THE MANY FACES OF JESUS
IN THE MEDIEVAL GOSPEL OF BARNABASR. Blackhirst Given what we know of the formative processes of the canonical portraits of Jesus it is remarkable to see, in the medieval Gospel of Barnabas, many varied characterizations, some of them developed and some only half-formed, grouped under the name "Jesus". The canonical portraits of Jesus contain many elements from diverse traditions: in the medieval Barnabas we see a unique (and specifically Ebionitic/anti-Pauline) arrangement of the same elements and traditions and many others that do not feature in the canonical portraits. Structurally, the work follows the same pattern as the canonical Gospels; it begins with an Infancy and Childhood narrative; this is followed by a long account of Jesus' ministry, and it then concludes with a Passion narrative. It is, however, far longer and far less coherent and seamless than the canonical works. Several different portraits or understandings of Jesus have been brought together but not effectively consolidated into a single portrait; we can discern different Jesuses in different sections of the text. The canonical Jesus is a composite character in this way too, but in Barnabas it is easier to make out the component parts of the portrayal. In this short article I have identified most (but not all) of these component parts as a preliminary study with a view to a fuller investigation in future and in the hope that it will encourage others to take a new look at this most peculiar of medieval books. The Gospel of Barnabas is full of fascinating and often mysterious intertextual encounters with the canonical and non-canonical Gospel literature. On that basis alone it warrants consideration among Christian apocryphal writings and is of interest to anyone investigating the permutations of the Jesus story.
The most immediately striking feature of Barnabas' portrayal of Jesus is that, throughout, the author is intent on conflating Jesus with the canonical portraits of John the Baptist. Indeed, this seems to be central to the concerns of the whole document, for the essence of the Barnabean gospel is that Jesus (not John) was the forerunner of the Messiah. Barnabas makes a fundamental shift in the spiritual functions of characters. In his account, Muhammad is the long-awaited Messiah to the world, while Jesus is his herald. This means that John the Baptist - the canonical forerunner of Jesus the Messiah - is effectively redundant and does not play a named role in the narrative. On the other hand, traditions, motifs, words, attitudes and other narrative components given to John in the canonical accounts are here appropriated by Barnabas' Jesus so that it is really the canonical Messianic Jesus - he to whom John is forerunner - that is redundant. Consequently, Barnabas' Jesus is often more John than Jesus. The conflation is evident right from chapter one:
Mary answered: "I know that God is almighty, therefore his will be done." The angel answered: "Now be conceived in you the prophet, whom you shall name Jesus: and you shall keep him from wine and from strong drink and from every unclean meat, because the child is a holy one of God." Mary bowed herself with humility, saying: "Behold the handmaid of God, let it be done according to your word."
This type of conflation is found throughout most sections of the work. An episode in chapter 42 gives a good example. In the canonical accounts it comes from John 1:19-25, where it refers not to Jesus but to the Baptist:
Then the disciples wept after this discourse, and Jesus was weeping, when they saw many who came to find him, for the chiefs of the priests took counsel among themselves to catch him in his talk. Wherefore they sent the Levites and some of the scribes to question him, saying: "Who are you?" Jesus confessed, and said the truth: "I am not the Messiah." They said: "Are you Elijah or Jeremiah, or any of the ancient prophets?" Jesus answered: "No." Then said they: "Who are you? Say, in order that we may give testimony to those who sent us." Then Jesus said: "I am a voice that cries through all Judea, and cries: "Prepare you the way for the messenger of the Lord," even as it is written in Esaias." They said: "If you be not the Messiah nor Elijah, or any prophet, wherefore do you preach new doctrine, and make yourself of more account than the Messiah?" Jesus answered: "The miracles which God works by my hands show that I speak that which God wills; nor indeed do I make myself to be accounted as him of whom you speak. For I am not worthy to unloose the ties of the hosen or the ratchets of the shoes of the Messenger of God whom you call "Messiah," who was made before me, and shall come after me, and shall bring the words of truth, so that his faith shall have no end." The Levites and scribes departed in confusion, and recounted all to the chiefs of the priests, who said: "He has the devil on his back who recounts all to him."
In episodes such as these Barnabas' Jesus clearly plays the role of the character we know as John.
Allied to this is Barnabas' portrayal of Jesus as Elijah redivivus, a role, of course, played by the canonical John. This seems to be a particularly significant issue, because the Barnabas gospel is replete with extra-canonical material stemming from the Elijah cycle in Kings and several important canonical episodes have been changed or 'corrected' to conform to stories, themes or motifs from the Elijah cycle. In many respects, in fact, the whole of the Gospel of Barnabas operates upon parallels between the time of Elijah and the time of Barnabas' Jesus/John. If there is a single thread upon which all of Barnabas' various beads can be strung it is upon the character of Elijah. Throughout there are parallels made between the persecution of Jesus/John and his followers, and the persecution of the Sons of the Prophets by Ahab and Jezebel. Barnabas' Jesus/John clearly believes that the predicament of his times bears a close resemblance with the predicament of Elijah and the Sons of the Prophets under Ahab, and a great many of Barnabas' unusual stories or his unusual treatment of canonical stories depends upon this resemblance. More generally, Barnabas' Jesus/John is a prophet in a prophetic tradition, and that prophetic tradition is the tradition of Elijah and his followers. The strongest and most pivotal instance of this is in Barnabas' docetic crucifixion: Jesus a la Elijah is carried by angels into heaven where he is 'occluded' until the Last Days. It is impossible to understand what Barnabas has done to the canonical portraits of Jesus without appreciating the many ways in which his Jesus/John is conceived of as Elijah reborn. The special attention given to the Lukan story of Jesus raising a widow's son at Nain needs to be understood in this light, for example. Our author seems to be fully aware that the basis of this canonical miracle of Jesus is in Elijah's exploits in Kings and he has an objection to the way in which Luke has used it.
In the canonical portraits of Jesus we can recognize him in the role of Moses at several points. Orthodox exegesis permits this, associating the Sermon on the Mount, for example, with Moses on the mountain. Pauline Christianity, however, does not develop the comparison to any significant degree, insisting rather on the inadequacy of the Mosaic Law as part of its New Covenant theme. Barnabas' Jesus, on the other hand, invokes the Law of Moses and insists on obedience to it from start to finish; righteousness and salvation are synonymous with "walking in the way of the Law" and the crucial food, washing and circumcision laws still prevail. Barnabas' Jesus, that is, is a far more Mosaic figure than in the canonical portraits. This is one of the ways in which it is certain that this medieval gospel is 'Jewish-Christian' or 'Ebionitic' and, at the same time, anti-Pauline. In chapter 92 - defying all geographical continuity - Jesus makes a detour in his travels to go to Mount Sinai to re-enact the exploits of Moses:
At this time, by the word of the holy angel, we, [had] gone to Mount Sinai with Jesus. There Jesus [and] his disciples kept the forty days.
David Sox, in his monograph on the medieval Barnabas, describes this episode as a "tell-tale error" by a medieval forger, who, he says, thought that Jesus here observed Lent. In Exodus.24:18, of course, Moses goes to Sinai for forty days providing the obvious precedent for the Barnabas passage. Barnabas' Jesus should here be understood as Moses, or at least as commemorating and re-establishing the Siniatic revelation, although this too is an Elijah motif.
More important than Jesus as Moses, though, in both the canonical accounts and that of Barnabas, is Jesus as his Old Testament namesake, Joshua. In Pauline thought the identification suggests parallels with the fact that Joshua and not Moses led the Israelites across the Jordan into the Promised Land; thus it is the new Joshua who will deliver 'Israel', not the Mosaic law. Joshua completes the work of Moses just as Christ fulfills the older dispensation. In the canonical gospels we can see elements of Joshua in, say, Judas Iscariot's notion of Jesus as a military Messiah. Barnabas' identification of Jesus with Joshua is entirely at odds with these sorts of parallels. His Jesus is, in many places, overtly militaristic. Otherwise, Barnabas is interested in two miracles associated with Joshua: the crossing of the Jordan dry-shod, and the occasion where Joshua made the sun stand still.
Accordingly the governor and the priest and the king prayed Jesus that in order to quiet the people he should mount up into a lofty place and speak to the people. Then went up Jesus on to one of the twelve stones which Joshua made the twelve tribes take up from the midst of Jordan;, when all Israel passed over there dry shod; and he said with a loud voice: "Let our priest go up into a high place whence he may confirm my words..."
Jesus debates the high priest on scriptural issues and particularly the question of Jesus's divinity. Jesus not only denies that he is more than "mere clay" but says that destruction will come upon Jerusalem because Israel has said so. Clearly, though, Jesus speaks from atop the stones as a new Joshua invoking the authority of the old. Then, in chapter 189, we have:
Then Jesus said: "This is true, because I am assured of it by God. Therefore, that every one may know that this is the truth, in the name of God let the sun stand still, and not move for twelve hours!" And so it came to pass, to the great terror of all Jerusalem and Judea.
The context of this repeat of Joshua's miracle is, like several key miracles in the Barnabas narrative, testimony to the truth of unorthdox Biblical texts or unorthodox interpretations of canonical texts. In this case the sun standing still is connected to an "old book of Moses and Joshua" once seen by the scribe Nicodemus:
Whereupon said the scribe: I have seen an old book; written by the hand of Moses and Joshua ;(he who made the sun stand still; as you have done), servants and prophets of God, which book is the true Book of Moses.
Confirmation that we are often to understand Barnabas' Jesus as a Joshua reborn is provided by the work's systematic aversion for the city of Jericho. It is, we are told at one point, a "city rebuilt under a curse..." Elsewhere, Jesus avoids Jericho assiduously. This is an issue that has connections with the Elijah material, but it is primarily based in associations from the Joshua story.
Connected with the military aspects of Joshua are also New Testament elements that can only be identified as belonging to Jewish Zealotry. That the historical Jesus had connections with the Zealot party in first century AD Palestinian politics is evident from the inclusion of zealots such as Simon among his disciples in the canonical accounts. Similarly, episodes such as the Cleansing of the Temple, the so-called 'hard' sayings and other now obscured motifs suggest a more militant Jesus than the dominant portrait of a peaceful and forgiving Jesus. In the medieval Barnabas this militant and hard-line character is, as already mentioned, much more to the fore, particularly where opposition to Roman occupation and observance of the Mosaic law is concerned. He describes the uncircumcized as "lower than dogs" and is vehement in his condemnation of the Roman authorities. A parallel scene to the canonical Cleansing of the Temple depicts Jesus in the Temple precincts discussing the legality of war with Roman soldiers. The Roman soldiers are expelled from the Temple like so many wooden idols:
Then Jesus said: "Adonai Sabaoth!" Whereupon straightway the soldiers were rolled out of the Temple as one rolls casks of wood when they are washed to refill them with wine; insomuch that now their head and now their feet struck the ground, and that without any one touching them.
In fact, not only did Jesus, by this means, expel them from the Temple, but because of this they flee from the whole of Judea, never to return again:
And they were so affrighted and fled in such wise that they were never more seen in Judea.
Here Jesus is portrayed as a militant defender of Jewish sovereignty.
Another scene, also apparently based on the Cleansing of the Temple episode, replaces the proof text invoked in the Gospel of John - "and the disciples remembered the words of Scripture Zeal for your House devours me " - with an allusion to the key proof text of Jewish Zealotry, the Phineas covenant from Numbers:
"the zeal of your honour, O God, inflames me, and I cannot hold my peace!"
On this occasion, Barnabas' Jesus' zeal is directed against collaborators with the Romans, and against the High Priesthood in particular. Building upon another passage from the Gospel of John, Barnabas portrays Jesus as provoking a disturbance, nay, a riot, in the Temple in which, we are told, a thousand people were killed and the Temple itself was polluted:
Whereupon every scribe and Pharisee, with the elders of the people, took up stones to stone Jesus, who vanished from their eyes and went out of the Temple. And then, through the great desire that they had to slay Jesus, blinded with fury and hatred, they struck one another in such wise that there died a thousand men; and they polluted the holy Temple.
This is typical of many scenes in which Barnabas places a militant and uncompromising 'zealous' Jesus in an atmosphere of violence and dissension which is, in fact, closer to the historical realities of the period than the benign and often pastoral atmosphere depicted in the canonical accounts. The strong allusion to Phineas' covenant no doubt places Barnabas' Jesus in these scenes among the Zealots.
There are also, I believe, strong indications of a "Jamesian" element in Barnabas. This would follow naturally from its generally Ebionitic character. Certainly, Barnabas' emphasis on 'works' and on 'walking in the Law', as well as numerous recurrent images and key vocabulary, can all be traced to the Jamesian epistle in the New Testament or to other sources of the Jamesian tradition in the early Church. Given that there appears to have been considerable friction between Paul and James over exactly the issues Barnabas nominates in the work's prologue - circumcision and food regulations - we might well expect elements of reverence for James to have been included among this anti-Pauline work's many faces of Jesus. In James' case, however, the resemblances are more difficult to find because we are far less sure of what it is we are looking for. James is a far more shadowy figure than, say, John the Baptist who is, in contrast, instantly recognizeable when we meet elements of his character in the text. We do find numerous things associated with James - such as a "white linen" motif and several different uses of the "right or left of the Law" vocabulary - in Barnabas, but these cannot be sure identifications. More important are the several occasions where Jesus delivers sermons from the Pinnacle of the Temple - a location that, in an Ebionitic work such as this, surely suggests James the Righteous. The first of these sermons in chapter 12 is of especial interest because of an extraordinary textual interplay with the Temptation in the Wilderness episode. This is a complex matter but Barnabas' treatment of this scene is, I suspect, based on the author's belief that Matthew 4:5 and Luke 4:9 are both hostile (and inverted) references to James the Righteous.
The whole city of Jerusalem was moved by these words so they all ran together to the Temple to see Jesus, who had entered it to pray, so that they could scarcely be contained there. Therefore the priests sought Jesus, saying: "This people desires to see you and hear you. Ascend to the pinnacle, and if God gives you a word, speak it in the name of the Lord." Then Jesus ascended to the place from which the scribes were wont to speak, and having beckoned with [his] hand for silence, he opened his mouth, saying: "Blessed be the holy name of God...
In this case, the Gospel of Barnabas preserves a whole sermon by this Jesus/James which perhaps bears some relation to the now lost "Ascents of James". Given Barnabas' extensive use of material from the Book of Kings, it is also worth noting that the Psuedo-Clement mentions that a feature of James' teachings was "how to interpret the Book of Kings".
Aside from the elements described above, there are undoubtedly more obscure elements that have somehow found their way into this work. There are possibly, for instance, elements taken from various minor Messianic pretenders from the New Testament period. One in particular is outstanding and deserves our attention. In chapter 72 of Barnabas we find the following:
Jesus answered: "Let not your heart be troubled, neither be you fearful: for I have not created you, but God our creator who has created you will protect you. As for me, I am now come to the world to prepare the way for the Messenger of God, who shall bring salvation to the world. But beware that you be not deceived, for many false prophets shall come, who shall take my words and contaminate my gospel." Then said Andrew: "Master tell us some sign, that we may know him." Jesus answered: "He will not come in your time, but will come some years after you, when my gospel shall be annulled, insomuch that there shall be scarcely thirty faithful.
The notion that the followers of the "true Gospel" will be reduced to scarcely thirty faithful is an almost verbatim quote from Origen's description of the Samaritan Messiah Dositheus. (The Clementine Recognitions also associate thirty disciples with Dositheus, the follower of the Baptist.) We know little about this Messianic pretender, but from what we do know we can be sure that some elements of this character have been attached to Barnabas' Jesus. Many scholars have supposed that Dositheus is not actually an historical figure but rather a Samaritan refiguring of John the Baptist and/or, according to others, the Righteous Teacher of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some traditions record that John had thirty disciples: it is supposed that this motif became appropriated by the Dositheus story and that the notice in Origen actually refers to the demise of those disciples of John who had resisted the incorporation of their Master into the Christian mythos. In any case, this is one of the clearest and most direct notices we have in Barnabas as to the traditions underpinning its portrait of Jesus. In this passage, at least, and probably elsewhere, we can identify Jesus with avenues of tradition concerning this Samaritan Dositheus. There is a very strong Samaritan influence evident throughout Barnabas; this identification of Jesus as Dositheus may be very near to the heart of the document.
What are we to make of this amalgam of associations, allusions and prototypes? In the introduction to one of his recent works Eisenmann described the canonical gospels as "a composite recreation of facts and episodes relating to a series of Messianic pretenders in Palestine in the first century...interlaced or spliced into a narrative of a distinctly Hellenistic or non-Palestinian, pro-Pauline cast." The Gospel of Barnabas is very much the same, but of a Hebraic and anti-Pauline cast. In many ways it presents itself as a type of decoding (or "mirror") text; this is especially clear where it is directed against the Gospel of Luke and the Samaritan, Elijah and John the Baptist content of Luke's special source. The nett result is, though, as Ragg remarked, a Jesus who is, despite his constant denial of the Sonship and Divinity, a much less convincing man than we have in the canonical portraits. This seems to be because Barnabas' Jesus is, first and foremost, a specific function in a great Messianic scheme; this function is then clothed and decorated with any appropriate elements from a whole range of characters from the Old Testament times and New. In my own studies I am moving towards conclusions about these matters. For now I think it is enough to sketch the main points and to demonstrate how fascinating and relevant a document is the Gospel of Barnabas regardless of the unresolved questions of its authorship and provenance. In the past, and to a great extent still today, it has been considered only in the context of Muslim-Christian polemic. It is important to remove it from that arena and start a serious assessment of its contents in the broader context of Christian apocrypha.
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©Copyright R. Blackhirst, 1999 2002