Barnabas the Apostle

A Levite of Cyprus, and a new name

Luke introduces him with unusual care, and by both his names: "Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas (which is, being interpreted, the son of consolation), a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet" (Acts 4:36–37). Every clause of that sentence matters.

He was a Levite — of the priestly tribe, and so trained in the Law from childhood, a man of the Temple's own household. He was of Cyprus, one of the great Jewish diaspora communities, wealthy, Greek-speaking, and closely tied by trade to Antioch and to Jerusalem; Salamis, on the island's eastern shore facing Syria, was its chief city and, by the tradition, his birthplace. He had land, and gave it away, in the earliest days when the Jerusalem community held all things in common — Luke sets his act immediately before the story of Ananias and Sapphira, so that the generous Levite stands as the true example against the false. And he was given a new name by the apostles, which is a mark of standing: Βαρνάβας, which Luke glosses υἱὸς παρακλήσεως, "son of paraklesis" — a word that means consolation, encouragement and exhortation all at once, and which the Greek Fathers took as a description of the man's whole character and his gift as a preacher. (The Aramaic behind the name is disputed; bar-nebhu'ah, "son of prophecy," has been proposed, since paraklesis is used of prophetic exhortation, but Luke's own gloss is what the Church has kept.)

The synaxarion tradition adds that he studied at Jerusalem in the school of Gamaliel, and had Saul of Tarsus for a fellow-student there — which, if true, explains a great deal of what follows — and that seeing the Lord's own ministry he became His disciple and was numbered among the Seventy whom Christ sent out two by two (Luke 10:1). Neither detail is in Scripture; both are old and universal in the books.

He vouched for Paul

Barnabas's first recorded act after the selling of his field is the one on which, humanly speaking, the whole later history of the Gentile mission turns. When the newly converted Saul came up to Jerusalem, "he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus" (Acts 9:26–27). The persecutor of the Church had no credit with the Church; one man's word gave him credit. That the word was a Levite's, a man of substance who had already given away his substance, and a man the apostles themselves had named son of consolation, is exactly why it was believed.

Antioch: where the disciples were first called Christians

The Hellenists scattered by the persecution after Stephen had come as far as Antioch and had begun, for the first time, to preach to Greeks as well as to Jews; and when the news reached Jerusalem the mother church "sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch" (Acts 11:22). Luke's judgement on him at this point is the warmest he passes on any man outside the Twelve: "he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith" (Acts 11:24). Barnabas saw the grace of God at Antioch, was glad, and exhorted them all — the verb is the same root as his name — to cleave to the Lord.

Then he did the second decisive thing. Seeing that the work was greater than one man, "he departed to Tarsus, to seek Saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch" (Acts 11:25–26). The name by which the whole world has since known the followers of Christ was coined in the city that Barnabas was sent to and where he installed Paul; and for the Church of Antioch that single year is the beginning of its history as a see. When famine came, it was Barnabas and Saul whom the Antiochene Christians sent up to Jerusalem with relief for the brethren of Judaea (Acts 11:29–30).

"Separate me Barnabas and Saul"

At Antioch, while the prophets and teachers ministered and fasted, "the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (Acts 13:2). They were sent with prayer and the laying-on of hands, and took with them John Mark, Barnabas's kinsman, as their attendant.

Note the order of the names: through the opening of the journey Luke writes "Barnabas and Saul," the elder and better-known man first. The mission began, naturally, on Barnabas's own island: they landed at Salamis and preached in the synagogues, crossed the length of Cyprus to Paphos, and there met the proconsul Sergius Paulus and the magus Bar-Jesus or Elymas, whom Paul struck blind, so that the proconsul believed. It is at exactly that point that Luke's phrasing changes to "Paul and his company," and thereafter "Paul and Barnabas" — the leadership passing, without a word of comment, from the man who had made the introduction to the man he had introduced. The Fathers read Barnabas's silent acceptance of that reversal as the finest thing about him.

Together they went on to Perga in Pamphylia — where Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem, the desertion that would divide them later — then inland to Antioch of Pisidia, to Iconium, to Lystra and Derbe, founding churches, and returning by the same road to ordain elders in each. At Lystra, after the healing of the cripple, the crowd took them for gods come down in the likeness of men, "and they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker" (Acts 14:12) — a verse which has always been read as a physical description: the tall, grave, imposing Barnabas taken for Zeus, and the small, urgent, eloquent Paul for Hermes the herald. The two rent their clothes and ran in among the people crying that they were men of like passions; and shortly afterwards Paul was stoned and dragged out of the city for dead. Acts 14:14, in the same scene, calls them both without qualification "the apostles, Barnabas and Paul."

The Council of Jerusalem, and the parting over Mark

Back at Antioch the great question broke: whether Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. Barnabas and Paul were sent up to Jerusalem to lay it before the apostles and elders, and at the Council (Acts 15) they gave their account of what God had done among the Gentiles by their hands. The decision of James and the assembly — that no burden should be laid on the Gentiles beyond a few necessary things — was carried back to Antioch in a letter naming "our beloved Barnabas and Paul."

Then comes the passage that the Church has never been able to read comfortably. Paul proposed that they revisit the churches they had founded. "And Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname was Mark. But Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work. And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus; and Paul chose Silas" (Acts 15:37–40). Luke uses a hard word — παροξυσμός, a sharpening, an exasperation — and does not take sides. Chrysostom's reading, which the Orthodox tradition has followed, is that both men acted from a real good: Paul from strictness for the work, Barnabas from mercy for his kinsman; that the providence of God used the quarrel to double the mission, since where one pair had gone two now went; and that Barnabas was vindicated in the event, for the Mark he would not abandon became the Evangelist, and Paul himself in the end asked for him and called him profitable (2 Timothy 4:11; Colossians 4:10).

One further scriptural notice must be set down honestly. In the letter to the Galatians Paul recalls the incident at Antioch when Peter withdrew from eating with the Gentile believers on the arrival of men from James, "and the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation" (Galatians 2:13). The Church's greatest reconcilers are recorded stumbling over the very question they had settled; Scripture flatters no one. That Paul continues nevertheless to name Barnabas as a standard of apostolic practice — "have we not power to forbear working? or I only and Barnabas?" (1 Corinthians 9:6) — shows that the breach was not final.

Cyprus, Milan, and the martyrdom at Salamis

Scripture follows Barnabas no further than the ship for Cyprus. The tradition takes him first on further journeys — the Byzantine accounts send him to Rome, and a firm and ancient Milanese tradition makes him the founder and first bishop of Milan, about the years 50–55, which is the ground of the Ambrosian church's claim to apostolic origin — and then home to Cyprus for the last time, with Mark.

At Salamis he preached in the synagogues of his own people, and there he was killed. The synaxarion account says that his adversaries in the city stirred up the crowd against him and he was stoned to death; the fifth-century Acts of Barnabas, which purports to be Mark's own narrative, has him seized at night, bound about the neck with a rope, dragged out of the city and burned. The traditions are usually harmonised by saying that his body was cast into the fire after the stoning; the day's synaxarion verse keeps only the stones. The year is given as about 61 or 62, and his age as seventy-six.

Mark recovered the body — secretly, by night, according to the Acts — and buried it in a cave outside the city to the west, under a carob tree; and upon the apostle's breast he laid the copy of the Gospel according to Matthew which Barnabas had written out in his own hand and had carried with him and read over the sick. Then Mark took ship for Egypt. What happened afterwards to the tomb is the subject of the next section, and is the most consequential relic-story in the history of the Orthodox East.

The finding of the relics, and the autocephaly of Cyprus

For four centuries the grave was forgotten and the place — the Cypriots called it the place of health, for cures were worked there — was remembered without a name. Meanwhile the Church of Cyprus was under pressure. The Patriarchate of Antioch claimed jurisdiction over the island, on the reasonable civil ground that Cyprus belonged administratively to the Diocese of the East, of which Antioch was the metropolis; the Cypriots answered that their church had been founded by an apostle and had never been subject to any other see. The Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus (431), in its eighth canon, decided for the Cypriots and forbade the bishops of the island to be ordained from outside it — but the Antiochene claim was pressed again in the following decades, and in the reign of the Emperor Zeno the case came up once more.

At that point, about the year 478, the Archbishop of Cyprus, Anthemios, saw the apostle in a vision — three times, the account says — who showed him the place of his burial beneath the carob tree. The archbishop dug, and found the cave, the coffin, the incorrupt relics, and on the breast the Gospel of Matthew in Barnabas's own hand. Anthemios sailed to Constantinople and laid the book before the Emperor and the Synod. The proof was accepted: the Church of Cyprus was an apostolic foundation, and was confirmed autocephalous — self-governing, ordaining its own archbishop, subject to no patriarch. Zeno added three privileges which the Archbishop of Cyprus exercises to this day and which no other hierarch of the Orthodox Church possesses: he signs in red ink, he wears a purple mantle at the feasts, and he carries an imperial sceptre in place of a pastoral staff. Over the tomb a church and monastery of Apostolos Varnavas were built near Salamis, outside Famagusta, which stood as a monastery into the twentieth century and remains a place of pilgrimage.

From the point of view of the Church of Antioch, whose usage this collection follows, the episode is a defeat, and it should be recorded as one and not glossed: Antioch's claim rested on civil geography and on the practice of ordaining Cypriot bishops from Antioch, and it was overruled first by a council and then by an emperor persuaded by a relic. What the two churches have never disputed is Barnabas himself. He is the apostle who made Antioch a church and Cyprus a church, and both keep him.

Writings ascribed to him

Three texts bear his name, and the three are of quite different value.

• The Epistle of Barnabas is a genuinely early Christian writing, of about the year 130, which reads the Old Testament allegorically against Jewish observance. Clement of Alexandria and Origen cited it as the apostle's, and it stands complete, with the Shepherd of Hermas, at the end of the New Testament in the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus — a witness to how close it came to the canon. Modern scholarship almost unanimously denies that Barnabas wrote it, chiefly because its date is too late and its hostility to the Law is unlike a Levite's; the Church has never read it liturgically.
• The Acts of Barnabas (Periodoi kai Martyrion tou Barnaba), a fifth-century Cypriot narrative written in Mark's voice, is the source of most of the circumstantial detail of the martyrdom and burial and of the apostolic history of the island. It is not history in the modern sense, but it is the earliest connected account, and it is the document behind the Cypriot synaxaria — including the entries for Herakleides and Myron of Tamassos and Auxibius of Soli, whose sees Barnabas and Mark are said to have founded.
• The Gospel of Barnabas has nothing to do with him. It is a late-medieval or early-modern composition, surviving in Italian and Spanish, which recasts the life of Christ along Islamic lines (denying the crucifixion, making Muhammad the Messiah). It is a forgery of the fourteenth century or later and is mentioned here only to be excluded.