeared. His followers, the Elkesaites, possessed a sacred writing which contained the revelation given to their founder in which Jesus appeared as a mountain ninety-six miles high! The Elkesaites held beliefs similar to those of the Ebionites
and rejected sacrifices and certain biblical books, especially the epistles of Paul. They also maintained a Docetic view of the person of Christ; but, as one commentator put it, like the rivers of Damascus, they, along with other curious sects, flowed out to the edge of the desert and vanished:
The Bishop of Bradford, A. W. F. Blunt, in his 1923 commentary on The Acts of the Apostles*® gives a view, with no quoted sources, which is to me intriguing and one we explore in another context:
"The Elkesaites ... never had any life except, in the country east of the Dead Sea, but in the sixth century Mohammed lived for some time in an Elkesaite community, and to this fact may be due the strange mixture of Jewish and Christian elements which can be seen in the Koran.'*' This extraordinary comment, like that given by Leonard St. Alban Wells concerning the Gospels of Peter and Barnabas, caused me to do a double-take when I first saw it. In themselves such remarks provide no more than intimations, but they suggest a worthwhile exploration which I will make later.
Shlomo Pines's attention was drawn to The Gospel of Barnabas by a colleague at the Hebrew University, David Flusser, who is also an expert on the history of the early Church. Flusser was struck by the observations on Barnabas of the Irish deistical writer John Toland in his 1718 treatise on the Ebionites, Nazarenus. Pines feels that 'Toland rightly pointed out this Gospel contains ''Ebionite"' elements'.*® Among others he mentions the opposition to Paul (the Ebionites rejected him as an apostle), the issues of circumcision and unclean meat. As noted earlier (page 11), Pines indicates that the Muslim writer Biruni postulated a connection between the 'Ebionite Gospel' and the Gospel of B. Jam. s.: 'In view of the peculiarities of the Arabic script, the possibility of the transformation of an Arabic form of the name of Barnabas into B. Jam. s. can be envisaged.'*8 Jan Slomp has, however, argued: 'As long as Professor Pines does not support his suggestion by stronger proofs it is possible to raise serious objections against his hypothesis.' Slomp thinks that if an early form of Barnabas' gospel was known to the companions of Muhammad, 'it is hard to understand why no Muslim tradition ever mentions it'.*?
Despite this, the fact of a Jewish scholar of Pines's stature bringing scholarly attention to Barnabas and linking it to Jewish
Christian sources has not gone unnoticed in Muslim polemical writings. Pines's interest began when the Oxford Islamic scholar
Samuel Stern'? mentioned a rambling 600-page manuscript, Abd
al-Jabbar's book on the proofs of Muhammad's prophecy, in the archives of Istanbul. Abd al-Jabbar was a tenth-century Muslim theologian and Chief Kadi of Rayy, a city which formerly stood on the site of modern Tehran. Pines noted that about 140 pages of the manuscript consisted of a much older Syriac account of what he considered to be Nazarene beliefs. Previously, the Jewish Christian
Nazarenes had been known of only through the Church fathers' polemics against them. Jabbar's account created a flurry of academic excitement in 1966, and Flusser claimed the find to be 'as important for the story of the first Christians as the Dead Sea
Scrolls were for understanding the pre-Christian background'.?!
Pines's release of the material to the press and Time magazine added fuel to Muslim polemics concerning early Christianity.
Mumtaz Ahmad Faruqui writes: 'It has been shown that quite a number of the early and true Jewish followers of Jesus, in the early decades after his death, regarded him as another prophet of Israel, and denounced ... Paul for preaching his message to the Gentiles.'4?
Much of the Syriac account copied by Jabbar consisted of polemics against Paul - an argument Jabbar continued in lengthy detail - and remind us of some of the polemical material from Pakistan already quoted. Whereas Jesus and his disciples had observed the law of Moses, Christians had subsequently changed the laws and adopted the customs and institutions of the pagan Romans. A formula used three times by Jabbar was that it was not the Romans who became
Christians but the Christians who became Romanised. Though the corruption began soon after Jesus' ministry, the chief culprits were
Paul and, later, Constantine.*?
According to Jabbar, it was difficult even for a trained theologian to get a correct statement out of Christians about their beliefs because of the various sectarian differences. One portion of the Istanbul manuscript receiving little attention from either Muslim polemicists or the press was an apocryphal account of the Passion which for Jabbar served as proof that the Koran was right and the crucified man was not Jesus. Unfortunately Jabbar does not tell us the source of the account, but it is clear he thought it came from the canonical New Testament. It is remarkably similar to early Muslim commentaries on the koranic text, and also evocative of the story of the Passion as presented in Barnabas.
Jabbar's unknown gospel states that Judas apparently tricked the Jews by delivering to them another man in the place of Jesus (in Barnabas, it is Judas himself who was Jesus' substitute on the cross). This unknown victim denied explicitly before Herod and
Pilate that he was the Messiah, as Judas does in Barnabas. Herod, not Pilate, took a basin of water and washed his hands of the accused man's blood to show he found no guilt in him. Herod then imprisoned the supposed Jesus for the night, but the next morning he was seized by angry Jews whotortured and finally crucified him.
It is, however, Pines's report of Jabbar's attacks on Paul which attracted the attention of Muslim writers. Paul's 'subversion of the original pure Jewish Christian faith' is their interest.
As Mumtaz Ahmad Faruqui continues his argument: 'Paul set up a creed of which Jesus knew nothing. He not only ignored the historical Jesus for the mythical Christ, but he also maintained his apostolic independence of those who lived with and saw Jesus, and he held himself aloof from the teachings of Jesus as contained in the gospels.'*4 In those words Faruqui sounds very much like the author of The Gospel of Barnabas. That book's last chapter ends, as it began, with a snipe at the apostle:
After Jesus had departed, the disciples scattered through the different parts of Israel and of the world, and the truth, hated of Satan, was persecuted, as it always is, by falsehood. For certain evil men, pretending to be disciples, ... preached, and yet preach, that Jesus is the Son of God, among whom Paul is deceived.**
CHAPTER TWO
'The Gospel in Its Present Form'
'Ata ur-Rahim in fesus, A Prophet of Islam*® presents the apostle Barnabas as the leader of those Christians who opposed Paul's 'new gospel', a perversion of the simple monotheism preached by Jesus to the disciples. On a purely surface level, the picture of Barnabas and Paul in opposition over the direction of early Christianity has a certain appeal - particularly in the light of the views of Jewish
Christian sects like the Ebionites. This has been a feature of popular polemics of a number of 'liberal' Christian and Muslim writers.
The biblical record of Barnabas is fairly clear, with a few indications that there was some disagreement between him and .
Paul but nothing like what has been suggested by writers like 'Ata ur-Rahim. The Barnabas of the New Testament, as one-time
Cambridge professor of divinity F. C. Burkitt has written, 'is an interesting personality of whom we would gladly know more, not only before he comes upon the scene in Acts and after he has left it, but also to his opinions and development during the time we do hear something of him'. 4" Barnabas was a Jewish Levite of Cyprus and became one of the earliest Christian disciples at Jerusalem. He seems to have been the leader of the Church in Antioch, where the term 'Christian' was first applied to the followers of Jesus. It was
Barnabas who introduced Paul to the other apostles, which opened the door for him into the Jerusalem Christian community.
Barnabas' support of Paul had a determining influence on the other Christian leaders. In the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Barnabas defended the claims of the Gentile Christians at the Church council in Jerusalem. This meant an enormous amount
of support for Paul. The pre-eminence St. Luke gives of 'Barnabas and Paul' indicates Barnabas' early importance over the one who would soon completely overshadow him. In the city of Lystra in Asia Minor the two missionaries were greeted with enthusiasm,
Barnabas being honoured by the natives with the title of 'Zeus' while Paul was simply named 'Hermes', the spokesman.
The notion of theological antagonism between the two is based on the separation of Barnabas from Paul at Antioch after the Jerusalem conference. This occurred over the matter of Barnabas taking his young cousin, John Mark, on a new missionary journey.
Earlier, Mark had left Paul and his company in Cyprus and returned to Jerusalem; this 'defection' was for Paul sufficient grounds for dropping him from the next effort. Barnabas was devoted to his cousin, and despite Paul's objection took Mark with him to Cyprus. We read in Acts: 'And there arose a sharp contention, so that they separated from each other.' The rift is further described in Paul's Letter to the Galatians with the discussion of the 'Judaizing' party of Christians who were against eating at table with Gentiles. Paul was displeased with his old friend's seeming siding with the 'Judaizers' and said, 'even
Barnabas was carried away and played false like the rest'.
Barnabas' theological position in the early Church was something of a middle course between those who favoured Paul's
'open' requirements for a mission to the Gentiles and the 'Judaizers' who were still wishing to maintain restrictions of the Mosaic law. Like Peter, Barnabas had great sympathy with the community at Jerusalem, but he was hardly the advocate of a 'pure
Jewish Christianity' some writers have projected. He is the traditional founder of the Cypriot Church, and legend asserts that when his relics were discovered in fifth-century Cyprus a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew written in his own hand was found lying on his breast. Writers like 'Ata ur-Rahim have insisted that was 'the original Gospel of Barnabas'.*® No group of Muslims has made greater polemical use of the Gospel of Barnabas than the Ahmadiyya movement, founded in Pakistan in the latter part of the nineteenth century by Hazrat
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad when he announced that Allah had appointed him the Messiah. (The lesser known Muslim fundamentalists Jama et e Islamic - the Muslim Brethren - have also shown great interest in the gospel.) Orthodox Muslims have always accepted the Greek title Christ ('Messiah') for Jesus, and it is used eleven times in the Koran with no particular explanation being
given for its interpretation. For this deviation and others, the Ahmadis are viewed as heretical by other Muslims; yet they carry out extensive evangelism in northern Africa, often side by side with other Muslim missionaries. More than any other Muslim group they have developed the koranic denial of Jesus' death into an elaborate scenario. Ghulam Ahmad had found a tomb in Srinagar said to be that of the Kashmiri prophet Yus Asaph, and received a revelation that it was the tomb of Jesus who had died in Kashmir at the age of 120. A. Faber-Kaiser explains that having left Palestine,
'Jesus seems to have travelled under the alias of ""Yus Asaph''' and claims, with the Ahmadis, that the name is the Arabic form of 'Jesus the Gatherer'? (the name for Jesus in the Koran is Isa). In 1890 the Ahmadi founder 'under Divine inspiration' declared that Jesus did not die on the cross but, having survived death, travelled to Afghanistan and subsequently to Kashmir in search of the ten tribes of Israel who had migrated there after their deliverance from bondage under Nebuchadnezzar.
The Ahmadi scenario for Jesus' survival of the Crucifixion is highly inventive and, as we shall see, suggestive of some details found in both Gnostic writings and early Muslim commentaries on the koranic denial. Pontius Pilate was certain of the innocence of Jesus and therefore, goaded by his dream-troubled wife, devised a plot to save his prisoner's life. As a responsible officer of the Roman empire he could not openly come to the forefront, but he was nevertheless the master-mind behind the whole scheme and the chief actor in the drama; also privy to the scheme were Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Conveniently, Pilate chose Friday afternoon as the time for Jesus' Crucifixion so that he would not be able to remain on the cross after sunset - the following day being the Sabbath. Joseph and Nicodemus brought Jesus to consciousness, as in The Crucifixion of Fesus by an Eye-Witness, by using a so-called
'special ointment'. Jesus recovered, making his way from Palestine through Persia to Afghanistan and finally to Kashmir; even the route he took is charted in Ahmadi material.>°
A book which developed this argument exhaustively was the 416page work by the Ahmadi Muslim Al-Haj Khwaja Nazir Ahmad,
Jesus in Heaven on Earth (a name given by Ahmadis and others to Kashmir).°!
It first appeared in 1952 and was widely read in Pakistan and India as well as the Near East. Nazir Ahmad was once the senior advocate of Pakistan's Supreme Court and took an eager interest in The Gospel of Barnabas, concerning which book he presents a strange logic: 'Unless the original copy which was
rejected by the Gelasian Council is produced, or in the absence of proof that the present copy is different from the copy which was recovered from the tomb of St. Barnabas, the Gospel in its present form must be accepted.'*?
Along with the altered tradition of Barnabas' relics, including 'the original gospel of Barnabas', the mentioning of 'a gospel of Barnabas' in two ancient listings of apocryphal works has been sufficient proof of Barnabas' authenticity for Muslim writers utilising the document. Both the so-called Gelasian Decree 'Of Books' (not later than the sixth century) and the seventh-century
Greek 'List of Sixty Books' give the name of 'a Gospel under the name of Barnabas', but the name is all we have. There is no Gospel of Barnabas 'written in his own hand', no fragments of a 'lost gospel' of Barnabas, no quotations from a Gospel of Barnabas in the Church fathers; the 'Gospel in its present form' (to use Nazir
Ahmad's words) is in Vienna, and the history of that Italian manuscript is in itself a fascinating story.
Despite latter-day attempts to link The Gospel of Barnabas with the apostle Barnabas and the disputations of early Jewish Christianity, the extant gospel was basically unknown in the Muslim world until 1734, when George Sale translated the Koran into English. As Temple Gairdner® wrote, Sale gave 'a chance mention of it' in the introduction and commentary to that translation. In his copious and still useful notes, Sale refers to a gospel 'which gives ... part of the history of Jesus with circumstances too curious to be omitted'.
George Sale's translation of the Koran was the first full translation into any modern language except for what is termed the 'lamentable
French version' of André Du Ryer in 1649 (which was rendered into English the same year by Alexander Ross). Sale's Koran is still published, and used in koranic studies. As Sir Edward Denison
Ross claims in the introduction: 'the present work presents to the Western student all the essentials of preliminary study of Islam' and that, to a certain extent, is still true.*4
Until fairly recently, Sale was the sole source of the existence of a Spanish manuscript of Barnabas and the Fra Marino account of the finding of the gospel in Pope Sixtus V's library. The Spanish version was seen by Sale when it was in the possession of the rector of Hedley in Hampshire, a Dr Holme. It later passed into the hands of Thomas Monkhouse, a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and was said 'to have disappeared from sight'. The Revd Joseph White saw the Spanish version while it was still in the possession of Monkhouse, and in his Bampton Lectures (Oxford, 1784) he gave
translation of the chapters dealing with the crucifixion of Judas. A later comparison of these sections with the Italian, as recorded by the Raggs, revealed very little difference. Dr White's reference was the last known one to the Spanish texts; and then, surprisingly, in 1976 a partial copy of that text seen by Sale and reproduced in part by White was reported to exist in the University of Sydney's Fisher
Library as part of the great collection of Sir.Charles Nicholson, its first chancellor.
The inside front cover has the armorial book-plate of Nicholson and a note: 'Transcribed from ms. in possession of the Revd Mr.
Edm. Callamy who bought it at the Decease of Mr. George Sale... and now gave me at the Decease of Mr. John Nickolls, 1745'.* It would seem that the manuscript, like anumber of other items in the Fisher Library, was purchased in Dublin, where two of Callamy's descendants resided. The importance of the Sydney manuscript will be discussed in Chapter 4.
According to the preface to his translation, George Sale heard about The Gospel of Barnabas through Bernard de la Monnoye, who mentioned it in Mengiana (1715)°*° and the aforementioned John
Toland, who noted in Nazarenus (1718) that gospel's affinity of 'making of Jesus a mere man' with 'the ancient Ebionite or Nazarene system'. Nazarenus called attention to the position of the Ebionites in the development of the early Church. Toland, a remarkable freethinker, was brought up, near Londonderry in Ireland, as a Catholic but later became a Protestant. In 1696 he published Christianity Not Mysterious, in which he sought to show that all the doctrine of scripture as Christian revelation could be interpreted rationally. The Irish Parliament condemned his book; and his later writings in England included an attempt to explain the miracles in the Old Testament.
Toland's discussion of Barnabas helps us unravel its whereabouts in the eighteenth century:
It isa Mahometan [Muslim] Gospel never publicly made known among Christians tho they have much talked about the - Mahometans acknowledging the Gospel ... The learned gentleman who has been so kind as to communicate it to me [viz. Mr.
Cramer, Counsellor to the King of Prussia, but residing in Amsterdam] had it out of the library of a person of great name and authority in the said city; who during his life was often heard to put a high value on the piece.*"
Elsewhere, Toland gives the impression that his discovery was unique: "There's but one copy of it in Christendom, accidentally discovered by me in Amsterdam', the year of discovery being
1709.°8 Jan Slomp thinks it likely the 'person of great name and authority' was the Italian scholar Gregorio Leti, father-in-law of Thomas Mongey who in 1718 wrote about Barnabas in Bibliothéque
Angloise on Histoire Littéraire de la Gran Bretagne. Leti was the official historian of the city of Amsterdam, and his library was sold in 1701, so Slomp's idea fits the known circumstances of the gospel being in Amsterdam.*® The link with the Italian Leti also takes us back to the manuscript's country of origin.
Gregorio Leti is an intriguing person. He is just the type to become involved with a work like Barnabas, and if he had lived a century and a half earlier, he would seem a likely candidate for authorship. Leti was born in Milan of a Bolognese family in 1630 and studied with the Jesuits at Cosenza and Rome. His uncle, the Bishop of Aquapendente, was shocked at his nephew's ideas on religion and afraid he would be contaminated by these heretical views. Leti set off on many wanderings in central Europe. He became a Calvinist in Geneva, and lived successfully there and in London and Amsterdam. He was the author of many books on a variety of topics, including biographies of Elizabeth I and Pope
Sixtus V; the latter volume, though popular, was vigorously condemned by the Church. Leti holds some kind of record as earning seventeen condemnations in thirty-five years in the Index of Prohibited Books.®° The German diplomat J. F. Cramer next comes to own the gospel
- perhaps he bought it from Leti's large library - and he presented it to one of the period's great collectors of books, Prince Eugene of Savoy. Along with the prince's extensive library, the Italian manuscript of The Gospel of Barnabas found its way into the imperial library of Vienna.
George Sale's 1734 mention of The Gospel of Barnabas initiated a certain Muslim fascination with the manuscript, but it was not until
1907, when two English scholars translated the Italian manuscript, that a strong Muslim polemic employing Barnabas developed.
Lonsdale Ragg and his wife Laura became interested in the quarto of 255 leaves in the imperial library shortly before the former was appointed chaplain to the Anglican communities in Bologna and Venice. Ragg is in the best tradition of Church of England clergymen of the period whose intellectual interests were manysided. He wrote two books on Dante (an interest which helped with 2i
his research into Barnabas), painted 'tree-portraits' and was editor of Tree Lover in 1932. His clerical career covered a long period: he served as Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon College and Vice-Chancellor at Lincoln Cathedral, and held. several European posts, including that of Archdeacon of Gibraltar, which he held until his death in 1945. One of his obituary notices speaks of his 'spare figure, intellectual head and genial smile'. His wife was a faithful collaborator in many of his pursuits.°!
In the preface to their book on Barnabas, the Raggs state: "The translators encountered many unforeseen difficulties during the four years in which the work has been in their hands; much of the translation has been hewn out on pilgrimage, or in small hotel rooms, and far: from books of reference.'®* That makes their achievement even more remarkable, for their critical analysis remains the definitive work on the subject. It is their translation which has been the basis of all subsequent reproductions of the Vienna document.
The Raggs present a general opinion that the Italian manuscript was probably 'a deliberate forgery of the latter half of the sixteenth century'. That date could be established on evidence of the paper used itself. It is described as 'a somewhat coarse and stout "'cottonpaper" ... with a water-mark no oriental paper ever bore'. An expert the Raggs consulted noted the anchor within a circle as being distinctly Italian, and the particular form it took on these leaves clearly belonged to the second half of the sixteenth century.
The handwriting tries to present an archaic flavour to the document, and suggests a style a century earlier. Italian scholars who analysed the writing noted an intermingling of Tuscan and North Italian characteristics and were inclined to believe it to be a Tuscan original copied by a Venetian scribe or perhaps the other way round. The many Arabic marginal notes throughout the text were also of interest and were filled with mistakes, giving the appearance of a European attempting to translate Italian phrases into an imperfect Arabic. The purpose of the marginal glosses is
'somewhat mysterious' to the translators, and in an article before the publication of the book, Lonsdale Ragg quotes F. C. Burkitt's remark that 'their function may have been to protect the MS from destruction at the hands of Moslems ignorant of western languages'.
A decisive point in placing the manuscript in the Middle Ages is a tell-tale error the writer made concerning the Jewish Year of Jubilee, which was celebrated every fifty years in biblical times. It
was a year when Jewish slaves regained their freedom and land reverted to its former owners (Leviticus 25). Barnabas makes the celebration a centenary event, and the mistake seemed to reveal an interesting possibility. Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first jubilee year for Roman Catholics-in 1300, which brought thousands of pilgrims to Rome. Owing to that financial success, Clement VI altered Boniface's intention of having the celebration every hundred years, and shortened the period: the next jubilee was celebrated in 1350. This indicated to the Raggs the writer must have lived after 1300 but before 1350, which would have made him a contemporary of Dante Alighieri. That conveniently meshed with a Dantesque colouration in the gospel. The Raggs conclude: '[This] internal evidence ... would point, then, to an Italian original of ap
1300-50: unless, indeed, the "'Jubilee"' passage is capable of another explanation.'** Yet much else about the manuscript points to its having been written at least a century or two later.
The 'Jubilee' passage in Chapter 82 of Barnabas reads: 'And then through all the world will God be worshipped, and mercy received, insomuch that the year of jubilee, which now cometh every hundred years, shall by the Messiah be reduced to every year in every place.' In 1978, Jan Slomp offered another explanation. He stressed the word 'reduced' in the passage because the reduction to 1350 did not stop there. In 1470, the year of the jubilee became every twenty-five years. When Sixtus V (the pope of the Fra
Marino story) ascended the throne in 1585, he started his reign with a jubilee, thus giving the impression that the holy father could name every or any year to be one of jubilee (1983-84 was declared an extraordinary jubilee by John Paul II). This tempts Slomp to suggest 1585 as the exact date for the 'Jubilee' passage.
Though about a third of the material in Barnabas has been derived from other sources the four canonical Gospels were shown by the Raggs to form the fundamental substratum of the manuscript. Curiously, there are no direct quotations from the Koran, and the writer is far more conversant with Christian than with Muslim scriptures. There is, however, a large amount of distinctly Muslim material, often in the form of long discourses put into the mouth of Jesus. The magical transformation of Judas and his arrest, trial and Crucifixion in place of Jesus are for the translators 'developments of hints in the Koran'. The Raggs felt that 'Barnabas performs the part of a commentator - unless indeed he has been working up a separate document now lost to us'.®° This suggestion has been entertained by others, as we have seen.
Barnabas is at variance with the Koran 6n anumber of important and minor points. First, it states that Mary experienced the birth of Jesus without pain, which contradicts the Koran. The Raggs think this passage may constitute 'a trace of an apocryphal gospel', but indicate that the birth without pain was also 'an accepted tradition of Latin medieval Christianity'. A variety of Gnostic-style parables, miracles and stories are included in the gospel, yet certain wellknown accounts which have clear Gnostic literary parallels, such as those of Jesus speaking from the cradle, the appearance of a miraculous spring for mother and child in the desert and the infant
Jesus' creation of birds from clay, are not to be found there.
Not only does Jesus foretell the coming of Muhammad in Barnabas, but the Prophet zs the promised Messiah. It does not occur to the writer that the appellation 'Christ' is the Greek word for 'Messiah', and he seems equally unaware that in the Koran
Jesus is 'al Masih'
(Messiah).
(The Arabic and first Urdu translations of Barnabas tried to hide the contradiction by writing
Masztya instead of al Masih!) The Gospel role of John the Baptist as Jesus' forerunner is eliminated in Barnabas, and that position is given to Jesus. Neither John nor his father, Zachariah, who are both mentioned several times in the Koran, ever appears in Barnabas.
The gospel makes Muhammad to be the Messiah in no uncertain terms, and the Raggs ask if he also is accorded the title of Paraclete, as Sale had suggested. 'Paraclete' is the Gospel of John's epithet for the Holy Spirit and has been traditionally translated 'comforter'.
The Latin Vulgate translation is 'advocate', which is preferred by many modern commentators. Scholars have noted the affinity of a koranic reference to the Paraclete of St. John's Gospel, which has:
'But when your Advocate has come, whom I will send you from the Father ... he will bear witness to me' (John 15.26). Sura 61.6 of the Koran presents Jesus as saying to the 'Israelites': 'I am sent forth to you by Allah to confirm the Torah already revealed and to give news of an apostle that will come after me whose name is Ahmad.' That last word has usually been interpreted as being another name for Muhammad.
In Barnabas, the proclamation that Jesus is 'giving news of an apostle' who will follow him is not veiled. The name Muhammad is repeatedly used, but whether a precise identification between the Christian Paraclete and Muhammad is presented in Barnabas, the Raggs say, 'No more ... and no less than does the Qoran itself'.°7
Further evidence for accepting the gospel as a medieval creation is the sometimes incredible ignorance it shows of first-century
Palestine: no gospel writer of the first centuries would make those mistakes. Arch-enemies Herod, Pilate and the Jewish high priest
Caiaphas are frequently found hobnobbing together. Caiaphas begs Pilate to procure a decree from the Roman senate making it a capital offence to call Jesus 'God' or 'Son of God' - and this decree is posted up in the temple, engraved on copper! There are anumber of geographical errors: the writer is apparently of the opinion that one can sail by boat to Nazareth.
The Raggs note a considerable medieval colouring to the gospel.
The picturesque description of the summer season in Palestine is far more suggestive of /a bella Italia than of first-century Palestine: there are references to stone quarries, ships, sailors, wine casks and feudal-sounding land division which are redolent of someone living in medieval Italy. Jesus' friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus are presented as proprietors of whole villages as if they had been feudal lords and ladies.
These touches are especially interesting to Lonsdale Ragg as an expert on Dante. He considers the description of the pains and cries of the damned in the gospel 'strongly reminiscent' of the Italian poet; the picture of hell in Barnabas is remarkably similar to that in the master's Inferno. Despite this, the translators make the observation that 'occasional inaccuracies are outweighed by a very general and intelligent knowledge alike of the Old Testament and the New'.°§ Undoubtedly the writer was well versed in the Latin
Vulgate and, like the Koran, his gospel 'contains much beautiful teaching on the subject of prayer'.
The final point in the introductory notes returns to the question of a Gnostic Gospel of Barnabas behind the Italian manuscript. The Raggs say: 'Assuming, ... for the sake of an argument, that an original Gnostic Barnabas or a Latin version of the same, fell into the hands of a Christian renegade of the fourteenth or fifteenth century - it would give him at once a title for his great missionary pamphlet, and a vast amount of material to work on'.® The translators take note, as have Muslim polemicists, of the 'prefatory and valedictory denunciations of St. Paul' in the gospel.'° These accusations give Barnabas the air of an apology by a convert seeking to justify his claims.
It is an irony that the 1907 publication of the Vienna manuscript had the effect of a death-blow to scholarly regard in the West; and yet in the Muslim world it initiated a strong polemical interest which has continued down to the present. For Western scholars the matter was settled: Barnabas was a forgery, devoid of any value.
The Raggs' critical introduction was practically ignored by Muslim writers, but their English translation became the basis of a 1908 Arabic translation which was reprinted many times. This in turn was the basis for further translations into Urdu, Persian, and Indonesian. Until the Raggs' book appeared, the text of The Gospel of Barnabas was not available to the wider public. With its translation into Arabic and other Muslim languages, Christians in Islamic countries, unlike those in the West, could not afford to ignore the existence of the strange book. Unknown to the Clarendon Press, the Raggs' English translation was published in Pakistan several times by a number of houses, most recently in 1981. Unlike previous editions, this publication contains the critical introduction but also a foreword which disclaims the importance of any critical analysis of the gospel (see pages 12-13)."! Eight years earlier, another pirated English edition appeared in Karachi through the auspices of the Pakistani chapter of the World Muslim
Congress and was promoted by articles in The Pakistan Times. It sold more than 12,000 copies in a few months.
As previously noted, Muslim interest in Barnabas has ranged from its being used by a sheikh of Cairo's prestigious al-Azhar in his religious instruction to its appearance in polemical works aimed at Western Christian readers. The seriousness with which the gospel is taken by some is vividly expressed in a small volume entitled The Prophets (see pages 13-14), whose author's expressed intention is to introduce young Muslims to the great prophets of Islam.7?
Barnabas is the avowed source for its presentation of Isa's (Jesus') last days. This incredible acceptance of a volume whose historical value has been termed 'exactly nil' by Western Christian scholars speaks loudly and points to a major division of understanding of the basis and formation of Christian scriptural tradition. The Prophets is no polemical tract initiated by an exotic Muslim sect; it carries the imprimatur of the Union of Muslim Organisations of the United
Kingdom.
The Egyptian scholar G. C. Anawati writes: 'The appearance of a forgery entitled the Gospel of Barnabas put into the hands of the Muslim polemicists ... anew weapon whose effects on the ordinary public, and even on some insufficiently informed members of universities are felt even today.'"? A decade has passed, and those words still have poignancy.