The Gospel of Barnabas: what Muslims should know

The Gospel of Barnabas presents a life of Jesus close to the Islamic account: Jesus denies that he is the Son of God, is spared the cross, and foretells the coming of Muhammad by name. It has been widely circulated among Muslims. An honest account of its origins serves Muslims better than an uncritical one, and the Islamic case for Jesus does not depend on it.

The manuscripts

Two manuscripts are known. The Italian one, held in the Austrian National Library in Vienna, is dated by the watermark of its paper to about 1600; a Spanish manuscript, reported by George Sale in 1734, survives in part in an eighteenth-century copy. The earliest reference to a Gospel of Barnabas that matches this text is in a Morisco manuscript of about 1634.¹

The date of the text

The text itself points to late medieval Europe. It speaks of a jubilee every hundred years, a practice of the Latin Church only in the first half of the fourteenth century, and the biblical scholar Jan Joosten concludes from this and other details that it was composed then.² Other Muslim scholars have long doubted its authenticity for the same reasons.³

What Muslims need

Muslims do not need the Gospel of Barnabas. The Qur’an gives its own account of Jesus: a prophet and the Messiah, born of the virgin Mary, who was neither killed nor crucified.⁴ It gives its own ground for that account, a revelation that stands as guardian over earlier scripture, and it points to the Prophet’s description in the scriptures of the People of the Book.⁵ A medieval text that echoes the Qur’an adds nothing to that witness, and relying on it hands critics an easy target.

وَقَوْلِهِمْ إِنَّا قَتَلْنَا ٱلْمَسِيحَ عِيسَى ٱبْنَ مَرْيَمَ رَسُولَ ٱللَّهِ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَـٰكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ ۚ وَإِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱخْتَلَفُوا۟ فِيهِ لَفِى شَكٍّ مِّنْهُ ۚ مَا لَهُم بِهِۦ مِنْ عِلْمٍ إِلَّا ٱتِّبَاعَ ٱلظَّنِّ ۚ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًۢا ١٥٧

And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, the messenger of Allāh.” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.

Qur’an 4:157⁶

The verse makes the point. The Qur’an’s account of the end of Jesus’s life rests on revelation alone, and it asks to be believed on that authority. It needs no later gospel to support it.

Further reading: Jesus across the traditions, How scripture was preserved.

Notes on the Gospel of Barnabas

1. Jan Joosten, “The Date and Provenance of the Gospel of Barnabas,” Journal of Theological Studies 61 (2010), on the Vienna manuscript (Cod. 2662 Eug.) and the Spanish manuscript first signalled by George Sale in 1734; Richard Bartholomew, “Novel Promotes Gospel of Barnabas Conspiracy Theory,” 28 December 2012, on the Morisco manuscript of 1634. ↩
2. Jan Joosten, “The Date and Provenance of the Gospel of Barnabas,” Journal of Theological Studies 61 (2010), as summarised in “Why the Gospel of Barnabas is a Medieval Fake,” Catholic Answers. ↩
3. “Is There a ‘Gospel of Barnabas’?,” John Ankerberg Show, citing Jan Slomp, p. 68. ↩
4. Qur’an 4:157, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩
5. Qur’an 7:157, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩
6. Qur’an 4:157, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩