The Bible’s text
Why this site does not quote the Gospel of Barnabas
The Gospel of Barnabas says Jesus was not crucified and names Muhammad ﷺ as the prophet to come. It is often shared online as proof of Islam. This topic explains what the book is, and why this site does not use it.
1The question
Is the Gospel of Barnabas an early gospel that Muslims can rely on?
2What Christians believe
Christians answer that the Gospel of Barnabas is a late medieval work, not an early gospel. No early church writer quotes it, no ancient manuscript of it exists, and it contains details that place it in medieval Europe.
Christians often point to its mistakes as proof that it was written long after the time of Jesus, and they ask Muslims not to treat it as a lost original Gospel.
3What the texts say
Testing what we are told
The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
The Barnabas of the Bible
And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus,
4What scholars say
The book survives in two manuscripts. An Italian one is kept in the Austrian National Library in Vienna; a Spanish one was known from an eighteenth-century copy that was rediscovered in Sydney in the 1970s. Lonsdale and Laura Ragg published the Italian text with an English translation in 1907.
Most scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim, date it to the 14th–16th centuries. One example often given is that it speaks of the Jubilee year coming every hundred years, a rule the Pope announced only in 1300. Jan Joosten (“The Gospel of Barnabas and the Diatessaron”, Harvard Theological Review, 2002) found that its wording follows medieval Italian Gospel texts.
Many Muslim scholars have also rejected it. One reason they give is that it has Jesus deny that he is the Messiah, while the Qur’an calls Jesus the Messiah (3:45).
5The Islamic perspective
Islam teaches its followers to check what they are told before they accept it, and not to follow what they have no knowledge of:
O ye who believe! If an evil-liver bring you tidings, verify it, lest ye smite some folk in ignorance and afterward repent of what ye did.
(O man), follow not that whereof thou hast no knowledge. Lo! the hearing and the sight and the heart - of each of these it will be asked.
The Muslim case does not need the Gospel of Barnabas. It stands on the Qur’an and on the Bible that Christians already read. Using a late book as if it were an early one would weaken a case that is strong without it.
6Objections and responses
“Christians hid the Gospel of Barnabas because it supports Islam.”
Response: There is no ancient evidence that the book existed before the Middle Ages. A list of rejected books from around the sixth century mentions a “Gospel of Barnabas”, but nothing shows it was the same book. Claiming more than the evidence shows does not help the truth.
“If this site rejects it, Muslims are admitting their case is weak.”
Response: The opposite is true. The Qur’an tells believers to verify what they hear (49:6). Setting aside a doubtful source and relying on strong ones is what an honest case looks like.
7Conclusion
Both sides agree that the Gospel of Barnabas survives only in late manuscripts and that most scholars date it to the 14th–16th centuries. Christians reject it as a late work. Many Muslims reject it too, and this site does not use it as evidence, because the Muslim case stands on the Qur’an and the Bible.
If someone shares a quote from “Barnabas” with you, check where it comes from before passing it on.
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Related topics
Sources
- Bible, King James Version:Proverbs 14:151 Thessalonians 5:21Acts 17:11Acts 4:36
- Qur’an, translated by M. Pickthall:Qur’an 49:6Qur’an 17:36
- Lonsdale and Laura Ragg (eds.), The Gospel of Barnabas (1907)
- Jan Joosten, “The Gospel of Barnabas and the Diatessaron”, Harvard Theological Review 95 (2002)