Bar' nabas, St (properly JOSES), mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as a fellow-labourer of Paul, and even honoured with the title of apostle. He is also supposed to have founded the first Christian community at Antioch. According to tradition, he became the first Bishop of Milan, but Ambrose makes no mention of him among the bishops who had preceded him in that see. He is variously reported to have died a natural death, or to have suffered martyrdom in Rome, Alexandria, or Cyprus, in 61 A.D. His festival is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church on June 11.
The Epistle ascribed to him bears the strongest internal evidence of being an Alexandrian forgery of the 2d century. This Epistle contains twenty-one chapters, the first four and a half in a Latin version, the rest in the original Greek. Its aim is obviously to strengthen the faith of believers in a purely spiritual Christianity. It commences by declaring that legal sacrifices are abolished, and then proceeds to show, though not in a very coherent or logical manner, how variously Christ was foretold in the Old Testament. In the tenth chapter, it spiritually allegorises the commands of Moses concerning clean and unclean beasts; in the fifteenth, it explains the 'true meaning' of the Sabbath; and in the sixteenth, what the Temple really prefigured. This concludes what may be termed the doctrinal portion of the Epistle; the remainder, which is of a practical character, describes the two ways of life—the way of Light and the way of Darkness, and closes with an exhortation that those who read it may so live that they may be blessed to all eternity. It is a simple, pious, and earnest work; but makes a far more judicious use of the New Testament than of the Old. It was ascribed to Barnabas by Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen, and is found in the Codex Sinaiticus; while its authenticity, if not its authorship, was admitted by Eusebius and Jerome. It is now usually dated early in the 2d century. The best editions are those of Hilgenfeld (2d ed. 1877) and Gebhardt-Harnack (2d ed. 1876).