The Epistle of St. Barnabas

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Barnabas (ܒܪܢܒܐ/Βαρνάβας) was born with the name Joseph, and was one of the prominent Christian disciples in Jerusalem, a convert to the Pharisaic School from a Hellenic Jewish background. St. Barnabas is usually identified as the cousin of St. Mark the Evangelist on the basis of the term "anepsios" used in Colossians 4, which carries the connotation of "cousin." Orthodox tradition holds that Aristobulus of Britannia, one of the Seventy Disciples, was also the brother of Barnabas. According to Acts 4:36, Barnabas was a Cypriot Jew. Named as an Apostle in Acts 14:14, he and St. Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers. They traveled for many apostolic missionary journeys, making many converts (c. 45–47), and participating in the Council of Jerusalem (c. 50). St. Barnabas and St. Paul successfully evangelized among the Hellenized Jews who attended Greek-speaking synagogues in various cities throughout Anatolia.

Tertullian named St. Barnabas as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which many others attributed to St. Paul. St. Clement of Alexandria and other Christian scholars, such as Origen, ascribed the Epistle of Barnabas to him. His writings are often forgotten in the West, but they are foundational to the hermeneutical approach of the Early Church, justifying much of the development we later see in the School of Alexandria and the contemporary use of the allegorical method of Orthodox exegesis. 

Orthodox tradition holds that St. Barnabas was martyred at Salamis, Cyprus, by an angry mob that was offended at his work between the Jewish and Hellenic communities. He is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Orthodox Church. The feast day of Barnabas is celebrated on June 11 in both the east and the West.

Symbols in the Epistle of Barnabas 

A man of practical learning, Greek education and seminal message, St. Barnabas defies all of our expectations. He wrote his epistle late in life, after he had made his journeys with the younger Paul. Although he was not as instrumental as St. Paul, he was possibly the source of St. Paul's firsthand accounts of Jesus, his exegetical doctrine, and because of his status as one of the original apostles, we know that his reputation directly contributed to St. Paul's authority. 

The biblical interpretation method used by St. Barnabas is both typological and allegorical, focused on what the Old Covenant means through symbols from the Life of Christ. He assigns consistent "values" to words within the Law and the Prophets, and expounds upon the Psalms as the emotional states of Christ himself, reflected in the darkened mind of David. Greek words and symbols from the Septuagint Old Testament are used to outline ways in which Christ was prefigured. The Greek numbering of the Psalms was a prophecy of Christ because Tau ("the sign of the cross") and Iota/Eta (the short form of “Iesus” in Greek) marked passages that referred to sacrifice. 

Many of the symbolic values of the Old Testament are dealt with by Barnabas in a forthright way - 

1) Wood/Tree/Tree of Life = Cross 

2) Sacrifice/Lamb = Christ 

3) Circumcision = Baptism (Opening of the Spirit as the Flesh is Opened by the Sign of the Covenant) 

4) Greek Alphabet as both Symbols for the Name of Christ and the Functions of Christ 

The Old Testament as Incomplete Revelation 

In one shocking passage, St. Barnabas suggests that "evil angels" were misunderstood to be "good angels" by the Old Testament prophets, therefore associating wrath and evil with an essentially loving and sheltering Father. This is one of the statements that the Heretic Marcion took to its furthest logical conclusion and taught that the God of the OT was a fallen angelic being, and not God Himself... Thus, the Marcionites rejected the whole of the OT and the purpose of the Jewish symbols. But St. Barnabas was not of this extreme or heretical opinion, and should not be mistaken as condoning it. He sees Christ's message on the nature of the Father as complete and the OT's understanding of Jehovah as merely figurative and the finite minds of blinded men trying to grasp the form of an unknowable. 

The First Allegorist 

St. Barnabas gives little thought to what the biblical text meant at the time of composition, but the thought is completely centered on "what it means now", and "how the imperfect pictures are now completed in the person of Christ." The Old Testament and the Greek Myths were all shadows of the person that was to come, but the quality of those intuitions were effected by the desire to reach higher and aspire to more pure goals... Which the carnal myths of Greece lacked, but the philosophers of the Golden Age had learned by the movement of the Spirit. 

St. Barnabas associated new meanings with old forms, the new meaning being the person of Christ. This recognition was only made possible by a method that was not Jewish, but Greek in origin, superimposed over the Jewish text. But, rather than trying to understand the context in which the Law was given, and molding personal understanding to that situation, St. Barnabas uses the text as a meeting place between man and the Word, the Incarnate Logos, who is the archetype from whence all forms emanate. St. Barnabas was not a "literalist" because he assumed that the Old Testament writers did not necessarily have a conscious grasp of the meanings of what they were communicating. 

The question then becomes, if Scripture was recontextualized by Christ, and His existence was warrant enough for a completely new association of meaning, are we inconsistent when we deny this same kind of recontextualization to Muslims and Mormons, based on their "lack of a prophetic record"? At what point is the New Testament subjected to allegorical interpretation? This is the question that the Gnostics asked, and the problem that Origin posed within the course of Orthodoxy taking a more concrete form. The Old Testament shows that there was not a complete understanding of the nature of God, and a disconnect between the true meanings of God's Commands and the intent of God's plan for the salvation of the world. This invalidation of the Jewish system is evident in the writing of St. Barnabas, and is less an apologetic for the Jewish nature of the Gospel than a use of Old Testament quotations juxtaposed with allegorical explanation to show the truly universal message of Christ, which was the same for Jew and Gentile. One of the primary reasons why St. Barnabas was excluded from the NT Canon regardless of its apostolic origin, was because of how his hermeneutical method did not square with the problems of history, the development of heresy and the reliance of NT theology on OT categories. This is also the reason why the sober, historical and literalist School of Antioch developed, as  a corrective to St. Barnabas’ early allegorical turn of thought, which was championed by Alexandrian converts from Hellenic Judaism, and relied upon Philo’s interpretive schema to interpret the Old Testament. St. Barnabas’ theories were later developed and modified in an Orthodox way by St. Clement of Alexandria, Ammonius of Alexandria, and Origin himself. 

There is also an exclusive use of the Greek meanings of the words from the Septuagint, showing that, if this translation had not existed and was recognized as authoritative during the time of Christ, Christianity could not have existed in the form that it took. This is why the rejection of the Septuagint has necessarily lead to a rejection of the Early Church's hermeneutical method and the content of its philosophical systems by the Protestant Church. Protestant exegesis, held up to the pattern and admonitions of St. Barnabas is a "Judaic Interpretation" of the Old Testament. The First Council of Jerusalem (Acts 17) made it clear that the Apostles did not sanction this view. Jewish culture and forms were to be regarded on slightly higher footing than the Ancient Pagan Philosophers, and only because it contained prophecies of the coming Messiah. 

Christ as the Word

For St. Barnabas, to be a Christian was not believing the Old Testament, but a belief in the message of Christ itself - the Gospel was new, radical, and transformative. But, if a method of interpretation is supreme, then you must concede a hidden supremacy, and search for ways in which interpretation of encoded meanings in the Life of Christ that can be found and applied. But, if the message becomes centered on Christ and not upon the Greek method of allegory or upon the supposed superiority of the Jewish Law, the contradiction is resolved and the allegorical method is seen as the ability of the Mind of the Word to open the words of every culture of every experience of the divine in the history of the world. It is no longer a secret meaning deciphered through a method, but a meaning that is manifest in everything by an overlay of Christ's life, confirmed by human experience. Our obedience is what accesses the meaning of Christ's reality, striving to have Christ within, and not in understanding it theoretically with our minds... And in doing so, we find meaning beyond mind in the Original Word. 

The Testimony of St. Barnabas

St. Barnabas walked with Christ, was a devout Jew, and an educated man, but he thought that the work of the Jews was accomplished by the coming of Christ and that Gnosis was useless in apprehending the ultimate truth of the Incarnation. He believed that this simple concept, of Christ as Macrocosm and Microcosm, justified overhauling and reinterpreting everything that the Jews believed and practiced. In this way, he truly was St. Paul's teacher. Unlike St. Paul, St. Barnabas clearly communicates a philosophy of interpretation that is left undefined by the Pauline texts, both for political reasons, and also because St. Paul was "all things to all people" and kept his methodological options open for rhetorical reasons. St. Barnabas' teaching on how the Old Testament is to be understood and applied is clearly the operative principle behind St. Paul's writings, and we are fortunate to have him as a reference to the Early Christian hermeneutical method. He is a pattern for how we must understand the interpretation of Christian Scripture, Philosophy, and History today. To St. Barnabas, all Scripture derives its meaning from the Real Person of God as Man... A man that he knew and sold all of his belongings to follow.

Collect for St. Barnabas the Apostle 

ALMIGHTY GOD, grant that we may follow the example of Thy faithful servant Saint Barnabas, who, seeking not his own renown but the well­being of Thy Church, gave generously of his life and substance for the relief of the poor and the spread of the Gospel amongst the Gentiles; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who livest and reignest with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

(Introduction largely edited from the Wiki page on St. Barnabas the Apostle)