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PREFACE When Laura and Lonsdale Ragg
published the Italian text of The
Gospel of Barnabas with marginal notes in Arabic and with an English
translation and critical introduction, Temple Gairdner was working in Cairo as
a missionary of the Anglican Church Missionary Society. As soon as an Arabic translation of The
Gospel of Barnabas with a new introduction had been published in Cairo,
Temple Gairdner and Selim 'Abdul-Ahad wrote a refutation of it in Arabic. In her beautiful biography of our
author, Temple Gairdner of Cairo (London: S.P.C.K., 1930). Constance E. Padwick mentions that this
refutation was published in 1907.
In 1908 the Christian Literature Society, Madras, published an English
translation of this work. The C.L.S. has kindly given
the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies, Hyderabad, India, permission to
prepare a new edition of this refutation.
This new edition includes the present preface, some editing of Gairdner's original test that doers not affect the original argument, and the
addition of the footnotes, prepared by the author of the Preface, to the
original text. While the need for a new
edition may be obvious to some readers who live in the Muslim world, others may
find it helpful to learn the reasons for this new edition. A brief delineation of these reasons is
the burden of this Preface. In 1916 two Urdu editions of
The Gospel of Barnabas were published, one in Lahore and one in
Okarah. The Urdu editions were
based on the Arabic. Meanwhile
several Arabic editions have appeared, the latest, to my knowledge, in
1964. Persian and Indonesian
editions also have been brought out.
In 1973 a pirated edition of the English translation of the Raggs' book,
without the critical introduction, was published in Karachi. Soon reprints were needed because the
Urdu and English press, including The Pakistan Times and Muslim News
International, strongly promoted these editions. In July 1974 a new Urdu edition was published by the Jama'at-I
Islami in Lahore. An
introductions was written by the Jama'at's founder, Maulana A.A.Maududi, one of
the most prolific writers on Islamic themes in Pakistan. In the West the Raggs'
publication was soon forgotten for reasons which will soon be evident to the
reader. Writers about the New
Testament Apocrypha hardly noticed it.
But in view of these highly controversial publications in the Muslim
world, Fr. Dr. J. Jomier published a scholarly study about in the MIDEO
(Melanges Institute Dominican Holy Spirit'Etuders Orientales du Caire, Vol. VI,
1959-1961). Jomier's "Paul'Evangile
selon Barnabe" ("The Gospel According to Barnabas) covers 90
pages. Once and for all it
demonstrated the spurious character of this so-called gospel. Since Jomier's work was
written in French, it did not reach all those who should have benefited from
it. Jomier's study also left some
questions unanswered and thus stimulated further research. On the popular level a Greek Orthodox
priest in Damascus, Elias Zahlawi, wrote a small but penetrating essay Hawl
ul-injil wa Inji Barnabas which was published by the Paulist Press in 1971
in Lebanon. Propagandistic use of
this pseudo-gospel in Indonesia led a Dutch missionary, H. Bergema, to write an
essay about it, which leans heavily on Jomier's research. So far no Indonesian edition of
Bergema's essay has been published.
Dr. Michel Fremaux prepared a French edition of
"Barnabas". Its
publication was expected in 1974, but I have not yet seen a copy. The writer of this Preface
got involved in an argument in The Pakistan Times. His studies resulted in an article
which was first published in June 1974 in Al-Mushir, the theological
journal of the Christian Study Centre in Rawalpindi. Prof. Yusuf Jalil developed an Urdu article in the same
journal into a brochure, which was published in the spring of 1975. Unfortunately, most of these publications
were either ignored or strongly attacked by Muslim apologetic writers. So far, only two or three Muslim
authors have publicly acknowledged that they consider this so-called gospel to
be a forgery. In an Urdu review of
the Urdu work A Study of the Gospel of Barnabas prepared by Bashir
Mahmud (Baffa Zilla Hazarah, Pakistan: Dar ul-'Ulum) Dr. Ghulam Jilani Barq
writes: In the light of the Christian rejection (of the
Gospel of Barnabas as a genuine Gospel) the contention that this work is
genuine can be validated only when a copy of it that antedates the mission of
the Prophet has been discovered and brought to light - which thus far has not
been possible. (Al-Furqan, Lucknow, August, 1975, prophet,. 48). New
Insights Since Temple Gairdner's Work Gairdner wrote his work
before the "Barnabas" debate.
This debate has focused on a few important points which should be
briefly mentioned in order to read Gairdner's essay in the right light today. I mention five points: 1.The identification of the Italian "Barnabas"
with a Gospel of Barnabas that is 2.The assumed perversion of, and conspiracy against,
original Christianity by St. Paul and his party. 3.The claim made by "Barnabas" that
Muhammad, not Jesus, is the real Messiah. 4.The background of "Barnabas" in the
circles of the persecuted Muslims/Moriscos and Jews/Matranos after the
reconquest of Spain. 5.The present day emphasis on dialogue and better
understanding rather than apologetics or polemics in the relationships between
Muslims and Christians. A more detailed study of
these five points will be presented, I hope, in a forthcoming second work by
the present writer in Al-Mushir.
However, for those readers who will read only this present edition of
Gairdner's work, I must summarize briefly the present state of research on
these issues. I do this also at
the special request of Fr. Jomier in Cairo with whom I corresponded about the
republishing of Gairdner's work. 1.Every effort to prove that the Italian
"Barnabas" is wholly or partly the same as the apocryphal gospel
mentioned in the so-called Gelasian Decrees has failed. These efforts were bound to fail,
because it is very likely that the gospel mentioned in the Gelasian Decrees
never existed at all. In the
apocryphal Acts of Barnabas , written before 478 A.D., we come across a
reference to the gospel used by Barnabas in his home country, Cyprus: Barnabas, having unrolled the Gospel, which he
had received from Matthew his fellow-labourer, began to teach the Jews. By leaving out the sentence in italics, the
impression is created that Barnabas used his own gospel! In 478 A.D. during the reign of Emperor
Zeno, church leaders in Cyprus are said to have found the remains of Barnabas. They could identify these remains by
only a dream which one of the bishops is said to have had. The event was exploited in order to
increase the prestige of Cyprus as an apostolic church. A legend was built on the above-quoted
sentence from the Acts of Barnabas, which mentions his use of the Gospel
of printed in 1698 A.D. by the
Bollandists in Antwerp, Belgium. I give a translation of the Latin and Greek
texts: The body of Barnabas had been found in Cyprus in 478
A.D. during the reign of Zeno (or in another reading: 'in the fourth year of
Zeno') with a gospel on his breast, having on his breast the Gospel
according to Matthew, copied by Barnabas himself. If we again omit the words in italics, we have discovered or invented, by mistake or on purpose, the Gospel of Barnabas! This may have been done by the opponents of the Cyprian claim to show that the claim was based on deceit which attributed to give a Gospel account. The interesting thing is, however, that publishers of the English pirated edition of "Barnabas" in Karachi in 1973 did omit the words "according to Matthew" from the above quotation, in order to prove, presumably, the existence of a gospel of Barnabas in the early church. In other words, it seems that they corrupted a text in order to prove that their forgery is authentic. Literature
2. Several books have been attributed to Barnabas in
the early church. A Gospel which
was non-existent, as we have just proved: Acts, of a fairly late date
but probably containing some true local Cyprian traditions; an Epistle which is
of a very early date. This Epistle
has even been preserved in some Bible manuscripts (Sinaiticus; Vaticanus). It enjoys a high authority but most
probably was not written by Barnabas himself. At present it is counted among the works of the apostolic
fathers, authors who lived after Jesus" Apostles in the beginning of the
second century A.D. Defenders of the
authenticity of The Gospel of Barnabas point out that in it
"Barnabas" defends the true and original Christianity in accordance
with Jesus' teaching against the corruptions introduced by Paul. This portrait of "Barnabas",
however, does not agree with the image of Barnabas held by Christians in the
early church. They certainly would
not have attributed to him the above mentioned Acts of Barnabas and Epistle
of Barnabas, if the man who speaks through these books had not somehow fitted the description
they had received of him in the New Testament, especially in the Acts of the
Apostles. There is no trace of
a conflict between Paul and Barnabas in the books attributed to him. On the contrary, the Barnabas of the
Epistle attacks the Judaisers among the Christians just as the New Testament
records that Paul and Barnabas attacked them. Barnabas' school of thought in the early church was not
identified with anti-Paulinism.
The minor conflict they had about a co-worker, according to The Acts
of the Apostles 15:39, had no real theological basis. Barnabas agreed with Paul that the new
Christians need not be circumcised, etc.
According to the Acts of the Apostles 15:39, Barnabas returned to his
home country, Cyprus, after he left Paul.
There he preached the Gospel, using probably the Gospel according to St.
Matthew (see above). In the circles of Muslim
polemical writers the anti-Pauline trend in "Barnabas" has revived
the claim that Paul perverted the original message of Jesus and Hellenized it
by preaching that Jesus was the Son of God. This theme we find already in the works of the Hazm (d. 1064
A.D.), al-Qarafi (d. 1285 A.D.) and Abu Talib (d. 1321 A.D.). These claims, no doubt, originated in
Jewish circles and were introduced into Islamic thought with other Jewish
material, namely the so-called Israi-liyyat. Modern Muslim thinkers
reject these Israiliyyat, considering them to be anti-Islamic. It follows that the insinuations about
a Pauline conspiracy against original Christianity should also be rejected
along with these other Israiliyyat! Nineteenth century Christian
"liberalism" has revived this presumed antithesis between the
original and simple gospel of Jesus and Paul's speculative Hellenistic
theology. This school of thought,
however, has completely disappeared, because it was the result of prejudiced
and superficial reading of the New Testament sources. The prejudice consisted in explaining the New Testament in
purely Hellenistic terms and in forgetting about its Hebrew and Aramaic
heritage. Even Jewish theologians
agree with this point of view. Literature
3.In many places "Barnabas" makes Jesus
declare that He is not the Messiah, but that Muhammad will be the Messiah. It is, of course, impossible for a
Muslim to accept that Jesus is not al-Masih. This name is given to Him in many
places in the Holy Qur'an (G. Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur'an (London:
Faber and Faber, 1965) Chapter 4). The Arabic and first Urdu
translations tried to hide this obvious contradiction between
"Barnabas" and the Qur'an.
They tried to solve the problem, a problem of their own making, by
writing Masiya instead of al-Masih. The Italian has Il Messia which can only mean the
Messiah, the Christ, al-Masih. In order to arrive at their wrong
translation, they first had to change the text. The forgery was not yet good enough for their polemical
purpose. In this way, however,
they obscured a very important point which "Barnabas", no doubt, was
to prove the superiority of Muhammad over Jesus. He does this by stressing, through words which he put in
Jesus' mouth, that Muhammad deserves the title "Messiah" more than
Jesus Himself. In the new English and Urdu
editions the words Messiah and Masih have been maintained. But by stressing that Jesus meant,
while using the word "Messiah" for Muhammad, that Muhammad was
"filled by God". Maulana
Maududi obscures the fact that "Barnabas" draws a contrast between
Jesus and Muhammad.
"Barnabas" does not mean that Jesus was not filled by God
(Maulana Maududi implies that He was not) but that Muhammad was filled by
God. "Barnabas" stresses
that the term Messiah, in its Jewish and New Testament meaning of bringing God's
plan to fulfillment, better applies to Muhammad than to Jesus. In my opinion this is one of the main objects of "Barnabas". 4.There are many indications that "Barnabas"
has a Spanish background. I a.
The
presence of Spanish fragments (printed in the Raggs' edition). b.
The
orthographical mistakes in the Italian text are typical of a Spaniard using
Italian as a second language, as de Epalza has demonstrated. c.
The
Spanish Muslim name of the "translator" Mustafa de Aranda. Aranda is a city in northern Spain. d.
The
fact that the Italian gospel was found in Amsterdam in circles which had close
contacts with refugees from Spain. e.
The
discovery of Gospel forgeries in Arabic after March 1588 in Granada. The forgers were two Moriscos, Alonso
de Castillo and Miguel de Luna. f.
The
persecution of Moriscos between 1575 and 1610. (Barnabas was discovered during the reign of Pope Sixtus
David, A.D. 1585-1590). This
persecution of the Spanish Moriscos by the Inquisition presented sufficient
motive to produce such a forgery in order to take revenge on the oppressors. g.
The
remaining Moriscos, who were expelled from Spain during the reign of Philip II
(A.D. 1556-1598), were not able to maintain a good knowledge of Arabic. This
may explain the poor Arabic on the margin of the Italian manuscript. h.
The
coins mentioned in "Barnabas" (chapter 54 of the Italian version
mentions a golden denarius divided into 60 minuti) were found in
Spain in the Visigothic period.
Dr. Garcia Gomez, a well-known Spanish orientalist, agreed with my
hypothesis which was presented to him by Fr. Jomier in Cairo. Literature
5."Barnabas" is a hindrance and no help for
dialogue. I have demonstrated this
in a rather detailed way in the above-mentioned publication. In support of this contention it is
sufficient to quote Prof. E.R.. Hambye in Delhi who wrote in the May 1975 issue
of Islam and the Modern Age:
.a spurious publication of this kind cannot
indeed contribute towards a genuine dialogue with Islam
.Pseudo-Barnabas falls
in the same category as the mythical, though time and again written about
Jesus' grave in Kashmir. I hope and pray that this new edition of Temple
Gairdner's essay will open the eyes of many to the truth of the four Gospel
accounts in the New Testament and the spurious nature of this so-called Gospel
of Barnabas. June1975 J. Slomp |