Jesus, Prophet of Islam - The Islamic Bulletin

The Gospel of Barnabas 131

The verses unique to each of the first three Gospels are

as follows: Matthew 330, Mark 53, and Luke 500.

From the Fathers of the Church until the end of the

Eighteenth century AD, one and a half millennia passed

without any new problems being raised on the sources

of the evangelists: people continued to follow tradition.

It was not until modem times that it was realised, on

the basis of these data, how each evangelist had taken

material found in the others and compiled his own spe­

cifie narration guided by his own personal views. Great

weight was attached to actual collection of material for

the narration. Itcame from the oraltraditionsof the com­

munities from which it originated on the one hand, and

from a common written Aramaic source that has not

been rediscovered on the other, Thiswritten sourcecould

have formed a compact mass or havebeen eomposed of

many fragments of different narrations used by each

evangclistto construd Risown original wm'k. 7

Thus the question inevitably arises as to whether the Apocryphal
Gospel of Barnabas is, in fact, either this missing Gospel or at least a
part of the possible collection of different narrations. It must be
remembered that John Mark, whose Gospel is the earliest of the
four accepted Gospels, was the son of the sister of Barnabas. He
never metJesus.Thus, whatherelated ofJesus's life and teaching
in his Gospel must have been related to him by others. Itis known
from the books of the New Testament that he accompanied Paul and
Barnabas on many of their rnissionary journeys up to the point
when there was a sharp conflict between them, resulting in Barna­
bas and Mark going to Cyprus together. It is unlikely that Mark
relied on Paul as a source of information since Paul had never met
Jesus either.
The only reasonable conclusion appears to be that he must have
repeated what his uncle Barnabas told him about Iesus. It is said
by sorne that he acted as Peter's interpreter and wrote down what
he had learned from Peter. This may be correct, for Mark must have
had sorne contact with the other apostles when he was not jour­
neying with Barnabas or Paul. However, Goodspeed shows us from
hisresearch thatanythinghe didlearnfrom Peterwasbynomeans
comprehensive: