The Gospel of Barnabas

About The Gospel of Barnabas Android App

The Gospel of Barnabas (Wisdom of the Ages #6)

"Edited and translated from the Italian ms. in the Imperial library at Vienna."

This app contains the full text of Lonsdale and Laura Ragg's public domain translation of 1907, as transcribed by ISTA, the Internet Sacred Text Archives. The text is organized by Chapter Number / Heading.

The Gospel of Barnabas is a non-canonical “gospel” purportedly written by the Apostle Barnabas, a narrative account of the life of Jesus told, uniquely, from a Muslim perspective (although not precisely theologically congruent with either Christianity or Islam). Evidenced by two known texts (in Italian and Spanish, the latter only available via a partial transcript), scholars generally place its date of composition around the 14th century A.D., and view it as an original work incorporating earlier materials that are, interestingly, derived from sources other than the Latin Vulgate most commonly in use at the time. The two texts are largely congruent, and the translation here is based on the Italian ms., as translated by Lonsdale and Laura Maria Roberts Ragg in 1907, which includes chapter headings for the first 27 chapters (the manuscript itself appears to be complete textually, but with surrounding material, including a preface, still in the process of composition). Given the lack of Chapter headings beyond the first 27 sections, I’ve taken the liberty of interpolating page headings from the Raggs’ translation (in CAPITALS). Neither these, nor the original Italian chapter headings, are likely original to the work itself (the latter are missing from the Spanish translation). The canonical St. Barnabas appears in Acts as an early member of the Church, a follower of Paul who first knew him as Saul.

The app offers the user the ability to randomly select an individual chapter for contemplation, as well as the ability to choose an individual chapter by Chapter Number/Name (with leading text to help provide context), along with the ability to search the text for sayings containing a particular word, and of course to scroll through the full text of the document.

More information about The Gospel of Barnabas can be found on the net via search; here are a few links of note:

WikiPedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Barnabas
The Nazaroo Files -
http://textualcriticism.scienceontheweb.net/FATHERS/GospelofBarnabas.html
Archive.Org saved copy of La Trobe University Professor Rob Blackhirst's web site; https://web.archive.org/web/20110607203156/http://www.latrobe.edu.au/arts/barnabas/Barnmain.html

Please check out our other apps, including the original in this series, our "Gospel of Thomas" app (Wisdom of the Ages #1). Also available: The Gospel of Q (#2), Hesiod's "Works and Days" (#3) and his "Theogony" (#5) and Sun-Tzu's "Art of War" (#4).

This app contains no advertising, gathers no user data beyond what the Google Play store makes available, and requires no permissions to run.