Lecture Thirteen

Barnabas and the Opposition to the Jews

from: The Teaching Company

Scope: The next writing of the Apostolic Fathers we consider, the Letter of Barnabas, was allegedly written by the traveling companion of Paul, Barnabas, but in fact, was written in the early 2nd century. It is a long and intriguing letter that is chiefly concerned with one issue: how Christianity relates to its mother religion, Judaism.

According to Barnabas, Christianity is superior to Judaism in every way, in that it is the religion that God had intended all along.

Jews who do not realize this are condemned for their blindness and susceptibility to the teachings of an evil angel. More than that, the Jewish Scriptures, in fact, do not belong to the Jews; they belong to Christians.

These and other highly controversial teachings form the core of the Letter of Barnabas. In this lecture, we will consider how its anonymous author makes his case and ask whether and to what extent it is fair to consider this letter as an early instance of Christian anti-Semitism.

Outline

I.          One of the most popular books outside of the New Testament in ancient times was the Letter of Barnabas.

            A.  It was so popular in parts of the Church that some Christian writers (such as Clement of Alexandria)
                 quoted it as Scripture.

            B.   It is actually included as one of the books of the New Testament in our oldest surviving complete
                  manuscript of the New Testament, Codex Sinaiticus.

            C.  In part, its popularity stemmed from its reputed author: Barnabas, the companion of the apostle
                  Paul (see Acts 13-14).

            D.  The book itself is anonymous, however, and scholars today recognize that it was written decades
                  after Barnabas's death.

            E.   It is probably a good thing that the book never made it into the New Testament: This is one of the
                  most virulently anti-Jewish books from the first two centuries of Christianity.

II.         The overarching theme of the Letter of Barnabas is that Judaism is, and always has been, a false religion;
            that Jews have always misunderstood the Law of Moses God gave them; and that the Old Testament is,
            in fact, a Christian, not a Jewish, book.

            A.  After the introduction to the letter, the theme is stated in 2:4: God has no need of the Jewish sacrifices
                 and has never wanted them.

                1.  One key to understanding the letter is that Barnabas draws this lesson from the pages of the
                     Jewish Scriptures themselves (specifically, the prophets, who were interested themselves in the
                     revival of the Jewish religion, not its abolition)!

                2.  In other words, Barnabas uses Jewish Scripture to undermine the Jewish religion.

             B. This is a strikingly different approach to Scripture from that evidenced among other early Christian
                 writers.

                 1.  Some early Christians, such as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, had just the opposite view of
                      Scripture: It was the only authoritative guide to faith and practice, to be adhered to closely by
                      the followers of Jesus.

                 2.  Other early Christians, such as the apostle Paul, thought that the Scriptures had been fulfilled
                      in Christ; its ritual laws were no longer a guide to how one was to live religiously.

                 3.  Still other early Christians, such as the 2nd-century teacher Marcion, thought that the Scriptures
                      of the Jews were only for the Jews and were to have no bearing on the lives of Christians.

                 4.  Barnabas, in contrast to all these other positions, maintained that parts of the Scripture were
                      literally to be accepted—those parts that condemned the Jews for their failure to worship God
                      appropriately. But other parts—especially those that described how God wanted his people to
                      live and worship—were to be taken figuratively.

                 5.  According to Barnabas, Jews had mistakenly taken God's Law given to Moses literally, when in
                      fact, he intended the Law to be a figurative set of instructions about how to live.

             C.   For Barnabas, the Jewish people, who had always misunderstood God's purpose and intentions,
                   were not really God's people, members of the covenant.

                   1.  In Barnabas' view, when God gave his covenant to his people on Mount Sinai, they immediately
                        broke it, as symbolized in Moses' smashing of the tablets of the Ten Commandments (4:6b-8).

                   2.  For that reason, Jews never had been people of the covenant.

                   3.  God's covenant is reserved for those who actually do what he wants, in believing in his messiah,
                        Jesus, and keeping the figurative meaning of the laws given to Moses.

III.       Much of the Letter of Barnabas is devoted to showing how Jews misunderstood these laws, taking them
          literally when they were meant symbolically.

          A.  This is seen in the law of circumcision, for example, which did not actually require Jews to cut the
               foreskins of their baby boys (as they were misled by an evil angel to believe) but was a symbolic
               statement of the need to believe in the cross of Jesus (ch. 9).

          B.  This "misunderstanding" is also seen in the laws of kosher, which are not about what not to eat but how
               not to behave.

               1.   Not eating pork means not behaving in the same manner as pigs, who are satisfied with their
                     master (God) only when well fed (10:1-4).

               2.   Not eating rabbit means not being sexually corrupt, like rabbits, who grow an additional orifice every
                     year to increase their sexual appetite (10:6).

               3.   Not eating the hyena means not being perverted, like hyenas, who alternate sex annually, one
                     year being male and the next female (10:7).

               4.   Not eating the weasel means not engaging in illicit sexual activity, like weasels, who conceive their
                     young through the mouth (10:8). And so on.

               5.   On the other hand, the foods that are to be eaten are symbolic as well: Jews are to eat only animals
                     that chew the cud and have split hooves. They are, in other words, to be those who meditate on
                     God's word (chewing the cud) and who are both upright in this world and anticipate the world to
                     come (split hooves).

          C.   The "misunderstanding" is further seen in other symbolic passages of Scripture, such as when the
                 children of Israel won their battle with the Amalekites so long as Moses stood over them lifting his arms
                 in the shape of a cross (ch. 12).

          D.  It is seen in the law of the Sabbath, which does not give Jews license not to work one day of the week,
                but refers to the future 1,000-year reign of Christ, the millennium (ch. 15).

IV.       This is clearly a work that attacks the Jewish religion from a Christian perspective. But when was it written?

           A.  The text indicates that the Temple lay in ruins and that there is an expectation that it will soon be
                rebuilt (16:3-4).

           B.  This means that it must have been written after A.D.70, when the Jewish Temple was destroyed,
                and probably when the Temple was rebuilt by the Romans as a temple to Jupiter/Zeus around the
                year 130.

           C.  It may be that heightened Jewish-Christian tensions are what led to this vitriolic attack on all things
                Jewish.

           D.  To make sense of that context, we need to know more about the development of Christianity away from
                 being a Jewish sect to becoming an anti-Jewish religion, which will be the subject of our next lecture.

Essential Reading: Bart D. Ehrman, ed., "The Epistle of Barnabas," in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, pp. 3-83. Clayton Jefford, Reading the Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction, pp.11-31.

Supplementary Reading: Reidar Hvalvik, The Struggle/or Scripture and Covenant: The Purpose of the Epistle of Barnabas. James Carleton Paget, The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background.