Why Was Barnabas Attributed
to Barnabas: Part 2
In my last post but one, in starting to talk about why the
anonymous Letter to Barnabas was attributed by early
Christians to Barnabas, best known as a one of the closest
companions of Paul, I talked mainly about the mid-second
century philosopher/theologian-eventually-branded-arch-heretic
Marcion. You may have wondered why. In this post I’ll tell you
why.
VERY brief review. Recall, the letter of Barnabas is
stridently anti-Jewish, claiming that the Jews never were the
people of God because they had broken the covenant as soon as
God had given it to them on Mount Sinai (by worshipping the
Golden Calf); they misunderstood the law, taking it literally,
when it was meant figuratively. Even though Jews never
realized it, the OT was not a Jewish book but a Christian
book, that not only anticipated Christ but proclaimed the
Christian message. END of review….
The first explicit reference to this anonymous letter is in
the writings of Clement of Alexandria, writing around 200 who
quotes it and claims it was written by Barnabas, who, he
indicates, was one of the seventy apostles sent out by Jesus
in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 10:1) and a later co-worker with
Paul (thus Clement, Miscellanies [otherwise known as the
Stromateis] 2.6, 31; 2.7, 35; and 2.20).
A couple of decades later the church father Origen named the
letter as a “Catholic epistle” (Against Celsus 1. 63) and
called it “divine scripture” (On First Principles 3, 2, 47).
Just over a century or so after that it was included among the
writings of the New Testament in the famous Codex Sinaiticus,
also closely associated with Alexandria. Almost certainly
neither Origen nor Sinaiticus would have accepted it into the
canon of Scripture if they had not thought it had an apostolic
origin.
And so in at least one part of the church – that connected
with Alexandria – there were Christians who thought that the
book was written by an apostle; and since it never has been
known by any other name, it almost certainly was always
associated with Barnabas.
But why Barnabas in particular?
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