05 — The Epistle of Barnabas
The collection’s source-critical centerpiece. The so-called Epistle of Barnabas is an early-second-century Christian text (c. AD 70–135) transmitted under the apostle’s name, once so esteemed that it stands among the books at the end of Codex Sinaiticus — but it is, in the judgment of nearly all modern scholarship, not the work of the apostle. These files present the Epistle as what it is: an important and early Christian writing, with a strongly allegorical and supersessionist reading of the Law, whose attribution to Barnabas is a matter of transmission, not authorship.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)
This section is where the guide does its most careful work. The Epistle of Barnabas is a real and valuable witness to early Christianity — one of the Apostolic Fathers, copied alongside the New Testament in a great fourth-century Bible, quoted as Scripture by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. But the figure of the apostle and the author of the Epistle must be held apart. Per the repository methodology, this section never asserts apostolic authorship; it presents the authenticity question as a structured dispute with the positions and their sources named, and it describes honestly the Epistle’s most distinctive and most troubling feature — its allegorical method, by which the entire Mosaic Law is read as never having been meant literally and the covenant is claimed for the Church against Israel.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Epistle of Barnabas | What the document is: its date (c. AD 70–135), its place in Codex Sinaiticus and the Apostolic Fathers corpus, its early near-canonical reception (Clement of Alexandria, Origen), and the full authorship question — presented as a structured [Disputed: ...] note naming the ancient attribution and the modern scholarly consensus against apostolic authorship. |
| The Letter and Its Allegory | The content and method of the Epistle: its two halves (doctrine and the Two Ways); its radically allegorical reading of the dietary laws, circumcision, the sabbath, and the Temple; the “318” gematria of Genesis 14:14 read as Jesus and the cross; and the supersessionist claim that Israel forfeited the covenant — described and assessed. |
See Also
- The Son of Encouragement — the apostle whose name the Epistle bears
- The Historical Questions — the authenticity question in the full inventory of what can be known
- The Church Fathers — the Epistle among the writings of the Apostolic Fathers
- Holy Scripture — the canon question raised by the Epistle’s near-canonical status
References
- The Epistle of Barnabas, chapters 1–21. (Cited by chapter.)
- Holmes, Michael W., ed. and trans. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. (Greek text and translation.)
- Paget, James Carleton. The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background. WUNT 2/64. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994.
- Prostmeier, Ferdinand R. Der Barnabasbrief. Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vätern 8. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999.
- Lightfoot, J. B., and J. R. Harmer. The Apostolic Fathers. London: Macmillan, 1891.