Posted by Jochen Katz on December 11, 1997 at 03:57:22:
In Reply to: Re: Gospel of Barnabas posted by james on December 09, 1997 at 11:30:23:
: (As an aside, the Gospel of Barnabus should not be confused with other pieces of literature that bear the name Barnabus.
: For example, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says this about the Epistle of Barnabus: "The epistle is one of The Apostolic Fathers.
: It stands at the end of the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus of the New Testament, in a sort of appendix. This means it once
: enjoyed quasi-canonical authority, a fact born out by Clement, Origen and Eusebius (H.E. iii. 25). Internal evidence
: refutes its ascription to Barnabus; nor does the epistle itself make any such claim " The term Apostolic Fathers refers
: vaguely to writers that were of the next generation after the 12 Apostles, as stated in the article Apostolic Fathers
: in the same edition of the encyclopaedia. The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA 1988) also
: refers to a piece of literature called Acts of Barnabus: "The apocryphal Epistle of Barnabus is almost certainly a
: mid-second-century composition and therefore not from the hand of Barnabus. The apocryphal Acts of Barnabus is from
: the fifth century and not useful in establishing reliable information on the person of Barnabus.")
After you made the difference clear, I wonder why you still confuse
it yourself?
: So it seems the Gospel of Barnabus is a fake.
: Of course, being a fake does not in itself mean that the Epistle of Barnabus is wrong.
: But it does need to be read as a 15th century document, not a first century one.
The pseudo-gospel of Barnabas is (most probably) a 15th century Muslim forgery,
but the Epistle of Barnabas is a 2nd century document, and quite orthodox,
nothing a Muslim would want to base an argument on.
On the following page is more info on the "gospel of Barnabas"
Jochen Katz