BARNABAS, EPISTLE OF. The epistle is one of "The Apostolic Fathers." It stands at the end of the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus of the New Testament, in a sort of appendix. This means that it once enjoyed quasicanonical authority, a fact borne out by Clement, Origen and Eusebius (H.E. iii. 25). In ternal evidence refutes its ascription to Barnabas; nor does the epistle itself make any such claim.
"That Alexandria, the place of its earliest reception, was also the place of its birth, is borne out by the internal evidence of style and interpretation, which is Alexandrian throughout." So wrote Lightfoot. But neither its "Alexandrianism" nor its "aston ishing familiarity with the Jewish rites" (Kohler in the Jewish Encycl.) proves this; still less that "the writer seems to have been a converted Jew." For, apart from seeming blunders in Jewish matters, he classes himself with his readers as formerly idolaters (xvi. 7, seq.). It is enough, then, to regard him as in close contact with Judaism. He seems also to have just visited his readers as a stranger, probably from Alexandria, or (i. 2-4) from Syria, the older home of Christianity, where also "the Two Ways" which he cites probably originated. He used his greater experience on the subject to warn his readers against all compromise between Judaism and the Gospel. He goes so far a.; to deny any historical connection between the two. The Divine oracles had ever pointed to the Christian Covenant, and had been so understood by the men of God in Israel, whereas the apostate people had turned aside to keep the ceremonial letter of the law at the instigation of an evil angel (ix. 4). He takes in succession the typical Jewish institutions—Circumcision, Foods, Ablutions, Covenant, Sabbath, Temple—showing their spiritual counterpart in the New People and its ordinances, and that the Cross was pre figured from the first. Such insight (gnosis) he regards as the mark of mature Christian faith. The burden of his epistle is, "Let us become spiritual, a perfect temple unto God" (iv. II); and that not only by theoretic insight, but also by practical wisdom of life. To enforce this he passes to "another sort of gnosis and in struction" (xviii. I) viz., the precepts of the "Two Ways," cited in a slightly different form from that in the first part of the Didache or Teaching of the Apostles. The modifications are all in a more spiritual direction, in keeping with the evangelic spirit which pervades even the allegorical ingenuities of the epistle.
Its date has been much debated. But Lightfoot's reading of the apocalyptic passage in ch. iv.—as modified by Sir W. M. Ram say—points clearly to the reign of Vespasian (A.D. 70--79). Thus it is the earliest of the Apostolic Fathers.