The Gospel of Barnabas or the Qur’an of Barnabas?

The Muslims in the Middle East are accustomed to acknowledge anything that upholds their religion and to declare as infidel anyone who contradicts them, even if he is right.
Most Muslims who believed and validated the “Gospel of Barnabas” have not read it, but have blindly adopted what it says just because they have heard that it recognized Muhammad.
What does the “Gospel of Barnabas” contain, who is its writer and who is Barnabas? If it recognizes Muhammad, why did Muslim imams withdraw it from the markets asking Muslims not to read it?

First of all, if you think that the author of this book is Barnabas, and he himself was St. Mark’s uncle who embraced the Christian faith after the resurrection of Christ, then you are mistaken.

The Author of the “Gospel of Barnabas”:
The book of Barnabas has been known in the world markets, before the Arab ones, since 1709, i.e., it appeared about 1700 years after the resurrection of Christ. It was written by a Muslim named Mustafa Al-Arandi, after Aranda in Spain, who translated it from Italian into Spanish. If it had been an approved gospel since the time of the apostles, or even the apostles of the apostles, we would have found it written in Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic.
In the year 1575, about 200 years before the appearance of Mustafa, and according to what Barnabas’ alleged book narrated about how it was found: “There was an Italian monk named Marino, this monk had a quarrel with Pope Sixtus V after he went to visit him. The Pope drowsed and slept in the presence of Marino, so to pass the time until the Pope wakes up, the monk started searching among the Pope’s books, and suddenly he ran across the “Gospel of Barnabas”. He stole and hid it in his robe, then took it and ran away making it the eternal hidden secret.”
This story, with its comic plot, raises obvious questions:
Does the Pope receive people in his bedroom?
He is the Pope of the Vatican, who is surrounded by number of guards, so how could he fall asleep during anyone’s visit?
Would the guards let that monk mess with the Pope’s stuff, steal and run away?
According to this monk himself, he left Christianity to spite the Pope and converted to Islam. It was said that the Pope punished the monk by depriving him of monasticism because of his sexual harassment of the nuns, which is the closest version to the truth.
After he was exposed and expelled from the monasticism, the monk went to Muslims and tried to please them; or they asked him to compose what they called the “Gospel of Barnabas” so he would write about Muhammad after Islamic scholars were unable to find a mention of him or a prophecy about him in the Torah and the Gospel.
Why do Christians not recognize the “Gospel of Barnabas”?
There are hundreds of mistakes and defects in the book, including funny and disgraceful things, and I will mention some of them:
1- Just like all the deceitful actions that the followers of Satan do, those who take from the Holy Bible a name that is not mentioned a lot in order to weave fake tales about it, to help them challenge the word of the LORD God in the Holy Bible, here also they used the name “Barnabas”, which is mentioned in the Holy Bible, and turned it into a character they used to serve the Qur’an. There is no Gospel, Epistle, or any reference in the Holy Bible to a great deed that Barnabas had done. The fact is simply that, a perverted Catholic monk, who was deprived of the service, converted to Islam and he wanted to insult the name of Christ by supporting the enemies of the Holy Bible; so he converted to Islam and wrote this “Gospel of Barnabas” in Italian. Later, a Muslim man called Mustafa took the book and translated it into Spanish, then Islamic printing houses translated and published it in Arabic. It is an Islamic work from A to Z, that’s why I called it “The Qur’an of Barnabas”.
2- The twelve disciples of the LORD Jesus Christ are known by name, and Barnabas is not one of them. He was Saint Mark’s uncle, and his name was Joseph. Ten to twelve years after the resurrection of the LORD Jesus Christ, he converted to Christianity, became one of the Evangelists, and began preaching in his country in Cyprus. One of the important things which Saint Barnabas was famous for, is that he was the first to sell his field and land and put the money under the disciples’ feet to spend it on preaching the LORD Jesus Christ. It is said that there is still a church in Cyprus named after Saint Barnabas in the memory of his martyrdom in the name of the LORD Jesus Christ.
If we look impartially at the life of Saint Barnabas, does it make any sense that a person who had sold his property and was martyred in the name of Jesus Christ, would have believed in Muhammad, who at that time had not come yet?!
3- The writer of this book also says that Jesus Christ had cursed anyone who says to Him “the Son of God”, this contradicts what the four Evangelists wrote in the Gospel, and that is why I also called it the “Qur’an of Barnabas”. Christ did not curse anyone, but He rather taught us saying: “bless, and curse not.” The concept of cursing and hatred of others does not exist in the personality of Jesus Christ at all.
4- On page 128 of the “Qur’an of Barnabas”, the writer says: ” Allah had created the world for the sake of the Prophet of Islam.”
On page 61 he says: “God created Muhammad before Christ”, as Adam saw in the air the writing: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger”, and Allah wrote on Adam’s right nail, “There is no god but Allah,” and on Adam’s left nail, “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” They made Allah hold in his hand nail polish to paint Adam’s nail.
5- On page 320 – 322 the writer claims that the Jews took Judas instead of Christ because he looked like Him, as Christ cast his likeness on Judas; they claimed that Christ was using magic and sorcery, and that Judas was shouting: “The malefactor,” i.e., Jesus “had survived, but I die unjustly.”
Despite all this screaming, no one could hear him because he was bewitched and his image was transformed. These ancient pagan stories based on magic and how one person turns into another enchanted one, make both our children and our adults laugh, so how would any sane person believe them?!

The catastrophic scientific errors in the “so-called” the Gospel of Barnabas:
1- In chapter(25) verse (26) he says: “God having created a mass of earth, and having left it for twenty-five thousand years without doing aught else; Satan knew that God was to take one hundred and forty and four thousand signed with the mark of prophecy… so Satan spat upon that mass of earth, and that spittle the angel Gabriel lifted up with some earth, so that therefore now man has the navel in his belly.”
2- Have you ever asked yourself why do most Muslims believe that there is an apple stuck in men’s throat and they look for it on the front of every man’s neck? This is also one of the scientific errors in the “Gospel of Barnabas”, which the Muslims were influenced by and took from its myths. In Chapter (40: 24-28) he says that when Adam ate a bite of the apple that Eve gave him after Satan tempted them, the bite became like a fire and he remembered the word of God, so the apple got stuck in his throat, and that’s why Adam has this prominent on the throat. This is also one of the myths that many Muslims consider as a scientific postulate.
3- In chapter (27: 5-7), the writer of the book talks about the transformation of people into animals, he says: “In the time of Moses, know you not that God turned into hideous beasts many men of Egypt?”
The transformation of man into an animal is also one of the pagan myths and legends that have been known in the religions which believe in reincarnation and the rebirth of the soul in another body; this myth is not only far from the Christian faith but also unscientific.
4- Chapter (145:43) says: “Let the lump of earth sleep…for every night let two hours of sleep suffice.”
So he said that the normal amount of sleep for human comfort is two hours, and this contradicts both science and logic.
5- Chapter (57:14) the lice turn into pearls:
He was talking about asceticism and austerity. Apparently, when the monk became a Muslim he became ascetic, mystic and did not take a bath so it seems that he was infested with lice, thus he wanted to find a way to hide the lice and the bad smell that was coming out of him so he said: “Truly I say to you, that the hair-shirt shall shine like the sun, and every louse a man shall have borne for love of God shall be turned into pearl…if the world knew his it would choose the hair-shirt sooner than purple, lice sooner than gold”
It seems that the writer of the “Qur’an of Barnabas” was suffering from a mental illness that prevented him from bathing till his shirt became rotten and lice covered his head, so he considered his illness as an asceticism.
6- The writer says that Solomon invited all the creatures of God to a feast, so a fish came and ate all that he had prepared. The real calamity is not in this funny book, but rather in the Muslims who believed it and said “Amen”.
7- Also one of the funny things in the “Qur’an of Barnabas” is that the camel does not like to drink murky water so that it does not see its ugliness.
8- It is also written in this book of superstitions that the people who have faith but have not done any work will be judged by seventy thousand years in the Purgatory; roasted until they get the intercession and go out. Here the truth of the writer of the book is revealed, as he was a Catholic monk who introduced the Catholic ideas, such as the Purgatory, in his book. These pagan ideas did not exist in the time of the saints of the early church.
Priests and men of faith tried to dissuade Muslims from circulating this book because of its nonsense and inaccuracies, saying to the Muslim sheikhs: “How do you even accept that the name of your Messenger is mentioned with all these nonsense?”
But as usual, when spreading the message of Islam, Muslims do not mind the mean no matter how despicable it is, as much as they care about the end. As long as the “Gospel of Barnabas” defames the Holy Bible and distorts the image of the LORD Jesus Christ, they decided to make this book the bestseller in the Arab world.
Suddenly the Muslims woke up from the coma of “Barnabas”, demanded of its withdrawn from the markets and issued a statement that this book is a forged and a non-divine book. The question is why did the sheikhs hide it even though it supported their religion?
The Reasons for Banning the “Gospel of Barnabas” from the Islamic Markets:
1- The “Gospel of Barnabas” considered that Jesus came to preach the Messiah to people, i.e. Muhammad. So when Jesus said, “I preach a prophet to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad, and he will be the Messiah” he did not only defame the Gospel, but he also defamed the Qur’an, for how can Muhammad be the Messiah?
The writer also says in the book that Jesus said: “I am God’s servant and desire to serve God’s Messenger whom you call Messiah.”
And of course, as you know, at the time of Jesus Christ, Muhammad was not yet born; as he was born more than 500 years after, according to the Islamic accounts.
2- This book does not recognize the Torah, the Gospel, nor the Zabur. The writer of the book (Mustafa Al-Arandi), quoting the monk Marino, claimed that God was not able to preserve the Torah at the time of Moses, so He sent David who was also unable to preserve the book of David, then He sent Christ who could not keep the Gospel as well; by that they made God weak and unable to keep His word throughout the ages except in His last edition, and this also contradicts Surah Al-Ma’idah in Quran 46: “And We sent, following in their footsteps,Isa, the son of Maryam, confirming that which came before him in the Torah; and We gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light and confirming that which preceded it of the Torah as guidance and instruction for the righteous.”
3- The most important thing which made Muslims wish that this book did not exist, is its defamation of the Islamic faith. In chapter (140:1) about Christ saying: “Believe ye, O men, that I am come into the world with a privilege which no man hath had, nor will even the messenger of God have it”
Here we find the writer contradicting himself when he said that Christ came to serve Muhammad, who is the Messiah, and suddenly he says that Christ was given privileges that were not given to humans, not even to the Messenger of Allah, thus he made Christ greater than Muhammad.

Who withdrew the book from the market?
In 1965, the Arabic Encyclopedia known as the “Easy Arabic Encyclopedia” had issued in its third chapter the statement of Muslim scholars on the invalidity of the “Gospel of Barnabas”, under the supervision of the Islamic scholar Muhammad Shafiq Gharbal in partnership with Sheikh Muhammad Abu Zahra, Dr. Ibrahim Madkour, Dr. Zaki Nagib Mahfouz, Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Helmy, Dr. Suhair Al-Qalamawi, and Dr. Hassan Al-Saati, and they said on page (354) of the Arabic Encyclopedia:
I. The Gospel of Barnabas is a forgery written by a European in the 15th century. They admitted that it was a work that appeared after the advent of Islam.
II. For 300 years, Muslims have not been able to obtain a single manuscript that proves authenticity of the Gospel of Barnabas.
III. Its great historical mistakes. The writer made Pontius Pilate the governor of Judaea at the time of the birth of Christ, while Pilate, a Roman ruler, was at the time of the crucifixion of Christ and reigned in 26 A.D. He also mentioned that the Jewish Jubilee is 100 years, whereas it was 50 years and remained so until the period of 300 or 400 years of the Middle Ages when it changed into 100 years, which also indicates that the time of writing this book was in the Middle Ages.
IV. They discovered great geographical errors, as the writer said that Nazareth and Jerusalem are two ports overlooking the sea, this indicates that the writer neither lived in Jerusalem nor did he visit it even once in his life, so how could he claim to be Saint Barnabas?
Also among his obvious mistakes is saying that Christ had fasted on Mount Sina in Egypt, while Christ had fasted in Jerusalem and never visited Egypt in his youth.
Furthermore, the auditors of the Gospel of Barnabas found modern expressions such as: (barrels, marble quarries, the use of the pound as a unit of measurement, and the jousting between lovers).These things have never existed in Palestine, so they prove that the writer of the “Book of Barnabas” was a European who had never visited the Holy Land and that the book was completed in the Middle Ages in the 15th century.
The real Saint Barnabas whose name is mentioned in the Holy Bible, who was martyred for the name of Christ two thousand years ago, and was buried by Saint Mark in 61 AD, is completely innocent of this book.
It seems that the translator Mustafa Al-Arandi took and translated the book without revising it, seeking to win Christians and make them question their faith, but the writers and publishers of this book were hoist by their own petard, as Muslims were the only ones to read and believe in these superstitions while Christians did not read nor care about it, except for men of faith who are interested in research and scrutiny.

Jan / 22 / 2019