Epistle of Barnabas

Reflection

The Epistle of Barnabas is an early Christian treatise attributed in tradition to the Barnabas of Acts, though modern scholarship is cautious about the authorship. Its great theme is the interpretation of the Old Testament as a Christian book. Chapter after chapter draws typological and figural readings from the Mosaic law and the prophets, showing how — when read in the light of Christ — the Hebrew Scriptures yield a coherent gospel message.

Examples of the method abound. The scapegoat ritual of Leviticus 16 is read as a figure of Christ rejected and slain outside the camp. The red heifer of Numbers 19 is read as Christ providing purification through his sacrifice. Even the number 318 (the household servants of Abraham in Genesis 14:14) is read by gematria as pointing to Jesus and the cross. The hermeneutic is occasionally extreme, but the foundational claim is what Paul, Hebrews, and Stephen had already made: the Old Testament was always about Christ.

The letter is significant in two ways. First, it confirms that the typological reading found in Paul and Hebrews was not a Pauline novelty but a method continuous with the church's earliest reading habits — the same method Jesus himself authorized in Luke 24:27 and 24:44-45. Second, the epistle is included alongside the New Testament in Codex Sinaiticus, demonstrating the boundary between received Scripture and edifying-but-not-canonical writing was still being drawn in the 4th century. By the time the canon was formally articulated, Barnabas had been retained as useful but set apart from the apostolic deposit.

Sources: James Carleton Paget, The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background (1994); Reidar Hvalvik, The Struggle for Scripture and Covenant (1996); Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers (3rd ed., 2007).