The Son of Encouragement

The Acts of the Apostles introduces Barnabas not by a sermon but by a surname and a gift: Joseph, a Levite of Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, “son of encouragement,” sold a field and laid the price at the apostles’ feet (Acts 4:36–37). This file examines the renaming, the meaning of the name, the gift, the Orthodox tradition that counts him among the Seventy, and the character of encouragement that runs as a single thread through his whole career.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Renaming

Barnabas enters the New Testament in a single dense verse that fixes nearly everything the early Church would remember about him. Among the believers of the Jerusalem community who held all things in common, Luke singles one out: “Joseph, who was surnamed by the apostles Barnabas (which means, Son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus” (Acts 4:36, RSV). The man’s given name was Joseph; the name by which the Church has always known him is the one the apostles gave him. That the apostles renamed him is itself significant: in the biblical world a new name marks a new identity and a new role, as Simon became Peter and Saul became Paul. The Twelve saw in Joseph a quality worth naming, and they named him for it (Acts 4:36).

Luke supplies his own gloss on the name — “which means, Son of encouragement” — and this translation is the Church’s primary key to Barnabas. The underlying Aramaic is debated by philologists, but Luke’s Greek rendering is not: huios paraklēseōs, “son of paraklēsis” (Acts 4:36). The word paraklēsis carries a range that English struggles to hold in one term — encouragement, exhortation, consolation, comfort, the act of standing alongside another to strengthen him. The same root names the Holy Spirit as the Paraklētos, the Comforter, the one called to our side (John 14:16). To call a man “son of paraklēsis” is thus to say that consolation and encouragement are not merely things he does but the very stamp of his character — that he is, as it were, born of and for the work of strengthening others (Acts 4:36; cf. Bruce, Acts, 1988, on 4:36).

The Gift

The name is immediately matched by a deed. Luke continues: Barnabas “sold a field which belonged to him, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:37, RSV). The act belongs to the description of the Jerusalem community’s common life, in which “no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own” and those who owned lands or houses sold them and laid the proceeds before the apostles for distribution (Acts 4:32–35). Barnabas is offered as the model and exemplar of this generosity — the named, positive instance that immediately precedes the dark counter-example of Ananias and Sapphira, who sold their property but lied about the price and were struck dead (Acts 5:1–11). The contrast is deliberate: Barnabas gives wholly and openly; Ananias gives partially and deceitfully (Acts 4:36–5:11; Keener, Acts, on 4:36–37).

That a Levite owned a field at all is worth a moment’s notice. The Law had assigned the tribe of Levi no inheritance of land in Israel, the Lord Himself being their portion (Numbers 18:20; Deuteronomy 10:9) — though Levites could in fact hold property, as Jeremiah’s purchase of a field shows (Jeremiah 32:7–9). Barnabas’s field may have lain in Cyprus, his homeland, or in Judea; the text does not say. What it says is that whatever he had, he gave (Acts 4:37). The first thing the Church knows of Barnabas is that he was a man who put his possessions at the service of the community of faith.

Among the Seventy

Orthodox tradition reckons Barnabas among the Seventy (or Seventy-two) whom the Lord appointed and “sent on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come” (Luke 10:1, RSV). The lists of the Seventy are later compilations — the best-known bearing the name of Dorotheus of Tyre and of Pseudo-Hippolytus — and they are traditions rather than apostolic-age records; the Church receives them as such (on the Seventy generally, see the synaxaria for January 4, the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles). Their inclusion of Barnabas reflects the early conviction, rooted in his prominence in Acts, that he stood in the first rank of the apostolic generation. The liturgical books accordingly honor Barnabas as an apostle in the full sense, “equal in honor” to the Twelve, even though he was not one of them — a man set apart by the Holy Spirit for the apostolate (Acts 13:2) and called an “apostle” by Luke himself (Acts 14:14). His apostolic dignity does not rest on the lists of the Seventy but on the witness of Acts; the lists are tradition’s way of locating him.

The Thread of Encouragement

Once the name is given, the Church reads the rest of Barnabas’s career as its fulfillment. The “son of encouragement” is precisely the man who, when the converted Saul came to Jerusalem and “they were all afraid of him,” “took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared to them how he had seen the Lord” (Acts 9:26–27, RSV) — the one who stood alongside the feared ex-persecutor and vouched for him. He is the man whom the Jerusalem church sent to Antioch and who, seeing the grace of God among the new Gentile believers, “was glad; and he exhorted [parekalei — the verb of paraklēsis] them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose” (Acts 11:23, RSV). Luke even pauses to characterize him there: “for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” (Acts 11:24, RSV) — one of the few such direct character-notes in Acts. And he is the man who, when John Mark had failed and deserted, would not abandon him but took him again and gave him a second chance, even at the cost of his partnership with Paul (Acts 15:37–39).

The pattern is consistent enough that the name reads as a thesis the narrative proves: Barnabas encourages. He encourages the apostles to trust Saul, the Antiochenes to persevere, and the failed John Mark to try again. Where others see danger, suspicion, or a proven disappointment, Barnabas sees the room God’s grace has to work, and he stands alongside the person to give that grace room. The Church has remembered him, fittingly, not chiefly as a preacher or a writer but as the encourager — the one whose surname became his life. It is a quality the tradition holds up as apostolic in its own right: the gift of building others up, of consolation and exhortation, named by Paul among the charisms of the Spirit (Romans 12:8; 1 Corinthians 14:3) and embodied in the man the apostles called its son.

See Also

References

  • The Acts of the Apostles 4:32–5:11; 9:26–27; 11:22–26; 13:2; 14:14; 15:37–39. (RSV and KJV consulted.)
  • The Gospel according to Luke 10:1; John 14:16; Romans 12:8; 1 Corinthians 14:3; Numbers 18:20; Deuteronomy 10:9; Jeremiah 32:7–9.
  • Bruce, F. F. The Book of the Acts. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988. (On Acts 4:36–37; the name Barnabas and paraklēsis.)
  • Keener, Craig S. Acts: An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–2015. (On Acts 4:36–37 and Barnabas’s character.)
  • The Synaxis of the Holy Seventy Apostles, commemorated January 4; the traditional lists attributed to Dorotheus of Tyre and Pseudo-Hippolytus. (As tradition, not apostolic-age record.)