Assalam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu all my friends
The article below is a particularly long one by any standards, yet I am sending it to you with a request to read through it diligently, as it strikes at the very heart of Christianity. Through it you will see all that went through in the early centuries after the coming and going of Jesus Christ, how things swung from one extreme to the other, and eventually, in 325 AD, and 381 AD, a hotchpotch version was foisted on the Christians as their official religion. It took some doing, and it had the sanction and support of the Church, which made all of it possible. Today nothing is known as to what went through in the making of the religion of Christianity as we know it today, and the Christians genuinely believe in what is propagated by the Church. But the fact of the matter is that, for various reasons, too difficult to explain here (though it is explained to some extent in the article below), the Christian of today follows something that has never been really advocated by Jesus Christ.
The genuine Christian would be appalled if he knew the history of how the Doctrine of Trinity, that he blindly accepts as the foundation of his religion, is actually a man-made concept that is passed off as something divinely ordained. The more he researches he will be led to the truth that Paul did a great disservice by introducing all his innovations that make up present-day Christianity. Today hardly any Christian has doubts about the validity of what the Church states as the foundation of his religion, for he expects, as any sane human being would do, that the Church stands for the truth and is above board. The fact is that the Church is caught up in a situation of its' own making, and continues giving support to the wrong principles it has been founded on. To do otherwise takes a great deal of courage, and no individual can ever hope to buck the established system, he would be considered a madman.
All that Jesus taught was thrown overboard by Paul, who took decisions on what Christianity should revolve around. The Christian today sees an easy way of obtaining salvation in the system propounded by the Church, and is prepared to hang on to it with all his strength, and that is what is keeping the Church together. The Christian is actually being fooled, but he is unable to see it, and he voluntarily allows himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. If a Christian analyzes what Jesus Christ actually said, and how his religion is diametrically opposed to it, he cannot help realizing he is following an incorrect line of thought. Such people are few, and these people realize they can do nothing to change the system.
This knowledge is essential not only for the Christian, so that he may realize what delusions he is labouring under (that just faith in Jesus Christ will ensure him Salvation) but for the Muslim too, to make him more conscious of the validity of his own faith, which is also based on what Jesus Christ (and Moses) preached. Islam is the culmination of the teachings of these two great prophets (not in any way to forget the works of the other great Prophets, all of whom had a role to play in the continuous flow of knowledge imparted to man over the ages).
During the last few weeks I have been engaged in discussions with some Christians who kept sending me articles by various Christian writers justifying Paul's version of Christianity, including justifications for the Doctrine of Trinity. These Christians are totally convinced of the current-day stand of the Church, which gives authenticity to the articles they send me. Being in such a situation they are unable to view those articles objectively, which only reflect pathetic justification to clinging on to the wrong concepts they advocate. To seriously contemplate letting go of these concepts is too much of a risk, a very big step, that would probably drown them in doubts and confusion. That is the level to which the Church has subjugated its people, that they are unwilling to ever look to reason. If they only investigate the way the Doctrine of Trinity came to be established as the stand of the Church, they will realize what vested interests can do. The only carrot that the Church is able to dangle before the Christian is guaranteed salvation for just believing in Jesus. And turn a blind eye to all that Jesus Christ kept emphasizing what the person who wanted salvation should do.
In Matthew 7: 21 to 29 we find the following
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? and in thy name have cast out devils ? and in thy name done many wonderful works ? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock : and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell not : for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand : and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell : and great was the fall of it. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine : for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.This is something the Christian would do well to reflect upon. For what the Church advocates is NOT what God and Jesus suggested they do to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said (as seen above) "whosoever heareth these sayings of mine........................" but the Christian of today is hearing the words ONLY of Paul. And remains deaf to the words of Jesus. In his thoughts and deeds. Which amplifies what Jesus said as found in Matthew 13:13
Therefore speak I to them in parables : because they seeing see not ; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
The Quran confirms it as follows:The Christian would also do well to pay heed to the warning in the Quran:
[005:117] "Never did I say to them aught except what You (Allâh) did command me to say: 'Worship Allâh, my Lord and your Lord.' And I was a witness over them while I dwelt amongst them, but when You took me up, You were the Watcher over them; and You are a Witness to all things. (This is a great admonition and warning to the Christians of the whole world).
It will be appropriate here to quote a hadith
It is obligatory to have belief in the Messengership of the Prophet (Muhammad ). Narrated Abu Hurairah [radhi-yAllâhu 'anhu]: Allâh's Messenger [sal-Allâhu 'alayhi wa sallam] said: "By Him (Allâh) in Whose Hand Muhammad's soul is, there is none from amongst the Jews and Christians (of these present nations) who hears about me and then dies without believing in the Message with which I have been sent (i.e. Islâmic Monotheism), but he will be from the dwellers of the (Hell) Fire." [Sahih Muslim, the Book of Faith, Vol.1, Hadith No. 153 (S.S.M. 20)] See also (V.3:85) and (V.3:116).
In spite of the efforts of the Christian churches to black out the life and message of Barnabas, the message of Barnabas has survived. How can it be blacked out when his name and activities have been enshrined, although partially, in the Holy Bible?
A Jew born in Cyprus, his name was Joses, and due to his devotion to the cause of Jesus, the other apostles had given him the surname of Barnabas; this term is variously translated as "Son of Consolation" or "Son of Exhortation". He was a successful preacher with a magnetic personality. Anyone tormented by the clash of creeds found solace and peace in his company. His eminence as a man who had been close to Jesus had made him a prominent member of the small group of disciples in Jerusalem who had gathered together after the disappearance of Jesus. They observed the Law of the Prophets, which Jesus had come, not to destroy but to fulfil (Matthew 5: 17). They continued to live as Jews and practiced what Jesus had taught them. That Christianity could ever be regarded as a new religion did not occur to any of them. They were devout and practicing Jews and they were distinguished from their neighbours only by their faith in the message of Jesus. In the beginning they did not organize themselves as a separate sect and did not have a synagogue of their own. There was nothing in the message of Jesus, as understood by them, to necessitate a break with Judaism. However, they incurred the enmity of the vested interests among the Jewish higher echelon. The Jews started the conflict between the Jews and the followers of Jesus because they felt that the Christians would undermine their authority.
The gulf progressively began to widen. During the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., the Christians left the city; and refused to take part in the Bar Coachaba rebellion in 132 A. D. These two events brought to the surface the difference between the Christians and the Jews.
The question of the origin of Jesus, his nature and relation to God, which later became so important, was not raised among these early disciples. That Jesus was a man supernaturally endowed by God was accepted without question. Nothing in the words of Jesus or the events in his life led them to modify this view. According to Aristides, one of the earliest apologists, the worship of the early Christians was more purely monotheistic even than of the Jews. With the conversion of Paul a new period opened in Christian Theology. Paul's theology was based on his personal experience interpreted in the light of contemporary Greek thought. The theory of redemption was the child of his brain, a belief entirely unknown to the disciples of Jesus. Paul's theory involved the deification of Jesus.
The Pauline period in the history of the Christian Church saw a change of scene and principles. In place of the disciples, who had sat at the feet of Jesus, a new figure, which had not known Jesus, had come to the forefront. In place of' Palestine, the Roman Empire became the scene of Christian activity. Instead of being a mere sect of Judaism, Christianity not only became independent of Judaism but also became independent of Jesus himself.
Paul was a Jew and an inhabitant of Tarsus. He had spent a long time in Rome and was a Roman citizen. He realized the strong hold that the Roman religion had on the masses. The intellectuals were under the influence of Plato and Aristotle. Paul seems to have felt that it would not be possible to convert the masses in the Roman Empire without making mutual adjustments. But his practical wisdom was not acceptable to those who had seen and heard Jesus. However, in spite of their difference, they decided to work together for the common cause.
As recorded in the Acts, Barnabas represented those who had become personal disciples of Jesus, and Paul co-operated with them for some time. But finally they fell out. Paul wanted to give up the Commandments given through Moses about things to eat; he wanted to give up the Commandment given through Abraham regarding circumcision. Barnabas and the other personal disciples disagreed. The following sentences in the Acts give a hint of the rift:
"And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputations with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question" (Acts 14: 1 and 2).
After this rift, there was a parting of the ways. In the Acts, Barnabas disappears after the rift, because the followers of Paul did the recording of the Acts of the Apostles. Because of Paul's compromise with Roman beliefs and legends, Pauline Christians grew in number and grew in strength. A stage was later reached when kings were used as pawns to further the ends of the Church.
The followers of Barnabas never developed a central organization. Yet due to the devotion of their leaders their number increased very fast. These Christians incurred the wrath of the Church and systematic effort was made to destroy them and to obliterate all traces of their existence including books and churches. The lesson of history, however, is that it is very difficult to destroy faith by force.
Their lack of organization became a source of strength because it was not so easy to pick them up one by one. Modern research has brought to light odd facts about these Christians. They are like the crests of waves and looking at them one can visualize a whole body of ocean not yet visible.
We notice that up to the 4th century A.D. there existed a sect known as Hypisistarians who refused to worship God as father. They revered Him as an All Mighty Ruler of the world. He was the Highest of all and no one was equal to Him.
Paul of Samasata was a Bishop of Antioch. He was of the view that Christ was not God but a man and a prophet. He differed only in degree from prophets who came before him and that God could not have become man substantially. Then we come across another Bishop of Antioch viz. Lucian. As a Bishop his reputation for sanctity was not less than his fame as a scholar. He came down strongly against the belief of Trinity. He deleted all mention of Trinity from the Bible, as he believed it to be a later interpolation not found in the earlier Gospels. He was martyred in 312 A.D.
Next we come to the famous disciple of Lucian viz. Arius (250-336 A.D). He was a Libyan by birth. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria ordained him a Deacon but later excommunicated him. Achilles the successor of Peter again ordained Arius as priest. Alexander the next Bishop of Alexandria once again excommunicated him. Arius however had gathered such a large following that he became a headache for the Church. If kept out of Church he could be a great danger to her but he could not be accommodated within the Church, as he wanted to establish the unity and simplicity of the Eternal God. He believed that how so ever much Christ might surpass other created beings he himself was not of the same substance as God. He was as human being as any other man. The teaching of Arius spread like wild fire and shook the very foundation of the Pauline Church. The controversy that was simmering for three hundred years suddenly became a conflagration. No man dared to oppose the organized Church but Arius did, and remained a headache for her whether he was ordained a priest or was excommunicated. During this time two events changed the history of Europe.
Emperor Constantine brought a greater pan of Europe under his rule and secondly he began to support the Christians without accepting Christianity. To the soldier prince the different creeds within the Christian faith were very confusing. In the Imperial Palace itself the controversy was raging not less fiercely. It appears that perhaps the Queen Mother was inclined towards Pauline Christianity while his sister Princess Constantina was a disciple of Arius. The Emperor was wavering between the two faiths. As an administrator he was interested only in uniting all the Christians within one Church. It was at this time that the conflict between Arius and Bishop Alexander became so widespread and so violent that it became a law and order problem. So the Emperor anxious to maintain peace in the newly unified Europe had to intervene.
In 325 A.D. a meeting of all denominations of Christianity was called at Nicea (Now lsnik, a village).
Bishop Alexander was not able to attend the conference and he deputed his lieutenant Athanasius, who subsequently succeeded Alexander as Bishop of Alexandria. The conference had many prolonged sessions. Emperor Constantine could not grasp the full implications of the ecclesiastical confrontation, but he was very clear in his mind that for maintaining peace in his realm the support and cooperation of the Church was necessary. Accordingly he threw his weight behind Athanasius and banished Arius from the realm. Thus the belief of Trinity became the official religion of the empire. Fearful massacre of Christians who did not believe in Trinity followed. It became a penal offence to possess a Bible not authorized by the Church and according to some estimates as many as 270 different versions of the Bible were burnt. Princess Constantina was not happy at the turn of events. The Emperor ultimately was persuaded to accept the faith of the men he killed. The result was that Arius was called back in 336. The day Arius was scheduled to visit the Cathedral of Constantinople in triumph he died suddenly. The Church called it a miracle. The Emperor knew it was a murder. He banished Athanasius and two other Bishops, The Emperor then formally accepted Christianity and was baptized by an Arian Bishop. Thus Monotheism became the official religion. Constantine died in 337. The next Emperor Constantanius also accepted the faith of Arius. In 341 a conference was held in Antioch and Monotheism was accepted as a correct interpretation of Christian faith. Another Council held in Sirmium in 351 confirmed this view. As a result Arianism was accepted by an overwhelming majority of Christians, St. Jerome wrote in 359 "the whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian". In this context the next important figure is that of Pope Honorius. A contemporary of Prophet Mohammed (peace be on him) he saw the rising tide of Islam whose tenets very much resembled those of Arius. As the mutual killings of Christians were still fresh in his memory he perhaps thought of finding a via media between Islam and Christianity. In his letters he began to support the doctrine of 'one mind', because if God has three independent minds the result would be chaos. The logical conclusion pointed to the belief in the existence of one God. This doctrine was not officially challenged for about half a century. Pope Honorius died in October 638. In 680, i.e. 42 years after his death, a council was held in Constantinople where Pope Honorius was anathematised. This event is unique in the history of Papacy when a succeeding Pope and the Church denounced a Pope. The next two personalities of this faith that deserve mention were members of the same family. L. F. M. Sozzini (1525-1565) was a native of Siena. In 1547 he came under the influence of Camillo, a Sicilian mystic. His fame spread in Switzerland. He challenged Calvin on the doctrine of Trinity. He amplified the doctrine of Arius, denied the divinity of Christ and repudiated the doctrine of original sin and atonement. The object of adoration according to him could only be the one and only one God. He was followed by his nephew F. P. Sozzini (1539-1604). In 1562 he published a work on St. John's Gospel denying the divinity of Jesus. In 1578 he ' went to Klausenburg in Transylvania whose ruler John Sigisumud was against the doctrine of Trinity. Here Bishop Francis David (1510-1579) was fiercely anti-Trinitarian. This led to the formation of a sect known as Racovian Catechism. It derives its name from Racow in Poland. This city became the stronghold of the faith of Arius.Among the present-day Christians a large number of men and women still believe in one God. They are not always vocal. Due to the crushing power of the Churches they cannot express themselves and there is not much communication between them.
In the end it will be of interest to quote Athanasius, the champion of Trinity. He says that whenever he forced his understanding to meditate on the divinity of Jesus his toilsome and unavailing efforts recoil on themselves, that the more he wrote the less capable was he of expressing his thoughts.
At another place he pronounces his creed as: - THERE ARE NOT THREE BUT ONE GOD
About Barnabas the Commandment is: "If he comes unto you, receive him". (Epistle to the Colossians, Chapter 4, Verse 10.)
The Gospel of Barnabas
Although none of today's officially accepted Gospels - or, for that matter, the Gospel of Barnabas, whose authenticity continues to be attacked by the established Church because its contents contradict official dogma on several fundamental issues - are capable of being objectively authenticated (instead it is sweepingly claimed that they are 'divinely inspired'), the Gospel of Barnabas does nevertheless remain interesting reading, especially since it appears to be, on the face of it, the only known surviving Gospel written by a close disciple of Jesus, that is, by a man who spent most of his lime in the actual company of Jesus, during the three years in which he was delivering his message.
Barnabas therefore had a direct experience and knowledge of Jesus' s teaching, unlike all the authors of the four officially accepted Gospels. It is not known when he wrote down what he remembered of Jesus and his guidance, whether events and discourses were recorded as they happened, or whether he wrote it soon after Jesus had left the earth, fearing that otherwise some of his teaching might be changed or lost. It is possible that he did not write down anything until he had retuned to Cyprus with John Mark.
As we have already seen, the two made this journey some time after Jesus had left the earth, after parting company with Paul of Tarsus, who had refused to make any further journeys with Barnabas on which Mark was also present. But no matter when it was written, and although it, too, like the four accepted Gospels, has inevitably suffered from being translated and filtered through several languages, it is, at least on the face of it, an eyewitness account of Jesus's life.
Both those who have a vested interest in attempting to 'prove' that the Gospel of Barnabas is a 'forgery' and those who simply want to be able to establish the truth of the matter, whatever it may be, are quick to point out that although the early church fathers often referred to the Gospel of Barnabas in their writings, this does not necessarily mean that what appears to be a sixteenth century Italian translation of the Gospel in the Imperial Library in Vienna is a faithful translation of the early first century original. Any number of changes could have been introduced during the intervening centuries.
This observation, it should also be pointed out, applies almost equally to the four officially accepted Gospels, (of which the earliest surviving manuscripts on which today's text is based are written in Greek - not Hebrew or Aramaic - and date from the 4th century AD, some three centuries after the late first century originals were probably written), although this possibility has never been too carefully considered by the established Church, since its authority would have been - and still could be - inevitably and seriously undermined as a result.
On the other hand, it can also be argued that if, on the balance of probabilities, the four accepted Gospels are more or less accurate, then this must also be more or less equally true of the Gospel of Barnabas, since much of its contents have very much in common with the four accepted Gospels and are often in complete agreement - although of course there are two very significant major differences between the Gospel of Barnabas and the four official Gospels, namely the account of just who it was who was crucified, and also the several specific references to the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him, which appear in the Gospel of Barnabas, but not in the other Gospels.
Ultimately any reader's assessment of the contents of any of the Gospels must be highly subjective. Either the words in any given verse ring true, or they do not - and the reaction of any particular reader will probably be different to that of any other reader.
As regards the various references to the Gospel of Barnabas which are known to have been made during the course of the last eighteen centuries or so - and which accordingly confirm that such a Gospel was written and did exist, even if it no longer entirely exists in its original form today - it has been well established that the Gospel of Barnabas was accepted as a Canonical Gospel in the churches of Alexandria up until 325 AD.
It is also known that it was being circulated in the first and second centuries after the birth of Jesus from the writings of Iraneus (130-200 AD) who wrote in support of the Divine Unity. Iraneus opposed Paul and his followers whom he accused 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 support of his views.
It is also clear from relatively recent research - which has been conducted more in the spirit of genuinely trying to find out what actually happened, rather than with the intention of merely attempting to present further 'evidence' either for or against established dogmas and theories which are clearly untenable in the light of undisputed historical facts and blatant contradictions - that the conflict between the Unitarian followers of Jesus who belonged to the Tribe of Israel on the one hand, and the European followers of Paul who did not belong to the Tribe of Israel and whose lives were rooted in an entirely different culture and philosophical heritage, on the other hand, occurred at a very early stage in the history of the Christian Church - and even before the early Christians began to rely more on the written word than on what had been transmitted by word of mouth.
In his book, The Bible, the Quran and Science, Dr Maurice Bucaille refers to these two groups as the Judeo-Christians and the Pauline Christians. His overview of the origins of and the interaction between these two groups - an overview at which he clearly arrived only after extensive research and careful consideration and analysis - confirms that this conflict was, at least to begin with, not so much an ideological conflict as a behavioural one, as his summary of an article published by Cardinal Daniélou in 1967, including many quotations from it, indicates:
After Jesus's departure, the 'little group of Apostles' formed a 'Jewish sect that remained faithful to the form of worship practised in the Temple'. However, when the observances of converts from paganism were added to them, a 'special system' was offered to them as it were:
The Council of Jerusalem in 49 AD exempted them from circumcision and Jewish observances; 'many JudeoChristians rejected this concession'. This group is quite separate from Paul. What is more, Paul and the JudeoChristians were in conflict over the question of pagans who had turned to Christianity, (the incident of Antioch, 49 AD).
'For Paul, the circumcision, Sabbath, and form of worship practiced in the Temple were henceforth old fashioned, even for the Jews. Christianity was to free itself from its political-cum-religious adherence to Judaism and open itself to the Gentiles.'
For those Judeo-Christians who remained 'loyal Jews', Paul was a traitor: Judeo-Christian documents call him an 'enemy', and accuse him of 'tactical double-dealing', 'Until 70 AD, Judeo-Christianity represents the majority of the Church' and 'Paul remains an isolated case', The head of the community at that time was James, a relation of Jesus. With him were Peter (at the beginning) and John. 'James may be considered to represent the Judeo-Christian camp, which deliberately clung to Judaism as opposed to Pauline Christianity.' Jesus's family has a very important place in the Judeo-Christian Church of Jerusalem, 'James's successor was Simeon, son of Cleopas, a cousin of the lord'.
Cardinal Daniélou here quotes Judeo-Christian writings which express the views on Jesus of this community which initially formed around the apostles: the Gospel of the Hebrews (coming from a Judeo-Christian community in Egypt), the writings of Clement: Homilies and Recognitions, 'Hypotyposeis', the Second Apocalypse of James, the Gospel of Thomas.
(One could note here that all these writings were later to be classed as Apocrypha, i.e. they had to be concealed by the victorious Church which was to be born of Paul's success. It was to make obvious excisions in the Gospel literature and retain only the four Canonic Gospels.)
'It is to the Judeo-Christians that one must ascribe the oldest writings of Christian literature.' Cardinal Daniélou mentions them in detail.
'It was not just in Jerusalem and Palestine that JudeoChristianity predominated during the first hundred years of the Church. The Judeo-Christian mission seems everywhere to have developed before the Pauline mission. This is certainly the explanation of the fact that the letters of Paul allude to a conflict.' They were the same adversaries he was to meet everywhere: in Galatia, Corinth, Colossae, Rome and Antioch.
The Syro-Palestinian coast from Gaza to Antioch was Judeo-Christian 'as witnessed by the Acts of the Apostles and Clementine writings'. In Asia Minor, the existence of Judeo-Christians is indicated in Paul's letters to the Galatians and Colossians. Papias' s writings give us information about Judeo-Christianity in Phrygia. In Greece, Paul's first letter to the Corinthians mentions Judeo-Christians especially at Apollos.
According to Clement's letter and the Shepherd of Hermas, Rome was an 'important centre'. For Suetonius and Tacitus, the Christians represented a Jewish sect. Cardinal Daniélou thinks that the first evangelisation in Africa was JudeoChristian. The Gospel of the Hebrews and the writings of Clement of Alexandria link up with this.
It is essential to know these facts to understand the struggle between communities that formed the background against which the Gospels were written. The texts that we have today, after many adaptations from the sources, began to appear around 70 AD, the time when the two rival communities were engaged in a fierce struggle, with the Judeo-Christians still retaining the upper hand. With the Jewish war and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the situation was to be reversed. This is how Cardinal Daniélou explains the decline:
'After the Jews had been discredited in the Empire, the Christians tended to detach themselves from them. The Hellenistic peoples of Christian persuasion then gained the upper hand: Paul won a posthumous victory; Christianity separated itself politically and sociologically from Judaism: it became the third people. All the same, until the Jewish revolt in 140 AD, Judeo-Christianity continued to predominate culturally.'
Who made up the doctrine of Trinity
From 70 AD to a period situated sometime before 110 AD the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were produced. They do not constitute the first written Christian documents: the letters of Paul date from well before them. According to O. Culmann, Paul probably wrote his letter to the Thessalonians in 50 AD. He had probably disappeared several years prior to the completion of Mark's Gospel.
Paul is the most controversial figure in Christianity. He was considered to be a traitor to Jesus's thought by the latter's family and by the apostles who had stayed in Jerusalem in the circle around James. Paul created Christianity at the expense of those whom Jesus had gathered around him to spread his teachings. He had not known Jesus during his lifetime and he proved the legitimacy of his mission by declaring that Jesus, raised from the dead, had appeared to him on the road to Damascus. It is quite reasonable to ask what Christianity might have been without Paul and one could no doubt construct all sorts of hypotheses on this subject.
As far as the Gospels are concerned however, it is almost certain that if this atmosphere of struggle between communities had not existed, we would not have had the writings we possess today. They appeared at a time of Herce struggle between the two communities. These 'combat writings', as Father Kannengiesser calls them, emerged from the multitude of writings on Jesus.
These occurred at the time when Paul's style of Christianity won through definitively, and created its own collection of official texts. These texts constituted the 'Canon' which condemned and excluded as unorthodox any other documents that were not suited to the line adopted by the Church.
The Judeo-Christians have now disappeared as a community with any influence, but one still hears people talking about them under the general term of 'Judaistic'. This is how Cardinal Daniélou describes their disappearance:
'When they were out off from the Great Church, that gradually freed itself from its Jewish attachments, they petered out very quickly in the West. In the East how ever it is possible to find traces of them in the Third and Fourth centuries AD, especially in Palestine, Arabia, Transjordania, Syria and Mesopotamia. Others joined in the orthodoxy of the Great Church, at the same time preserving traces of Semitic culture; some of these still persist in the Churches of Ethiopia and Chaldea,'
The 'official' confirmation of the 'victory' over the true followers of Jesus by Paulinian Christianity was enshrined, as we have already seen, in the outcome of the famous Council of Nicea which was held in 325 AD - when the Roman Emperor Constantine, who at the time claimed to be 'neutral' on the grounds that he was not a Christian, decided that the Paulinian version of Christianity represented the true teachings of Jesus, and that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John should become the officially accepted gospels, and that all other gospels, including the Gospel of Barnabas, were to be destroyed - along with whoever was found to have them in their possession - a decision which resulted in many of the early gospels being lost for good, and millions of Unitarian Christians being martyred in the years that followed.
It was also at the Council of Nicea, after over two centuries of debate, that Jesus was officially granted divine status, and, with the official instatement at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD of 'the Holy Ghost' as the 'third person', the doctrine of Trinity which had begun to emerge during the intervening period finally came of age, some three and a half centuries after the disappearance of Jesus.
Shortly after the Council of Constantinople, the Roman Emperor Theodosius made it a capital offence to reject the doctrine of Trinity, thereby laying the foundations for the Mediaeval and Spanish Inquisitions which were to flourish centuries later by which time the doctrines of the New Covenant, and of Original Sin, and of the Atonement and Forgiveness of Sins, and of the Trinity, had become so deeply embedded in the Christian psyche that no amount of reformations, ancient or modem, and however well-intentioned, could dislodge them.
Thus it is a matter of historical fact that it took several centuries for the doctrine of Trinity to be developed - as part of a long drawn out cultural and philosophical process, characterised by fierce conflict and at times often confused debate - which explains why the doctrine is never actually described in detail within any of the texts of even the official Paulinian version of the New Testament as being central to Jesus's teaching.
This can only be because the contents of the early Christian writings - both of the Judeo-Christians and of the Paulinian Christians - had already been finalised prior to the formulation of the doctrine, and were already too well-known to be tampered with too extensively, by the time that the doctrine had reached the stage where it was formally expressed in writing.
The most that the Paulinian Church could hope to achieve was the systematic and complete suppression of all the Judeo-Christian writings which clearly and unequivocally affirmed the Oneness of God as well as confirming the continuity of both teaching and behavior which existed between Moses and Jesus, peace be on them.
Once the doctrine of Trinity had been formally adopted and declared to be the official doctrine of the Pauline Church, one of the inevitable consequences of this decision was that out of the three hundred or so Gospels extant at that time, only the four which were selected as the official Gospels of the Pauline Church were permitted to survive. The remaining Gospels, including the Gospel of Barnabas, were ordered to be destroyed completely.
It was also decided that all Gospels written in Hebrew should be destroyed. Edicts were issued stating that anyone found in possession of an unauthorized Gospel would be put to death. This was the first well organized attempt to remove all the records of Jesus's original teaching, whether in human beings or books, which contradicted the doctrine of Trinity. In the case of the Gospel of Barnabas, these orders were not entirely successful, and mention of its continued existence has been made up to the present day:
Pope Damascus (304-384 AD), who became Pope in 366 AD, is recorded as having issued a decree that the Gospel of Barnabas should not be read. This decree was supported by Gelasus, Bishop of Caesaria, who died in 395 AD. The Gospel was included in his list of Apocryphal books. 'Apocrypha' simply means 'hidden from the people'. Thus, at this stage, the Gospel was no longer available to everyone, but was still being referred to by the leaders of the Church. In fact, it is known that the Pope secured a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas in 383 AD, and kept it in his private library.
There were a number of other decrees which referred to the Gospel. It was forbidden by the Decree of the Western Churches in 382 AD, and by Pope Innocent in 465 AD. In the Gelasian Decree of 496 AD, the Evangelium Barnabe is included in the list of forbidden books. This decree was reaffirmed by Hormisdas, who was Pope from 514 to 523 AD. All these decrees are mentioned in the Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts in the Library of Chancellor Seguier (1558-1672), prepared by B. de Montfaucon (1655-1741).
The writings of Barnabas - which include his Epistle as well as his Gospel' - are also mentioned in the Stichometry of Nicephorus as follows:
Serial No. 3: Epistle of Barnabas ... Lines 1,300 and again in the list of Sixty Books as follows:
Serial No. 17: Travels and teaching of the Apostles.
Serial No. 18: Epistle of Barnabas.
Serial No. 24: Gospel According to Barnabas.
This famous list was also known as the Index, and Christians were not supposed to read any of the books listed in it On pain of eternal punishment.
It is interesting to note in passing that a Greek version of the Epistle of Barnabas (which is mentioned by two of the most well known early church fathers, Origen (185-254 AD) and Eusebius (265-340 AD) in their writings) is in fact to be found in the Codex Sinaiiicus - perhaps the earliest Greek version of the New Testament known to be in existence today and dating from the 4th or 5th century AD - although it has been excluded from all modem versions of the Bible.
Although Christian polemicists have repeatedly attempted to allege not only that the ltalian translation of the Gospel of Barnabas is a mediaeval forgery, but also by implication that the Gospel itself is a forgery - written by a Muslim convert in the fifteenth or sixteenth century AD - this clearly cannot be correct, given the number of recorded references to the Gospel of Barnabas which were often made long before the coming of the Prophet Muhammad.
As regards other later references to the Gospel of Barnabas, the Gospel is also, recorded in the 206th manuscript of the Baroccian Collection in the Bodleian Library in Oxford which dates from the 6th or 7th century AD. Cotelerius, who catalogued the manuscripts in the Library of the French king, listed the Gospel of Barnabas in the Index of Scriptures which he prepared in 1789. There is also a solitary fragment of a Greek version of the Gospel of Barnabas to he found in a museum in Athens, which is all that remains of a copy which was burnt:
It is interesting to note that consistent with the observation by Grabe in Spicilegium Patrum, I, 302, Toland found that the 39th Baroccian manuscript contains a fragment that is an Italian equivalent to the Greek text. Thus Toland's conclusion was that the extant Italian translation of the Gospel of Barnabas was identical to the ancient Gospel of Barnabas. In the same year, Reland in De religione Mahommedica (1718) discovered that the Gospel also existed in Arabic and Spanish.
Mr. Johnson's conclusions regarding all the various references to the various versions of the Gospel of Barnabas are significant:
Grabe's knowledge of a Greek version of the Gospel and its equivalence to the later Italian manuscript makes it highly plausible that today's Gospel of Barnabas is in fact the Evangelium Barnabae listed by the Sixth century Gelasian Decretal and the Sixth or Seventh century Cod. Barocc, 206's list of 60 books. I say, 'highly plausible' because no early Greek manuscript is known to be in existence today.
However, it is equally certain that Christian claims that the Gospel of Barnabas is a forgery of some fifteenth or sixteenth century renegade Muslim, are simply vain attempts to dismiss a Gospel that strikes at the heart of contemporary Christian Christology. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians admitted the centrality of this doctrine to the entire body of Christian faith:
"Tell me, if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how is it that some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is void of content and your faith is empty too. Indeed, we should then be exposed as false witnesses of God, for we have borne witness before Him that He raised up Christ ... " (I Corinthians 15: 12-15)
Clearly, if there is an early Greek or Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Barnabas in existence somewhere, then a comparison between it and the Italian translation would end the dispute as to the authenticity and reliability of the Italian version once and for all.
In the fourth year of the Emperor Zeno's rule in 478 AD, the remains of Barnabas were discovered, and a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas, written in his own hand, was found on his breast. This is recorded in the Acta Sanctorum, Boland Junii, Tome II, pages 422 450, published in Antwerp in 1698. It has been claimed by the Roman Catholic Church that the Gospel found in the grave of Barnabas was that of Matthew, but no steps have been taken to display this copy. The exact contents of the twenty-five mile long library of the Vatican continue to remain in the dark.
The manuscript from which the current English translation of the Gospel of Barnabas was made, was originally in the possession of Pope Sixtus V (1589-1590). He had a friend, a monk called Fra Marino, who became very interested in the Gospel of Barnabas after reading the writings of Iraneus, who quoted from it extensively.
One day he went to see the Pope. They lunched together and, after the meal, the Pope fell asleep. Father Marino began to browse through the books in the Pope's private library and discovered an Italian manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas. Concealing it in the sleeve of his robe, he left and came out of the Vatican with it. This manuscript then passed through different hands until it reached 'a person of great name and authority' in Amsterdam, 'who, during his life time, was often heard to put a high value to this piece.' After his death, it came into the possession of J.E. Cramer, a Councilor of the King of Prussia. In 1713, Cramer presented this manuscript to the famous connoisseur of books, Prince Eugene of Savoy. In 1738, along with the library of the Prince, it found its way into the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, where it now rests.
Toland, a notable historian of the early Church, had access to this manuscript, and he refers to it in his Miscellaneaus Works, which was published posthumously in 1747. He says of the Gospel: 'This is in scripture style to a hair,' and continues:
"The story of Jesus is very differently told in many things from the received Gospels, but much more fully ... and particularly this Gospel ... being near as long again as many of ours. Someone would make a prejudice in favour of it; because, as all things are best known just after they happen, so everything diminishes the further it proceeds from its original."
The following extract from the Gospel of Barnabas, for example, (which is taken from the translation of Lonsdale and Laura Ragg) describes what is alleged to have taken place immediately before the miraculous feeding of the five thousand - an account which, as well as furnishing an explanation as to why such a large crowd had gathered in the first place, cannot be found in the four officially accepted Gospels, and for obvious reasons, since it describes how Jesus publicly demonstrated that he could not possibly be identified with God, simply by comparing his human attributes with God's divine attributes:
"Accordingly the governor and the priest and the king prayed Jesus that in order to quiet the people he should mount up into a lofty place and speak to the people. Then went up Jesus on to one of the twelve stones which Joshua made the twelve tribes take up from the midst of Jordan, when all Israel passed over there dry shod; and he said with a loud voice: 'Let our priest go up into a high place whence he may confirm my words.'
Thereupon the priest went up thither; to whom Jesus said distinctly, so that everyone might hear: 'It is written in the testament and covenant of the living God that our God has no beginning; neither shall He ever have an end.'
The priest answered: 'Even so it is written therein.'
Jesus said: 'It is written there that our God by His word alone has created all things.'
'Even so it is,' said the priest.
Jesus said: 'It is written there that God is invisible and hidden from the mind of man, seeing He is incorporeal and uncomposed, without variableness.'
'So it is truly,' said the priest.
Jesus said: 'It is written there how that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, seeing that our God is infinite.'
'So said Solomon the Prophet,' said the priest, 'O Jesus.'
Said Jesus: 'It is written there that God has no need forasmuch as He eats not, sleeps not, and suffers not from any deficiency.'
'So is it,' said the priest.
Said Jesus: 'It is written there that our God is everywhere, and that there is not any other god but He, Who strikes down and makes whole, and does all that pleases Him.'
'So it is written,' replied the priest.
Then Jesus, having lifted up his hands, said: 'Lord our God, this is my faith wherewith I shall come to your judgment: in testimony against every one that shall believe the contrary.'
And turning himself towards the people, he said, "Repent, for from all that of which the priest has said that it is written in the book of Moses, the covenant of God for ever, you may perceive your sin; for that I am a visible man and a morsel of clay that walks upon the earth, mortal as are other men. And I have had a beginning, and shall have an end, and am such that I cannot create a fly over again."
The publicity which Toland gave to the Vienna manuscript made it impossible for it to share the same fate as another manuscript of the Gospel in Spanish which also once existed. This manuscript was presented to a college library in England at about the same time that the Italian manuscript was given to the Hofbibliothek. It had not been in England long before it mysteriously disappeared.
The Italian manuscript was translated into English by Canon Lonsdale and Laura Ragg, and was printed and published by the Oxford University Press in 1907. Nearly the whole edition of this English translation abruptly and mysteriously disappeared from the market. Only two copies of this translation are known to exist, one in the British Museum, and the other in the Library of Congress in Washington. A microfilm copy of the book in the Library of Congress was obtained, and a fresh edition of the English translation was printed in Pakistan. A copy of this edition was used for the purposes of reprinting a revised version of the Gospel of Barnabas thereafter,
The new English edition, understandably, has caused the present Christian Church a certain degree of irritation - for if the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas are true, then it clearly follows that most of the versions of Christianity which exist today - and accordingly the various Churches which promote them - do not have very firm foundations
This is because the Gospel of Barnabas confirms that Jesus was not God, nor the 'son' of God, and that he was neither crucified in the first place, nor subsequently 'raised from the dead' thereafter. As we have already seen, it was Paul himself who pointed out that if Jesus was neither crucified nor raised from the dead, then the bottom falls out of the Paulinian thesis:
"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead ..." (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).
Accordingly virtually all the established churches, however near or far they are to each other, have united in their various efforts to discredit the English version of the Gospel of Barnabas by discrediting the Italian edition from which it was translated.
In a manner reminiscent of the way in which the Russian edition of The Protocols of the EIders of Zion has been constantly branded as ' a forgery' in order to discredit any translation of it into another language, so with the Spanish and English translations of the Gospel of Barnabas, it has been claimed that the Italian version is a forgery - and, by implication, that even the much earlier Hebrew and Greek versions which, as we have just seen, are known to have existed at a very early stage in the history of Christianity, must also have been 'forgeries'!
Perhaps the most sustained and scholarly attempt aimed at discrediting the English edition of the Gospel of Barnabas has been the book written by David Sox entitled, somewhat misleadingly, 'The Gospel of Barnabas'. Only a few lines of the English translation are actually quoted by him, and the underlying purpose of his book is clearly to put off as many people as possible from actually reading the Gospel of Barnabas itself and making their own minds up about its authenticity!
Given that David Sox's brief was to 'prove' that the Italian version of the Gospel of Barnabas is a forgery, his methodology is transparently clear:
Having ascertained that the binding of the manuscript in Vienna dates from approximately the 16th or 17th century - although not necessarily the manuscript itself, which may date from an earlier period and which could have been bound and rebound several times before ending up in its present binding for all we know, but certainly not an earlier manuscript from which it may have been copied, let alone an even earlier manuscript in Greek or Hebrew from which it may have been translated - David Sox then had to find a likely forger:
It had to be someone who was clearly familiar with both the Old and the New Testaments as represented in the Vulgate Bible - so that repeated references could be made to Old Testament events and prophecies whenever this was appropriate; it had to be someone who had converted to Islam, but who nevertheless would be 'clever' enough not to make the 'forgery' correspond too closely or entirely with what the Quran says about Jesus
(for example, describing the Prophet Muhammad as 'the Messiah' who would come after Jesus, whereas the Quran confirms that Jesus was the Messiah whose coming had been foretold by Moses; or, for example, confirming the traditional nativity story given in the officially accepted Gospels, rather than giving an account of the birth of Jesus which corresponded with the account which is given in the Quran; Or, for example, not mentioning various miracles of Jesus which, as we shall see in Chapter Eleven, are described in the Quran, but not in the officially accepted Gospels);
and it had to be someone who had the ability to ensure not only that the 'forgery' did not correspond exactly with what is in the Quran, but also that at least a third of the contents of the 'forgery' confirmed exactly what is in the other officially accepted Gospels, that at least another third expanded on what is in the other officially accepted Gospels without contradicting them, and that the remaining third - even if it contradicted what is in the other officially accepted Gospels - nevertheless appeared to be 'in scripture style to a hair', to use the phrase coined by Toland. It could not have been a particularly easy brief!
There was, however, one obvious possible candidate: According to the Preface to the Spanish translation of the Gospel of Barnabas, Fra Marino - the monk who is said to have stolen the Pope's copy of the Italian version - had subsequently embraced Islam. 'If we can only prove that he did not really steal the Pope's copy at all,' we can see David Sox thinking, 'but that in fact he actually wrote it himself - then we will have succeeded!' Naturally this hypothesis would depend heavily on establishing beyond any doubt that not only the binding, but also the Italian manuscript itself was written between approximately 1580 and 1600 any proof of which is very conspicuous by its absence.
Of course, short of having access to an authentic and voluntary confession by Fra Marino, it would be impossible to 'prove' such a thesis, some four centuries after the alleged event, even 'on the balance of probabilities', and let alone 'beyond any reasonable doubt', - as David Sox in a roundabout way himself accepts, when he admits that 'the reader is faced with a great amount of speculation' in his book. However he nevertheless attempts the impossible, perhaps in the hope that, by at least raising this possibility and making it seem plausible, any version of the Gospel of Barnabas might as a result be sufficiently discredited not to be taken too seriously by anyone who happened to come across it.
We are accordingly presented with the fruits of David Sox' s laborious searches through the official records for the period within which the Italian manuscript was probably bound to see if there is any mention of a Fra Marino who not only had the requisite talents to be able to produce such an interesting 'forgery', but who also would have had the necessary motive needed to sustain what would have been such a demanding and, if he were to be found out by the Inquisition, such a dangerous, task.
David Sox was only able to come up with one possible candidate: a former Inquisitor of Venice - who probably would have been more likely to have burnt the Gospel of Barnabas than written it! - who according to the records was officially reprimanded on two occasions for being too lenient with heretics, and who was subsequently demoted from his position and replaced.
From these scant details, David Sox concludes that Fra Marino was not only somehow driven to embrace Islam, but also must have decided to forge the Italian version of the Gospel of Barnabas as an act of revenge against his successor - although how such an act could have actually adversely affected his successor (who probably would have been delighted to burn the offending 'forgery' had he ever come across it) is never clarified.
This scenario is extremely tenuous, to say the least, especially when in fact the Italian manuscript receives hardly any publicity whatsoever for the next four hundred years - and not until the English version of it begins to be widely circulated some seventy years after the Italian version has been translated into English by Canon Lonsdale and Laura Ragg!
Unfortunately for David Sox there are no contemporary records which depict the successor of an ex-Inquisitor (who happens to be called Fra Marino) tearing his hair out in desperation as hundreds of gullible Italians inexplicably embrace Islam after reading the infamous Gospel of Barnabas.
Indeed there is no real 'proof' that the Fra Marino to whom the Preface to the Spanish version refers is none other than our ex-Inquisitor from Venice. In all probability there were literally tens, if not hundreds, of Fra Marinos in Italy during the time of Pope Sixtus V not all of whom would have been recorded in what few records have survived up until today, and any one of whom might have been the Fra Marino who stole the Pope's copy of the Gospel of Barnabas.
Furthermore, as regards the Fra Marino selected by David Sox, although it is recorded that he was an Inquisitor, and that he was reprimanded, and that he was demoted (but not dismissed), there is no record that he either subsequently embraced Islam, or that he was burnt at the stake for embracing Islam, or that he fled the country in order to avoid the clutches of the Inquisition after accepting Islam. If, as David Sox has attempted to argue, Fra Marino himself wrote the Gospel of Barnabas 'in revenge against his successor', surely the Gospel would have been publicised at the time, and surely there would have been a public outcry as a result. It appears that David Sox could find no such record.
Thus in spite of all his long hours of research, his carefully arranged footnotes and cross-references, and his lucid style, David Sox's hypothesis remains unlikely, implausible and unconvincing. It is highly unlikely that any impartial court of law today could possibly conclude, on the 'evidence' presented by David Sox, that the link needed to substantiate his allegation of forgery which he seeks to establish in his book has been proved.
Indeed one cannot help concluding that perhaps the main reason why he has gone to such great lengths in his attempts to prove the highly improbable, may well be that it is because the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas are in fact true.
It is however to his credit that in spite of all the farfetched speculation - of which, as we have already seen, he admits there is 'a great amount' - David Sox does have the intellectual honesty to admit that, 'The Jesus of the Gospel of Barnabas is on many occasions similar to that of the canonical Gospels,' - although he then adds, ' because, of course, the former book depends on material contained in the latter.' It is possible, however, that it is in fact the converse of that statement which is nearer the truth:
It is possible that the reason why there is in fact such a marked similarity between the contents of The Gospel of Barnabas and that of the other Gospels is that the Italian translation is not a 'forgery', but rather a faithful translation of a much earlier Greek or Hebrew or even Aramaic version, which was in existence long before the Quran was revealed, and on which the writers of the four officially accepted Gospels perhaps depended - for it is now generally accepted that the three earliest accepted Gospels, known as the Synoptic Gospels, were in part derived from an earlier unknown Gospel which today's researchers often refer to as the '0' Gospel, for want of a better name.
It is possible that this earlier unknown Gospel could be the original Gospel of Barnabas, although it is clear from the following analysis contained in Dr. Maurice Bucaille's book, The Bible, the Quran and Science, that the 'Q' Gospel may well have been a collection of different narrations, rather than one complete document:
The problem of sources was approached in a very simplistic fashion at the time of the Fathers of the Church. In the early centuries of Christianity, the only source available was the Gospel that the complete manuscripts provided first, Le. Matthew's Gospel. The problem of sources only concerned Mark and Luke because John constituted a quite separate case. Saint Augustine held that Mark, who appears second in the traditional order of presentation, had been inspired by Matthew and had summarised his work. He further considered that Luke, who comes third in the manuscripts, had used data from both; his prologue suggests this, and has already been discussed.
From the Fathers of the Church until the end of the Eighteenth century AD, one and a half millennia passed without any new problems being raised on the sources of the evangelists: people continued to follow tradition. It was not until modern times that it was realised, on the basis of these data, how each evangelist had taken material found in the others and compiled his own specific narration guided by his own personal views.
Great weight was attached to actual collection of material for the narration. It came from the oral traditions of the communities from which it originated on the one hand, and from a common written Aramaic source that has not been rediscovered on the other, This written source could have formed a compact mass or have been composed of many fragments of different narrations used by each evangelist to contradict his own original work.
Thus the question inevitably arises as to whether the Apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas is, in fact, either this missing Gospel or at least a part of the possible collection of different narrations.
It must be remembered that John Mark, whose Gospel is the earliest of the four accepted Gospels, was the son of the sister of Barnabas. He never met Jesus. Thus, what he related of Jesus's life and teaching in his Gospel must have been related to him by others.
It is known from the books of the New Testament that he accompanied Paul and Barnabas on many of their missionary journeys up to the point when there was a sharp conflict between them, resulting in Barnabas and Mark going to Cyprus together. It is unlikely that Mark relied on Paul as a source of information since Paul had never met Jesus either.
The only reasonable conclusion appears to be that he must have repeated what his uncle Barnabas told him about Jesus. It is said by some that he acted as Peter's interpreter and wrote down what he had learned from Peter. This may be correct, for Mark must have had some contact with the other apostles when he was not journeying with Barnabas or Paul. However, Good speed shows us from his research that anything he did learn from Peter was by no means comprehensive:
He had been an interpreter of Peter and wrote down accurately, though not in order, everything that he remembered that had been said or done by the Lord.
For he neither heard the Lord, nor followed him, but afterwards, as I said, attended Peter who adapted his instructions to the needs of the hearers, but had no design of giving a connected account of the lord's oracles.
Luke, who also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, never met Jesus. He was Paul's personal physician. Matthew, who also never encountered Jesus, was a tax collector.
It has been argued that Mark's Gospel might be the 'Q' Gospel and that Matthew and Luke used his Gospel when writing theirs. However, they record details which Mark does not, which implies that Mark's Gospel could not have been their only source. Some have said that this is not important, since it is known that Mark's Gospel was written in Hebrew, then translated into Greek, and the Greek translation then translated once again into Latin.
All the Hebrew and early Greek versions of Mark's Gospel have been destroyed, and people can only speculate as to how much of the Gospel was changed or altered during these transitions from one language to another, although it has now been generally accepted that the final section (Mark 16: 9-20) was tacked on to the end of the basic work at a later stage in order to round it off, which is why it is not to be found in the two oldest complete manuscripts of the Gospels, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus which are said to date from the late 4th or 5th century AD.
It is interesting to note in passing that there have even been attempts to return to the source by synthesising the Gospels, since the contradictions that arise between them have, at times, proved a little awkward for the established Church.
Titian attempted to synthesise the four accepted Gospels, which had already been earmarked by the Pauline Church as their official Scriptures during the second century AD. In this Gospel, Titian used 96% of John's Gospel, 75% of Matthew's Gospel, 66% of Luke's Gospel, and 50% of Mark's Gospel. The rest he rejected. It is significant that he placed little trust in the earliest Gospel and relied most heavily on the last Gospel to be written. His synthesised Gospel was not a success.
Thus it is debatable whether Mark's Gospel can be regarded as the common source of the three Synoptic Gospels, whereas most of the events recorded in these three Gospels are contained within the Gospel of Barnabas - although, as has already been remarked, there are some notable and deeply significant differences - which is why, according to the Introduction to the Gospel of Barnabas, Barnabas wrote his Gospel in the first place:
"Dearly beloved, the great and wonderful God has during these past days visited us by his Prophet Jesus Christ in great mercy of teaching and miracles, by reason whereof many, being deceived of Satan, under pretence of piety, are preaching most impious doctrine, calling Jesus son of God, repudiating the circumcision ordained of God for ever, and permitting every unclean meat:
Among whom also Paul has been deceived, whereof I speak not without grief; for which cause I am writing that truth which I have seen and heard, in the intercourse that I have had with Jesus, in order that you may be saved, and not deceived of Satan and perish in the judgement of God. Therefore beware of every one that preaches unto you new doctrine contrary to that which I write, that you may be saved eternally. The great God be with you and guard you from Satan and from every evil. Amen."
If the Italian version of the Gospel of Barnabas is a faithful translation of an earlier manuscript which actually did contain what Barnabas originally wrote - and there is no way of conclusively 'proving' this, just as there is no way of conclusively 'proving' that the contents of the four officially accepted Gospels which exist today actually contain what their original authors in fact wrote - then it does follow that the Gospel of Barnabas could well be the 'Q' Gospel, the common source of the synoptic Gospels, although as yet no one has ventured to make a verse by verse comparison between the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas and the contents of the four official Gospels in order to establish exactly which verses are shared and which verses are unique.
If the Gospel of Barnabas is the 'Q' Gospel, and given the manner in which Paulinian Christianity developed, it then makes it easier to understand why not only the manuscripts of all the other Gospels - which are known to have existed in the early years of Christianity and which were rejected at the Council of Nicea were destroyed, but also all the early manuscripts of even-the four official Gospels, probably after the original texts had been radically altered. It should be emphasised that as regards the four officially accepted Gospels, there are no versions in the original Hebrew or Aramaic, and that, as Dr Maurice Bucaille confirms, the earliest Greek versions date from after the Council of Nicea:
Documents prior to this, i.e. papyri from the Third century AD and one possibly dating from the Second, only transmit fragments to us. The two oldest parchment manuscripts are Greek, Fourth century AD. They are the Codex Vaticanus, preserved in the Vatican Library and whose place of discovery is unknown, and the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered on Mount Sinai and is now preserved in the British Museum, London. The second contains two apocryphal works.
According to the Ecumenical Translation, two hundred and fifty other known parchments exist throughout the world, the last of these being from the Eleventh century AD. 'Not all the copies of the New Testament that have come down to us are identical' however. 'On the contrary, it is possible to distinguish differences of varying degrees of importance between them, but however important they may be, there is always a large number of them. Some of these only concern differences of grammatical detail, vocabulary or word order. Elsewhere however, differences between manuscripts can be seen which affect the meaning of whole passages.' If one wishes to see the extent of textual differences, one only has to glance through the Novum Testamenturn Graece (Nestlé-Aland, Pub., United Bible Societies, London, 1971).
This work contains a so-called 'middle of the road' Greek text. It is a text of synthesis with notes containing all the variations found in the different versions.
Thus not only is it possible - indeed it is highly likely - that significant changes were made to the original texts which pre-dated the Council of Nicea and which have all been destroyed, but also even the texts which date from after the Council of Nicea do not fully agree with each other, cannot therefore be entirely accurate, and in fact have themselves been altered:
The authenticity of a text, and of even the most venerable manuscript, is always open to debate. The Codex Vatîcatlus is a good example of this. The facsimile reproduction edited by the Vatican City, contains an accompanying note from its editors informing us that, 'several centuries after it was copied (believed to have been in circa the Tenth or Eleventh century), a scribe inked over all the letters except those he thought were a mistake.' There are passages in the text where the original letters in light brown still show through, contrasting visibly with the rest of the text which is in dark brown.
There is no indication that it was a faithful restoration. The note states moreover that, 'the different hands that corrected and annotated the manuscript over the centuries have not yet been definitively discerned; a certain number of corrections were undoubtedly made when the text was inked over.' In all the religious manuals the text is presented as a Fourth century copy. One has to go to sources at the Vatican to discover that various hands may have altered the text centuries later.
One might reply that other texts may be used for comparison, but how does one choose between variations that change the meaning? It is a well known fact that a very old scribe's correction can lead to the definitive reproduction of the corrected text. We shall see further on how a single-word in a passage from John concerning the Paraclete radically alters its meaning and completely changes its sense when viewed from a theological point of view.
O. Culmann, in his book, The New Testament, writes the following on the subject of variations:
"Sometimes the latter are the result of inadvertent flaws: the copier misses a word out, or conversely writes it twice, or a whole section of a sentence is carelessly omitted because in the manuscript to be copied it appeared between two identical words. Sometimes it is a matter of deliberate corrections, either the copier has taken the liberty of correcting the text according to his own ideas or he has tried to bring it into line with a parallel text in a more or less skillful attempt to reduce the number of discrepancies. As, little by little, the New Testament writings broke away from the rest of early Christian literature, and came to be regarded as Holy Scripture, so the copiers became more and more hesitant about taking the same liberties as their predecessors: they thought they were copying the authentic text, but in fact wrote down the variations. Finally, a copier sometimes wrote annotations in the margin to explain an obscure passage. The following copier, thinking that the sentence he found in the margin had been left out of the passage by his predecessor, thought it necessary to include the margin notes in the text. This process often made the new text even more obscure."
The scribes of some manuscripts sometimes took exceedingly great liberties with the texts. This is the case of one of the most venerable manuscripts after the two referred to above, the Sixth century Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. The scribe probably noticed the difference between Luke's and Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, so he put Matthew's genealogy into his copy of Luke, but as the second contained fewer names than the first, he padded it out with extra names (without however balancing them up).
Is it possible to say that the Latin translations, such as Saint Jerome's Sixth century Vulgate, or older translations (Vetus Itala), or Syriac and Coptic translations are any more faithful than the basic Greek manuscripts? They might have been made from manuscripts older than the ones referred to above and subsequently lost to the present day. We just do not know.
The truth of the matter is that there are no complete pre Council of Nicea manuscripts of any of the writings contained in the New Testament extant today - nor of the Gospel of Barnabas for that matter or if there are, then whoever has them has been keeping very quiet about them for a good many centuries, and probably for not the right reasons.
It must be emphasised therefore that the contents of the earliest Greek manuscripts of the four officially accepted Gospels are in fact just as capable of having been 'forged', albeit during an earlier period, as are the contents of the Italian manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas. We just do not know.
The converse possibility, however, is equally true, and although, to quote the Introduction to the Ecumenical Translation, 'there can be no hope of going back to the original text itself,' there is still the possibility that on the whole all the Gospels - including The Gospel of Barnabas - in their present form do contain a certain degree of accuracy and truth. It is possible to read all of these Gospels and find elements of what must be true in all of them - but it is impossible to claim that any of them are entirely accurate or to rely completely and unreservedly on any one of them.
Furthermore, the one Gospel which we do not have is the Gospel of Jesus, the original revelation that he received, in the original language in which it was revealed - so that the accuracy and authenticity of any translation of that original text could always be ascertained and assessed simply by referring back to that original text whenever the occasion might arise.
It is interesting to note, as has already been stated, in this context that according to the Gospel of Barnabas, the revelation which was given to Jesus – 'The Ingeel' - was never preserved as a written text at any stage, but was more in the nature of a well of wisdom which was placed in the heart of Jesus by the angel Gabriel, and from which he could draw as he needed:
Jesus having come to the age of thirty years, as he himself said unto me, went up to the Mount of Olives with his mother to gather olives. Then at midday as he was praying, when he came to these words: 'Lord, with mercy ...,' he was surrounded by an exceeding bright light and by an infinite multitude of angels, who were saying: 'Blessed be Cod.' The angel Gabriel presented to him as it were a shining mirror, a book, which descended into the heart of Jesus, in which he had knowledge of what God has done and what has said, and what God wills insomuch that everything was laid bare and open to him; as he said unto me: 'Believe, Barnabas, that I know every prophet with every prophecy, insomuch that whatever I say the whole has come forth from that book.'
This account of the nature of the revelation which Jesus received is not contradicted by any historical record which states otherwise. There is no record of Jesus being presented with inscribed tablets as happened with Moses, for example, or of his receiving a series of revelations like Muhammad, blessings and peace be on all of them, with certain disciples being appointed to record these revelations as they occurred - but not any of Jesus' s own words - in order to ensure that the revelation was preserved exactly as it was revealed.
There can be no doubt, however, that Jesus was an illuminated being whose words contained a clarity and directness which reflected all the qualities of light - and which must have entered people's hearts and remained in them just as light does when it enters a room.
And when these words came to be recorded in writing, then surely at least some of these words - together with the accounts of the situations in which they were uttered - must have survived intact, even if the darkness in other people tried to cloud some of them up or shut them out by changing or removing them.
In spite of all the imperfections which exist in the present contents not only of the Old and the New Testaments, but also of The Gospel of Barnabas and other similar works, there can be no doubt that at least some of their contents must accurately record at least some of the words and actions of Jesus, peace be on him - although it will never be possible to actually differentiate between what is reliable and what is not with complete accuracy or certainty.
It does remain a great pity, therefore, that there is no complete original authentic text of the Gospel of Jesus, which has been verified beyond any reasonable doubt, in existence today.
It therefore follows that what David Sox says of the four officially accepted Gospels applies equally to the Gospel of Barnabas:
The differences, even the contradictions, between the Gospel accounts do not detract from the spiritual truths that they contain; if anything, they give us a better understanding of the world in which they were written.
Nevertheless, there is still the necessity - wherever fundamental contradictions between the various accounts do exist - of having to decide which account is the most accurate and the nearest to the truth of the matter:
Was Jesus a Prophet of God or a 'son' of God? Was it Jesus or Judas, or someone else, who was crucified? Did Jesus tell his disciples that there would be a Prophet who would come after him who would be called Muhammad, and are the references to the Paraclete in John's Gospel in fact references to him?
And the answers to these questions can only be sensed if the reader does indeed understand the world in which they were written - and accordingly the nature of the disagreement that dearly existed between the two groups of Christians whom Cardinal Daniélou termed the Judeo-Christians and the Pauline Christians, between those who sincerely followed the example of Jesus and those who followed Paul, putting words into the mouth of Jesus that he, peace be on him, never himself uttered, and granting him a divine status which he neither claimed nor possessed.
Even though none of the contents of either the New Testament or the Gospel of Barnabas are capable of being fully authenticated; and even though it is impossible to establish exactly what has been altered, or added, or removed, or allowed to remain intact; and whether or not the authors of the officially accepted Gospels, each with such a differing background, derived their knowledge from the same source or not; and if they did, then whether or not that source was in fact The Gospel of Barnabas, about Barnabas the commandment is: "If he comes unto you, receive him." (Epistle to the Colossians 4:10).
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