The Gospel of Barnabas 121Serial No. 3: Epistle of Barnabas ... Lines 1,300and again in the list of Sixty Books as follows:Serial No. 17: Travels and teaching of the Apostles.
Serial No. 18: Epistle of Barnabas.
Serial No. 24 : Gospel According to Barnabas.This famous list was also known as the Index, and Christians were
not supposed to read any of the books listed in it On pain of etemal
punishment.
lt is interesting to note in passing that a Greek version of the
Epistle of Barnabas (which is mentioned by two of the most well
known early church fathers, Origen (185-254 AD) and Eusebius
(265-340 AD) in their writings) is in fact to be found in the Codex
Sinaiiicus -perhaps the earliest Greek version of the New Testa
ment known to be in existence today and dating from the 4th or
5th century AD -although it has been excluded from all modem
versions of the Bible.
Although Christian polemicists have repeatedly attempted to
allege not only that the ltalian translation of the Gospel of Barnabas
is a mediaeval forgery, but also by implication that the Gospel it
self is a forgery -written by a Muslim convert in the fifteenth or
sixteenth century AD - this clearly cannot be correct, given the
number of recorded references to the Gospel of Barnabas which were
often made long before the coming of the Prophet Muhammad,
blessings and peace be on him.
As regards other later references to the Gospel of Barnabas, the
Gospel is also, recorded in the 206th manuscript of the Baroccian
Collection in the Bodleian Library in Oxford which dates from the
6th or 7th century AD. 2 Cotelerius, whocataloguedthe manuscripts
in the Library of the French king, listed the Gospel ofBarnabas in the
Index of Scriptures which he prepared in 1789. There is also a soli
tary fragment of a Greek version of the Gospel of Barnabas to he
found in a museum in Athens, which is all that remains of a copy
which was bumt:
BllpJlclpCl' 6 bdcrroAof '4)1" 1" A,J.~AACI" "o""pClill' UMWTfP0S'
6 lI~nfcrar, a,&ra blpxua• • Alo, lX"'., Tijr o,"","Cor 3