The Epistle of Barnabas: Is It Scripture or a False Gospel?
Short answer: The Epistle of Barnabas is not Scripture. It is an anonymous early Christian letter, written probably between AD 70 and 135, that was read in some churches but was never received into the New Testament canon. Galatians 1:6-9 warns against deserting the gospel for a different one. The church tested every writing by apostolic teaching, and Barnabas failed the test at decisive points: it teaches that the Old Testament law was never God's true intention, that its literal commands came from an evil angel, and that the covenant belongs only to Christians. Galatians 1:6-9 says, "I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different “good news”". However, the letter is still valuable: it shows what second-century Christians debated, how they read the Old Testament, and why the church needed a settled canon.
What the Epistle of Barnabas actually is
The Epistle of Barnabas is a Greek letter of roughly twenty-one chapters, preserved complete in two famous manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Hierosolymitanus. It never claims to be written by the biblical Barnabas, the companion of Paul. The attribution is traditional and early, but internal evidence argues against it: the writer does not present himself as an eyewitness of Jesus, and his handling of the law is far from the Jerusalem church's known posture. Most historians date it between the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70 and the Bar Kokhba revolt, roughly AD 130 to 135. It was written somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, most likely Egypt or Syro-Palestine. In other words, it is a real early Christian document, but its author, date, and location are all uncertain.
The letter falls into two broad halves. The first half is a long interpretation of Scripture, mostly Genesis and Exodus, arguing that the Old Testament's literal commands were given as a temporary concession and that their true, spiritual meaning points to Christ and the church. The second half is a manual on the two ways, contrasting the way of light with the way of darkness in a style very similar to the Didache. The closing section again warns about the last days and calls for watchfulness. This structure tells us what kind of book it is: a sermon-like tract for instruction, not an apostolic letter addressed to a church with a named apostolic author.
Why does it carry Barnabas's name? Early Christians often attached an apostle's or notable disciple's name to a writing to signal its authority and to preserve its teaching. That practice does not automatically make a document dishonest; it does make its authority derivative and unverifiable. When a church father such as Clement of Alexandria or Origen cites Barnabas, he treats it as a worthy but disputed writing. Origen explicitly lists it among the writings that were questioned. So even from the earliest evidence, the church did not treat Barnabas the way it treated Paul's letters or the four Gospels.
The letter is valuable for a different reason. It preserves a window into how second-century Christians argued with Jews and with other Christians about the law, the covenant, and the interpretation of Scripture. It shows the pressure the church faced from both sides: Judaizers who wanted Gentile believers to keep the law, and over-correcting voices who wanted to write the law off entirely. Barnabas represents the over-correction. Reading it is like reading a debate transcript from a church we never knew. It informs history without ruling the church, and that is exactly how we should handle it.
Why was it read in churches but not received as Scripture
Barnabas was read publicly in some congregations. Codex Sinaiticus, one of our two oldest complete Bibles, includes it alongside the New Testament books, which shows that at least one fourth-century church considered it worthwhile to preserve in a scriptural codex. But inclusion in a manuscript is not the same as canon. Codex Sinaiticus also contains the Shepherd of Hermas, and no one argues that Hermas was received as Scripture by the whole church. The question is not whether a book was copied or read, but whether the churches recognised it as apostolic and God-breathed.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, "Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness". The church's discernment was exactly this: did the writing come from the apostles, or from those who faithfully carried their teaching? Barnabas is anonymous and post-apostolic. It does not pass that test. The churches did not reject it because it was unhelpful; they declined to put it on the level of the apostolic writings because its origin could not be traced to the apostolic circle.
The criterion that settled the New Testament was a combination of apostolic origin, agreement with the rule of faith, and reception by the churches over time. Barnabas fails at the first and third points. It was never read in all the churches, and its theology of the law contradicts Paul, the acknowledged apostle to the Gentiles. When a book plainly contradicts an unquestioned apostolic letter, the question is closed. The church received the writings that carried the authority of Christ's own messengers and used everything else as edifying, fallible literature.
This distinction matters for how we read any ancient Christian book. Reading the church fathers is good; substituting them for the apostles is not. The apostolic letters were written by people who saw the risen Lord or worked directly with those who did. Barnabas gives us the theology of a later, unidentified teacher. It is a historical witness, not a doctrinal authority, and the early church was careful to keep that line clear even when it copied the letter into a Bible.
The test Paul gives in Galatians 1:6-9
Galatians opens with an astonishment. Paul writes, "I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different “good news”". The word different is doing heavy work. The Galatian error did not present itself as a denial of Jesus. It presented itself as an improvement: Jesus plus circumcision, Jesus plus law-keeping, Jesus plus the full package of Jewish identity. Paul calls that a desertion of the God who called them, because to add a requirement for salvation is to subtract from Christ.
Paul then becomes blunt. He refuses to allow the word good news to be stretched over a different message. He treats the rival teaching not as a secondary point of view but as a distortion of the gospel of Christ. The issue is not style, culture, or emphasis. It is whether a person is saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, or by grace plus something they must do. Any message that shifts even part of the ground of salvation away from Christ has changed the gospel, no matter how it is marketed.
One question Galatians 1:6-9 raises is whether it condemns every believer who misreads the Law or misunderstands Christian freedom. Paul is answering a settled apostolic foundation, not a debate among equals. His opponents were teaching that the Gentiles must be circumcised to be saved. The church can bear with a believer who has an incomplete grasp of Scripture. It cannot redefine the basis of salvation. The difference is between an immature Christian and a false teacher who is leading others away from Christ.
The passage is therefore a working test, not a general suspicion of everyone who differs from us. The test is: does this teaching preserve the finished work of Christ as the only ground of acceptance with God? The Epistle of Barnabas, when it treats the law as never truly commanded by God and the covenant as belonging only to Christians, runs into a different problem: not the Judaizing error Paul fought, but an over-correction that reads the Old Testament as a coded document to be decoded rather than as the true and living word of God that it is.
What Barnabas says about the Old Testament law
The heart of Barnabas lies in its claim that God never literally demanded sacrifice, fasting, or temple worship. The letter reads passages such as Jeremiah's critique of sacrifice and Isaiah's weariness with feast days as proof that the commands were never meant to be kept literally. It says the dietary laws were given as a spiritual code: the clean animals represent virtues and the unclean animals represent vices. The Sabbath, in its reading, is not the seventh day but the coming age of rest. This is allegory, and it is relentless.
The problem is not allegory by itself. Paul uses typology in Galatians 4 and 1 Corinthians 10, and Hebrews reads the tabernacle as a shadow. But Paul and Hebrews never say the literal commands were never God's commands. They say the shadow points to the substance. Barnabas goes further. It says a wicked angel, not God, gave the literal law, and the letter says so in plain terms. That is a different claim entirely, and it is the point at which the letter contradicts the apostolic teaching it claims to honour.
The practical effect is severe. If the Old Testament's plain commands came from an evil angel, then the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God who spoke at Sinai. That splits the Bible's own witness to one God, one covenant of promise, and one plan of redemption. Paul's whole argument in Galatians depends on the law being good, given by God, and fulfilled in Christ. Barnabas undercuts the foundation by denying that the law was ever really given the way it reads.
The letter's motive is understandable. Second-century Christians were arguing with people who insisted Gentiles must keep the law, so Barnabas tried to make the law mean something other than a code of conduct. But the cure is worse than the disease. The apostolic answer is that the law is good but unable to justify, that it was a guardian until Christ came, and that it is fulfilled in him, not that it was a lie from an evil spirit. That is a caution for every generation tempted to save the Bible by spiritualising the parts that are inconvenient.
How the early church weighed disputed books
The church did not decide on the canon in a single council. It was a slow, widespread recognition. Books like Barnabas, 1 Clement, the Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas were read in various congregations and debated. Some fathers quoted them as Scripture, some listed them as disputed, and most simply used them without putting them on the level of the Gospels and the apostolic letters. The process was messy on the surface, but the criterion was stable: apostolicity, agreement with the faith once delivered, and reception across the churches.
Acts 17:10-11 says, "The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Beroea. When they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue." The next verse, not quoted here, describes the Beroeans examining the Scriptures daily to see whether Paul's teaching was true. That is the pattern. Even an apostle was checked against the Scriptures. A later teacher like the writer of Barnabas is checked far more strictly, and when his teaching contradicts the acknowledged letters of Paul, the Beroean instinct applies.
Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart." This is the authority we are after. A sermon or letter can be helpful, but only the living word searches the heart and binds the conscience. When we read Barnabas, we are reading a human teacher. When we read Paul, we are reading the word through which God himself speaks.
2 Peter 3:15-16 shows that the church's early instinct ran the other direction from Barnabas: Peter's readers are directed to Paul's letters alongside the other Scriptures. Peter notes that some things in Paul are hard to understand and that the ignorant and unstable twist them. That is a reminder that both error and correction were already at work. The church's task was to hear the apostolic writings and let them judge everything else, including books written in the apostles' names.
What we should and should not take from Barnabas
We should take the warning. Barnabas shows us how a sincere attempt to defend the gospel can go wrong when it stops submitting to apostolic teaching and starts rewriting the Bible's story. It shows us that error does not always look like unbelief. It can look like extra zeal, extra symbolism, extra cleverness. The Galatian error added requirements to grace; the Barnabas error added a decoding scheme to Scripture. Both leave people with something other than the plain word of God, and both require correction.
We should not take the letter's theology of the law. It is not simply a different emphasis from Paul; it is a different account of where the law came from and what God intended. Faithful Christians differ on how to apply the Old Testament's ceremonial and civil laws today, and we should be honest about those differences. But the question of whether the literal commands were ever given by God is not an open question. Paul says the law is holy and the commandment holy, righteous, and good; Barnabas says otherwise.
We should not treat the letter's presence in Codex Sinaiticus as proof of canonicity. The codex also contains Hermas, and the same reasoning would have to include it. Manuscript presence, public reading, and quotation by a church father are all evidence that a book existed and was valued. They are not evidence that it was received as Scripture by the churches. The New Testament was settled by apostolic origin and reception, not by accidental proximity to other books in a binder.
We can still read it with profit as history and as a mirror. It tells us what the second-century church was fighting about and how a thoughtful Christian of that era could go astray while quoting the Bible constantly. It should make us grateful for the canon, grateful for the letters of Paul, and careful about every teaching that arrives with a new key to Scripture. The Lord's people are not to be children tossed to and fro, and the best protection is the apostolic word itself, read plainly and prayerfully.
Biblical fidelity check
What the supplied passages establish is clear. Galatians 1:6-9 establishes that there is one gospel, that it is the grace of Christ, and that a rival message is a desertion of the God who called us. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 establishes that every writing which is Scripture carries God's breath and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. 2 Peter 3:15-16 establishes that Paul's letters were already being classed among the Scriptures in the apostolic era. Hebrews 4:12 establishes the searching, living power of God's word. Revelation 22:18-19 establishes that adding to God's words is a serious matter. These passages give us the standard; they do not themselves name Barnabas.
What the passages do not establish is a detailed procedure for sorting third-century and fourth-century book lists, nor do they say that any book read in a church is automatically Scripture. A common misreading runs like this: since the New Testament we have came to be recognised in the early church, and since Barnabas was read in the early church, Barnabas must be as scriptural as anything else. That is wrong. Reading and reception are different things, and the church's verdict on Barnabas, along with its verdict on the Shepherd of Hermas and 1 Clement, was that these are edifying but not apostolic. The faithful response is to honour the apostolic writings as the church did, not to flatten the distinction the church itself maintained.
Other passages that speak to Galatians 1:6-9
Several related studies help fill out the doctrine Paul is defending here. For the standing of the gospel and the call to set your hope fully on grace, see What Does 1 Peter 1:13 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. For the holiness that flows from grace rather than replacing it, see What Does 1 Peter 1:15 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. For the redemption that grounds Paul's one gospel, see What Does 1 Peter 1:18 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. And for the electing, sanctifying, and sprinkling work of God that stands behind the call, see What Does 1 Peter 1:2 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. Read together, these passages keep the gospel about what God has done, not what we must add.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Epistle of Barnabas in the Bible?
No. It is not part of the Old or New Testament. It was read in some early churches and is preserved in Codex Sinaiticus, one of our oldest Bibles, but the church did not receive it as apostolic Scripture. It is an anonymous second-century letter, and the churches declined to put it on the level of the Gospels and the letters of Paul, Peter, and John. It is useful history and edifying in places, but it is not the word of God.
Did Barnabas, the companion of Paul, write the letter?
The letter claims no such authorship in its text; the name comes from early tradition. Most historians doubt it, because the writer does not present himself as an eyewitness, and his teaching about the law and covenant contradicts the apostolic teaching of Paul, whose associate Barnabas was. An early Christian writer could use a respected name to gain a hearing, or a later scribe could attach it. Either way, the letter's own content does not support the traditional attribution.
Why does this letter matter for Christians today?
It matters as a case study in how error enters the church through sincere people quoting the Bible. Barnabas tries to defend the faith and ends up reinterpreting the Old Testament so heavily that its literal commands are credited to an evil angel. That is a warning and an encouragement. The warning is against clever systems that displace plain Scripture. The encouragement is that the church did not need to reinvent the gospel; it simply held to the apostolic writings through a long and messy process.
