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Barnabas
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Saint Barnabas (1st century), born Joseph, was an early Christian convert, one of the earliest disciples in Jerusalem. Like almost all Christians at the time, Barnabas was Jewish, specifically a Levite. Termed an apostle, he and Saint Paul undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the demands of stricter church leaders. They gained many converts in Antioch (c 43-44) and traveled together making more converts (c 45-47), and participated in the Council of Jerusalem (c 50). Barnabas and Paul successfully evangelized among the "God-fearing" gentiles who attended synagogues in various Hellenized cities of Anatolia.
Barnabas' story appears in Acts of the Apostles, and Paul mentions him in some of his epistles. Tertullian named him as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but this and other attributions are conjecture. Clement of Alexandria ascribed an early Christian epistle to Barnabas, but that is highly improbable.
He is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Church, martyred at Salamis (AD 61). The feast day of St Barnabas is celebrated on June 11.
EtymologiesHis Hellenic Jewish parents called him Joseph (although the Byzantine text-type calls him , Ioses, 'Joses', a Greek variant of 'Joseph'), but when he sold all his goods and gave the money to the apostles in Jerusalem, they gave him a new name: Barnabas. This name appears to be from the Aramaic , , meaning 'the (son of the) prophet'. However, the Greek text of the explains the name as , hyios parakleseos, meaning "son of exhortation and or encouragement."
Barnabas in the New TestamentBarnabas appears mainly in Acts, a Christian history of the early Christian church. He also appears in certain of Saint Paul's epistles.
St Barnabas is one of the first prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch (Acts 13:1). Like all the apostles, Barnabas was Jewish, a Levite (a tribe of ministers). His aunt was the mother of John, surnamed Mark, widely assumed to be the same Mark as the person traditionally believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark. He was a native of Cyprus, where he possessed land (Acts 4:36, 37), which he sold, and gave the proceeds to the church in Jerusalem. When Saint Paul returned to Jerusalem after his conversion, Barnabas took him and introduced him to the apostles (9:27). It is possible that they had been fellow students in the school of Rabbi Gamaliel.
The prosperity of the church at Antioch led the apostles and brethren at Jerusalem to send Barnabas there to superintend the movement. He found the work so extensive and weighty that he went to Tarsus in search of Paul to assist him. St Paul returned with him to Antioch and labored with him for a whole year (Acts 11:25, 26). At the end of this period, the two were sent up to Jerusalem (AD 44) with the contributions the church at Antioch had made for the poorer members of the Jerusalem church (11:28-30).
Shortly after they returned, bringing John Mark with them, they were appointed as missionaries to Asia Minor, and in this capacity visited Cyprus and some of the principal cities of Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Lycaonia (Acts 13:14). With the conversion of Sergius Paulus, Paul begins to gain prominence over Barnabas from the point where the name "Paul," his Roman name, is substituted for "Saul" (13:9); instead of "Barnabas and Saul" as heretofore (11:30; 12:25; 13:2, 7) we now read "Paul and Barnabas" (13:43, 46, 50; 14:20; 15:2, 22, 35); only in 14:14 and 15:12, 25 does Barnabas again occupy the first place, in the first passage with recollection of 14:12, in the last two, because Barnabas stood in closer relation to the Jerusalem church than Paul. St. Paul appears as the preaching missionary (13:16; 14:8-9, 19-20), whence the Lystrans regarded him as Hermes, St. Barnabas as Zeus (14:12). Returning from this first missionary journey to Antioch, they were again sent up to Jerusalem to consult with the church there regarding the relation of Gentiles to the church (Acts 15:2; Galatians 2:1). According to Gal. 2:9-10, Barnabas was included with Paul in the agreement made between them, on the one hand, and James, St. Peter, and St. John, on the other, that the two former should in the future preach to the pagans, not forgetting the poor at Jerusalem. This matter having been settled, they returned again to Antioch, bringing the agreement of the council that Gentiles were to be admitted into the church.
Having returned to Antioch and spent some time there (15:35), St Paul asked Barnabas to accompany him on another journey (15:36). Barnabas wished to take John Mark along, but Paul did not, as he had left them on the former journey (15:37-38). The dispute ended by Paul and Barnabas taking separate routes. Paul took Silas as his companion, and journeyed through Syria and Cilicia; while Barnabas took his younger cousin, John Mark, to visit Cyprus (15:36-41).
St Barnabas is not mentioned again by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. However, in Gal. 2:13 a little more is learned about him, and his weakness under the taunts of the Jewish Christians is evident; and from 1 Corinthians 9:6 it may be gathered that he continued to labor as missionary.
Barnabas and AntiochAntioch, the third-most important city of the Roman Empire, then part of Syria province, today Antakya, Turkey, was where Christians were first so-called. It was the site of an early church, traditionally said to be founded by Peter. A considerable minority of the Antioch church of Barnabas's time belonged to the merchant class, and they provided support to the poorer Jerusalem church.
Council of JerusalemBarnabas participated in the Council of Jerusalem, which dealt with the admission of gentiles into the Christian community. This was the most crucial problem in the history of Christianity. Paul and Barnabas proposed that gentiles be allowed into the community without being circumcized, realizing that Christianity would never reach large numbers of gentiles if circumcision were required.
MartyrdomChurch tradition describes the martyrdom of many saints. Barnabas's martyrdom is legend. It relates that certain Jews coming to Syria and Salamis, where Barnabas was then preaching the gospel, being highly exasperated at his extraordinary success, fell upon him as he was disputing in the synagogue, dragged him out, and, after the most inhumane tortures, stoned him to death. His kinsman, John Mark, who was a spectator of this barbarous action, privately interred his body in a cave, where it remained till the time of the Emperor Zeno, in the year 485 AD. A monastery built in his name at Salamis, Cyprus, is where a tomb reputed to hold his remains was found in the year 488.He is venerated as the Patron Saint of Cyprus.
Other sourcesOther sources bring St Barnabas to Rome and Alexandria. In the "Clementine Recognitions" (i, 7) he is depicted as preaching in Rome even during Christ's lifetime, and Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, ii, 20) makes him one of the Seventy Disciples that are mentioned in the Gospel of Luke.
Not older than the 3rd century is the tradition of the later activity and martyrdom of St Barnabas in Cyprus, where his remains are said to have been discovered under the Emperor Zeno. The Cypriot Church claimed Saint Barnabas as its founder in order to rid itself of the supremacy of the Patriarch of Antioch, as it also did of the Archbishop of Milan afterward, to become more independent of Rome. In this connection, the question whether St. Barnabas was an apostle became important, and was often discussed during the Middle Ages. The statements as to the year of St Barnabas's death are discrepant and untrustworthy.
Alleged writingsTertullian and other Western writers regard Barnabas as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. This may have been the Roman tradition -- which Tertullian usually follows -- and in Rome the epistle may have had its first readers. But the tradition has weighty considerations against it.
According to Photius (Quaest. in Amphil., 123), Barnabas wrote the Acts of the Apostles. (Current consensus ascribes the book to the author of Luke.)
He is also traditionally associated with the Epistle of Barnabas, although modern scholars think it more likely that that epistle was written in Alexandria in the 130s.
Another book using that same title, the "Gospel of Barnabas," survives in two post-medieval manuscripts in Italian and Spanish. Contrary to the canonical Christian Gospels, and in accordance with the Islamic view of Jesus, this later "Gospel of Barnabas" states that Jesus was not the son of God, but a prophet, and calls Paul "the deceived." The book also says Jesus rose alive into Heaven without having been crucified, and that Judas Iscariot was crucified in his place.
- Die Apostolischen Väter. Griechisch-deutsche Parallelausgabe. J.C.B. Mohr Tübingen 1992. ISBN 3-16-145887-7
- Der Barnabasbrief. Übersetzt und erklärt von Ferdinand R. Prostmeier. Series: Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vätern (KAV, Vol. 8). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen 1999. ISBN 3-525-51683-5
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