Gospel of Barnabas

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chitownmuslim

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I came across this website which has the Gospel of Barnabas posted on it. I read a few chapters from this gospel, and I was astonished to find many references to the prophet Mohammed (pbuh) in this gospel, also refering to him by name:
"Jesus answered: `The name of the Messiah is admirable, for God himself gave him the name when he had created his soul, and placed it in a celestial splendour. God said: "Wait Mohammed; for thy sake I will to create paradise, the world, and a great multitude of creatures, whereof I make thee a present, insomuch that whoso bless thee shall be blessed, and whoso shall curse thee shall be accursed. When I shall send thee into the world I shall send thee as my messenger of salvation, and thy word shall be true, insomuch that heaven and earth shall fail, but thy faith shall never fail. Mohammed is his blessed name."
(Chapter 97. Gospel of Barnabas)

The writings in this Gospel also have prophet Isa/Jesus (AS) clearly stating his status a as a prophet from God, and telling one of his disciples that he is not God and never claimed to be God:
"Jesus answered: `Believe me, Barnabas, that I cannot weep as much as I ought. For if men had not called me God, I should have seen God here as he will be seen in paradise, and should have been safe not to fear the day of judgement. But God knoweth that I am innocent, because never have I harboured thought to be held more than a poor slave. Nay, I tell thee that if I had not been called God I should have been carried into paradise when I shall depart from the world, whereas now I shall not go thither until the judgement. Now thou seest if I have cause to weep. Know, O Barnabas, that for this I must have great persecution, and shall be sold by one of my disciples for thirty pieces of money. Whereupon I am sure that he who shall sell me shall be slain in my name, for that God shall take me up from the earth, and shall change the appearance of the traitor so that every one shall believe him to be me; nevertheless, when he dieth an evil death, I shall abide in that dishonour for a long time in the world. But when Mohammed shall come, the sacred messenger of God, that infamy shall be taken away. And this shall God do because I have confessed the truth of the Messiah; who shall give me this reward, that I shall be known to be alive and to be a stranger to that death of infamy."
(Chapter 112. Gospel of Barnabas)

There are also chapters in this Gospel which say that Jesus (AS) was not crucified and was lifted up to heaven:
"When the soldiers with Judas drew near to the place where Jesus was, Jesus heard the approach of many people, wherefore in fear he withdrew into the house. And the eleven were sleeping. Then God, seeing the danger of his servant, commanded Gabriel;, Michael;, Rafael;, and Uriel, his ministers, to take Jesus out of the world. The holy angels came and took Jesus out by the window that looks toward the South;. They bare him and placed him in the third heaven in the company of angels blessing God for evermore."

I heard shiekhs saying that the true Injeel of Isa (AS) will be recovered by Muslims before Judgement Day. Now Im not saying that this is the true Injeel or anything. Nor am I in a position to declare this gospel authentic but it really surprised me to read some of the passages in this gospel which spoke of Prophet Isa (AS) in the same manner Islam does.

Anyways I justed wanted to hear what my Muslim brothers and sisters think of this, I would also like to hear a Christian opinion on this Gospel...

Salaam..
 
is it true this is one of the very very old versions of the bible? that's what i heard i cant remember

any information on it, like to which denomination does it belong n stuff... and is it written by any one in particular or is it claimed to be remnants of thhe actual bible?

salams
 
The website its posted on claims that a disciple of Isa (AS) named Barnabas wrote this gospel, and that this gospel was an authentic Christian gospel until the Nicene Council was held (325 C.E.). The website also claims that numerous Popes and Vatican clergy held private copies of this gospel even after it was anulled by the Nicean Council.

I say: Allahu A'alam...:)
 
im lost i should hav checked the site

omgg so that's the nicean council!!! yes yes they're so retardedly lost... but hey.. u got Muslim scholars today trying to do the same thing

only diff is that Allah promised to protect the quran from transmutations.
 
As far as I know, the people running the site are Muslims who believe that this gospel has some remnants of the true Injeel...

But then again: Allahu A'alam...
 
I have been intrigued by the Barnabas Gospels for a long time. I have yet to find irrefutable proof that they are truly the Gospels of Barnabas that were removed from the Bible by the Nicene Council. However, on a personal level I believe they are genuine Gospels and their removal was the reason the Christians were led away from the Sirat Mustaqeem.
 
Woodrow said:
I have been intrigued by the Barnabas Gospels for a long time. I have yet to find irrefutable proof that they are truly the Gospels of Barnabas that were removed from the Bible by the Nicene Council. However, on a personal level I believe they are genuine Gospels and their removal was the reason the Christians were led away from the Sirat Mustaqeem.
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I definitely agree ...:)

Im curious to know what the Christian perspective is on this....
 
Amazing how just because you stick the label "gospel" on a document, some assume it automatically has he same authority as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.. or more usually that it contains some suppressed hidden truth they don't.

What is a "genuine" Gospel? The author of this one was no more a disciple of Jesus (at least in a literal sense) than the previous four... and that's assuming that it is authentic. The Council of Nicea was necessary; teachings and histories had spread far across the ancient world by word-of-mouth to many isolated communities. In some of those "authentic" teachings were springing up among the locals that were far removed from those prevalent in Rome... usually with little to justify such differences. Standardization of the canon was clearly required. Whether they got it "right" or "wrong" in all cases, we will probably never know?
 
Trumble said:
Amazing how just because you stick the label "gospel" on a document, some assume it automatically has he same authority as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.. or more usually that it contains some suppressed hidden truth they don't.

What is a "genuine" Gospel? The author of this one was no more a disciple of Jesus (at least in a literal sense) than the previous four... and that's assuming that it is authentic. The Council of Nicea was necessary; teachings and histories had spread far across the ancient world by word-of-mouth to many isolated communities. In some of those "authentic" teachings were springing up among the locals that were far removed from those prevalent in Rome... usually with little to justify such differences. Standardization of the canon was clearly required. Whether they got it "right" or "wrong" in all cases, we will probably never know?
Click to expand...

So do you think the Gospel of Barnabas was forged? If you do, why?
 
Trumble said:
Amazing how just because you stick the label "gospel" on a document, some assume it automatically has he same authority as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.. or more usually that it contains some suppressed hidden truth they don't.

What is a "genuine" Gospel? The author of this one was no more a disciple of Jesus (at least in a literal sense) than the previous four... and that's assuming that it is authentic. The Council of Nicea was necessary; teachings and histories had spread far across the ancient world by word-of-mouth to many isolated communities. In some of those "authentic" teachings were springing up among the locals that were far removed from those prevalent in Rome... usually with little to justify such differences. Standardization of the canon was clearly required. Whether they got it "right" or "wrong" in all cases, we will probably never know?
Click to expand...

well that's the point, we probably will never know (maybe until they give access to the catholic churche archives)... so we should stick to sources we do know about, Quran and hadith.
 
no, and nor did he write the Quran either.

But he revealed the Quran to Muhammad, and he also inspired Muhammad to say what he did

as is stated in surat najm 'He doesn't speak based on desires, (rather) it is a revelation that is revealed'
 
LOL...Gospel of Baranabas? "removed from Bible"??
wiki perspective on this: "The Gospel of Barnabas is a work purporting to be a depiction of the life of Jesus by his disciple Barnabas. The two earliest known manuscripts have been dated to the late sixteenth century, and are written in Italian and in Spanish; although the Spanish version survives now only in an eighteenth century copy. It is about the same length as the four canonical gospels put together (the Italian manuscript has 222 chapters); with the bulk being devoted to an account of Jesus' ministry, much of it harmonised from accounts also found in the canonical gospels. In some, but not all, respects it conforms to the Islamic interpretation of Christian origins; and consequently its authorship and textual history remain the subject of continued controversy.

The Gospel is considered by the majority of academics (including Christians and some Muslims) to be late, pseudepigraphical and a pious fraud; however, some academics suggest that it may contain some remnants of an earlier apocryphal work edited to conform to Islam, perhaps Gnostic (Cirillo, Ragg) or Ebionite (Pines) or Diatessaronic (Joosten), and some Muslim scholars consider it genuine. Some Islamic organizations cite it in support of the Islamic view of Jesus"
more on wiki, and http://folk.uio.no/leirvik/tekster/Barnabas.htm

and btw: talking about "removing" anything from Bible is incorrect. yup, it did took some time to establish canon. But books, which made it to the canon, were books holded by most of local churches as "holy" and "genuin". So the fact that some texts - usualy later, with major teological differences from "mainstream" of that time. - were not widely accepted is so strange to you? Because counciles accepted what was already accepted. They didn't "rule" over christians in the way Pope rules today.
"after it was anulled by the Nicean Council" - what councile of Nicea was "talking about": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea hymmm...GoB not mentioned...how come??? ;)

salaam all
n.
 
duskiness said:
LOL...Gospel of Baranabas? "removed from Bible"??
wiki perspective on this: "The Gospel of Barnabas is a work purporting to be a depiction of the life of Jesus by his disciple Barnabas. The two earliest known manuscripts have been dated to the late sixteenth century, and are written in Italian and in Spanish; although the Spanish version survives now only in an eighteenth century copy. It is about the same length as the four canonical gospels put together (the Italian manuscript has 222 chapters); with the bulk being devoted to an account of Jesus' ministry, much of it harmonised from accounts also found in the canonical gospels. In some, but not all, respects it conforms to the Islamic interpretation of Christian origins; and consequently its authorship and textual history remain the subject of continued controversy.

The Gospel is considered by the majority of academics (including Christians and some Muslims) to be late, pseudepigraphical and a pious fraud; however, some academics suggest that it may contain some remnants of an earlier apocryphal work edited to conform to Islam, perhaps Gnostic (Cirillo, Ragg) or Ebionite (Pines) or Diatessaronic (Joosten), and some Muslim scholars consider it genuine. Some Islamic organizations cite it in support of the Islamic view of Jesus"
more on wiki, and http://folk.uio.no/leirvik/tekster/Barnabas.htm

and btw: talking about "removing" anything from Bible is incorrect. yup, it did took some time to establish canon. But books, which made it to the canon, were books holded by most of local churches as "holy" and "genuin". So the fact that some texts - usualy later, with major teological differences from "mainstream" of that time. - were not widely accepted is so strange to you? Because counciles accepted what was already accepted. They didn't "rule" over christians in the way Pope rules today.
"after it was anulled by the Nicean Council" - what councile of Nicea was "talking about": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea hymmm...GoB not mentioned...how come??? ;)

salaam all
n.
Click to expand...

salam,
The link you posted (wikipedia) doesnt mention any of the gospels anulled by the Council of Nicea. Furthermore, this gospel is rejected by many Christian scholars because it has Jesus (AS) explicitly stating his status as a messenger or prophet. This arguement is at the heart of the "Da Vinci Code" debate which is being discussed in everywhere now in the Christian world. So what this book not "holy" or "genuine"?
 
chitownmuslim said:
Im sorry let me rephrase that:

So why is this gospel not "holy" or "genuine"?
Click to expand...

i think i'll repeat: "The Gospel is considered by the majority of academics (including Christians and some Muslims) to be late, pseudepigraphical and a pious fraud"

or...

"Some students of the work argue for an Italian origin, noting phrases in Barnabas which are very similar to phrases used by Dante and suggesting that the author of Barnabas borrowed from Dante's works; they take the Spanish version's preface to support this conclusion. Other students have noted a range of textual similarities between passages in the Gospel of Barnabas, and variously the texts of a series of late mediaeval vernacular harmonies of the four canonical gospels (in Middle English and Middle Dutch, but especially in Middle Italian); which are all speculated as deriving from a lost Old Latin version of the Diatessaron of Tatian (Jan Joosten, "The Gospel of Barnabas and the Diatessaron," Harvard Theological Review 95.1 (2002): 73-96). This would also support an Italian origin.

Other students argue that the Spanish version came first, regarding the Spanish preface's claims of an Italian source as intended to boost the work's credibility by linking it to the Papal libraries. These scholars note parallels with a series of Morisco forgeries, the Sacromonte tablets of Granada, dating from the 1590s; or otherwise with Morisco reworkings of Christian and Islamic traditions, produced following their expulsion from Spain (G.A.Wiegers, "Muhammad as the Messiah: A comparison of the polemical works of Juan Alonso with the Gospel of Barnabas", Leiden, Bibliotheca Orientalis, LII, no 3/4, April-Juni 1995, pp.245-292)."

or ....
"Consequently most students would concur with a stratification of the surviving text into at least three distinct layers of composition:

* an editorial layer dating from the 1590s; and comprising, at the least, the Spanish preface and the Arabic annotations,

* a layer of vernacular narrative composition, either in Spanish or Italian, and dating from no earlier than the mid 14th century,

* a layer derived from earlier source materials, almost certainly transmitted to the vernacular author/translator in Latin; and comprising, at the least, those extensive passages in the Gospel of Barnabas that closely parallel pericopes in the canonical gospels; but whose underlying text appears markedly distinct from that of the late medieval Latin Vulgate (as for instance in the alternative version of the Lord's Prayer in chapter 37, which includes a concluding doxology, contrary to the Vulgate text, but in accordance with the Diatessaron and many other early variant traditions)"

it says 14th century, right? First Council of Nicaea - 325. Do You see that i would be highly difficult to "anulle" it?
And there is nothing about "anulling" on Council of Nicaea, because there was no "anulling".
"Da Vinci Code" - and You think that's a "historic book"? there are planty of books by historians (christian and non) prooving were did D.Brown make mistake. but in fact thats just silly - "Da Vinci Code" is a book you can read in train to school but it not a book in which you find history of Christianty, Bible, creation of Bible canon, early movments in (and "outside") Church. although some do treat it like that. and that's why we have this "discussion"
n.
 
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