Jesus, Prophet of Islam - The Islamic Bulletin

130 Jesus, Prophet ofIslam

It is possible that the reason why there is in fact such a marked
similarity between the contents of The Gospel of Barnabas and that
of the other Gospels is that the Italian translation is not a 'forgery',
but rather a faithful translation of a much earlier Greek or Hebrew
or even Aramaic version, whichwas in existence long before the
Qur'an was revealed, and on which the writers of the four offi­
cially accepted Gospels perhaps depended - for it is now generally
accepted that the three earliest accepted Gospels, known as the
Synoptic Gospels, were in part derived from an earlier unknown
Gospel which today's researchers often refer to as the '0' Gospel,
for want of a better name.
Itis possible that this earlier unknown Gospel could be the origi­
nal Gospel of Barnabas, although it is clear from the following analy­
sis contained in Dr. Maurice Bucaille's book, The Bible, the Qur' an
and Science, that the 'Q' Gospel may well have been a collection of
different narrations, rather than one complete document:

The problem of sources was approached in a very sim­

plistic fashion at the time of the Fathers of the Church.

In the early centuries of Christianity, the only source

available was the Gospel that the complete manuscripts

provided first, Le. Matthew's Gospel. The problem of

sources only concerned Mark and Luke because John

constituted a quite separate case. Saint Augustine held

that Mark, who appears second in the traditional order

of presentation, had been inspired by Matthew and had

summarised his work. He further considered that Luke,

who cornes third in the manuscripts, had used data from

both; ms prologue suggests this, and has already been

discussed.

The experts in exegesis at this period were as able as

we are to estimate the degree of corroboration between

the texts and find a large number of verses common to

two or three synoptics. Today, the commentators of the

Ecumenical Translation of the Bible provide the following

figures:

verses common to all three synoptics 330

verses common to Mark and Matthew 178

verses common to Mark and Luke 100

verses common to Matthew and Luke 230

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