Barnabas' gospel

Along the lines of the gospel in the Acts of John, and perhaps more to the point in Ignatius' Epistle to the Smyrnaeans: here comes J Christopher Edwards' gospel in the Epistle of Barnabas. Edwards seems to have provided an advertisement for the 95-page book in a 22-page summary.

The epistle doesn't hint as to who composed it; "Barnabas" has been attached to its content, later. "Later" means after late stage Animal Apocalypse, itself no earlier than AD 70. I'll just call him that for simplicity, as is my usual practice. Hey maybe he'd got named after the guy in our Scriptures...

For Barnabas, Jesus did deeds matching - more or less - what we read in the canonical four. Barnabas however isn't interested in telling a Gospel, as such. Rather, Barnabas intends to preach how Jesus' career is the true fulfillment of Scripture - including the usual Isaiah and Psalm references, and some unusual like Enoch. If Barnabas can't relate some deed or saying to the Old Testament - Barnabas doesn't care, so isn't going to tell us. Thus leading to takes like Crossan's that we're watching someone compose a Gospel on-the-fly, not knowing anything real about Christ's vita.

After we abandon that Barnabas actually wrote this thing, scholars have settled upon Alexandria for its authorship. This may or may not be right; in light of Egypt (generally) not having much evidence for a Christian community, until Justin or still-later.

As to the merits of Barnabas' gospel... I'll get to that later. Barnabas did get copied including with Sinaiticus, and even translated (to Latin); but I can see how it didn't get much cited.