Gospel of Barnabas Could Lead to Global Collapse of Christianity

A leather-bound Gospel of Barnabas, discovered in 2000, could lead to a worldwide collapse of Christianity, according to a report in Iran's Basij Press.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the text, written on animal hide, was confiscated by Turkish authorities during an anti-smuggling operation against a group charged with smuggling antiquities, illegal excavations and the possession of explosives.

The text is in Syriac - a dialect of Aramaic - and was reportedly written sometime in the fifth or sixth centuries and, briefly, states Jesus Christ was never actually crucified and, in fact, he himself predicted the coming of the Prophet Muhammad and the religion of Islam. The Iranian press also suggested the discovery was so immense, it could affect world politics.

"The discovery of the original Barnabas Bible will now undermine the Christian Church and its authority and will revolutionize the religion in the world," the Basij report states, adding, "The most significant fact, though, is that this Bible has predicted the coming of Prophet Mohammad and in itself has verified the religion of Islam, and this alone will unbalance the powers of the world and create instability in the Christian world."

"God has hidden himself as Archangel Michael ran them (Adam and Eve) out of heaven, (and) when Adam turned, he noticed that at top of the gateway to heaven, it was written "La elah ela Allah, Mohamad rasool Allah",' meaning Allah is the only God and Mohammad his prophet," Basij quoted Chapter 41 of the Gospel of Barnabas as saying.

There is no information as to where exactly the book was discovered by National Turk reported it was found in the Ankara Justice Palace, in the Turkish capital, and was being shifted to the city's Ethnography Museum under police escort.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail confirmed that the Vatican had sent an official request to see the text but it is not yet confirmed if the authorities have granted permission...

...The gospel contains excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on leather which is loosely bundled and is estimated to be worth 40 million Turkish Liras (£17.8mn).

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/345441/20120525/gospel-barnabas-iranian-bible-christianity-collapse.htm

1500 year-old ‘ Syriac ‘ Bible found in Ankara, Turkey : Vatican in shock !

The relic was ‘rediscovered’ in the depositum of Ankaran Justice Palace, the ancient version of bible is believed to be written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.

http://www.nationalturk.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ancient-bible-turkey-nationalturk-02451.jpg

Ankara / Turkey – The bible was already in custody of Turkish authorities after having been seized in 2000 in an operation in Mediterranean area in Turkey. The gang of smugglers had been charged with smuggling antiquities, illegal excavations and the possession of explosives and went to trial. Turkish police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript in the bible could be about 1500 to 2000 years old.After waiting eight years in Ankara the ancient bible is being transferred to the Ankaran Ethnography Museum with a police escort.

Ancient Bible will be shown in Ankaran Ethnography Museum

The bible...had been transferred to Ankara for safety reasons, since no owners of the ancient relic could be found.

The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on leather and loosely strung together, with lines of Syriac script with Aramaic dialect. Turkish authorities express the bible is a cultural asset and should be protected for being worthy of a museum.
Ancient Bible in Aramaic dialected Syriac rediscovered in Turkey

Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic – the native language of Jesus – once spoken across much of the Middle East and Central Asia. It is used wherever there are Syrian Christians and still survives in the Syrian Orthodox Church in India and a village in the vicinity of Syrian capital Damascus. Aramaic is also still used in religious rituals of Maronite Christians in Cyprus.

Experts were however divided over the provenance of the manuscript, and whether it was an original, which would render it priceless, or a fake. Other questions surround the discovery of the ancient bible, whether the smugglers had had other copies of the relic or had smuggled them from Turkey.
Vatican eyes the faith of the ancient relic

The Vatican reportedly placed an official request to examine the scripture, which was written on pages made of animal hide in the Aramaic language using the Syriac alphabet.

The copy of the ancient Bible is valued as high as 40 million Turkish Liras ( 28 Mil. Dollars)

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?action=post;num=1337995411;virboard=;title=PostReply

If the gospel specifically mentions Mohammad my bet is that it was written after 600.

Despite all the criticism of Christianity and Islam, there's still billions of them.

Quote:

Much has been written in the past few days, particularly in Muslim newspapers, on the discovery of a bible in Turkey, a bible that was apparently written in Aramaic – the language Jesus spoke – approximately 1,500 years ago. The bible is written on leather pages in gold letters. The cover has inscriptions in Aramaic and a cross, drawn in a rather rudimentary way. What has attracted the most attention – from the media point of view – is a number of statements made by Jesus where he apparently predicts the coming of Muhammad. Nevertheless, up to now no media organisation has published the exact words attributed to Christ. But alas, this extraordinary discovery is probably a hoax, the work of a forger who, according to some, could have been a European Jewish scholar from the Middle Ages. The most factual criticisms have come from the Syriacs. Indeed, anyone who speaks modern Assyrian (also known as neo-Aramaic) will find the inscription on the so-called ‘Gospel of Barnabas’ easy to read. However errors are just as easy to make out. Apparently, the main inscription, in a modern transliteration, reads: ‘b-shimmit maran paish kteewa aha ktawa al idateh d-rabbaneh d-dera illaya b-ninweh b'sheeta d-alpa w-khamshamma d-maran’. This apparently means: ‘In the name of the Lord, this book is written by monks of the high monastery in Nineveh in the 1500th year of our Lord.’ There is not enough space here to go through the grammatical and conceptual errors in detail, but experts in modern Assyrian assure us that they are obvious and quite significant. Apart from anything else, the inscription says ‘book’, but one never refers to a bible in Assyrian with the word ‘book’. The Bible is either referred to as New or Old Testament, or Holy Book. It is quite unlikely that monks could have made such obvious mistakes. However these are not the only issues in a case that raises interesting points – both at the time of its creation and now – only when considered in the light of a rather hostile attitude towards Christians. Today, a fair number of newspapers and media organisations in Muslim Countries have picked up the news, saying that ‘an ancient, 1500-year-old bible predicted the coming of Muhammad.’ Apart from the obvious age confusion between the 1500 years attributed by the media and the date of 1500 AD written in the book’s main inscription, it is clear that predicting in 1500 AD something that occurred in 630 AD is no great prophecy. So we have to ask ourselves why the Islamic media is so ready to approve what seems to be a glaring mistake whatever way you look at it, a mistake which however appeals to followers of Islam, who have always claimed that Jesus, ‘Issa’, was the predecessor of ‘the Seal of the Prophets’. According to reports in Al Bawaba, the Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism, Ertugrul Gunay, stated that ‘in line with Islamic belief, the Gospel of Barnabas treats Jesus as a human being and not as God. It rejects the idea of the Holy Trinity and the Crucifixion and reveals that Jesus predicted the coming of the Prophet Muhammad.’ However, even from an Islamic point of view, the ‘Gospel of Barnabas’ is far from flawless. For example, it says that there are nine heavens and that the tenth is Paradise, while the Qur’an only mentions seven. The Aramaic text states that Mary gave birth to Jesus without experiencing pain while the Qur’an explicitly refers to the pain of childbirth. Moreover, according to these reports, the apocryphal text says that Jesus apparently told Hebrew clerics that he was not the Messiah and that Muhammad would be the Messiah. This, in fact, would seem to reject the existence of a Messiah and makes it so that Jesus and Muhammad appear as the same person. That is without even taking into account the historical details. The text mentions three armies the Palestine of the time, each of which was made up of 200,000 soldiers. However the entire population of Palestine 2,000 years ago probably didn’t come to more than 200,000 people, according to some scholars. In short, all of this leads us to believe that we are dealing with a wonderful fake. But when was it written? There is a clue and it is found in chapter 217. The last sentence states that 100 pounds of stone were placed on the body of Christ and this would lead us to believe that the gospel was penned recently: the first use of the pound as a unit of weight dates to the Ottoman Empire in its dealings with Italy and Spain. According to some scholars, ‘the gospel attributed to Saint Barnabas was written by a European Jew in the Middle Ages who was fairly familiar with the Qur’an and the Gospels. He mixed facts and elements from both but his intentions are still unknown.’ Unfortunately, despite the fact that doubts and questions concerning the gospel were well-known, many Islamic media organisations have reported the gospel’s statements on Jesus’ predictions regarding Muhammad as if they were fact, something which will certainly cause problems at a ground-roots level, in terms of relations between Christian and Muslim communities, especially if the latter do not have a high level of education.

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/world-news/detail/articolo/bibbia-bible-biblia-13182/

Mnemonic wrote on May 26^th, 2012 at 9:08pm:

Despite all the criticism of Christianity and Islam, there's still billions of them.

Yeah hopefully they will die down though in this age where we have psychology and psychiatry to help them.

SOB

Frances - yes that was my understanding too. There are several copies of the "Gospel of Barnabus" around apart from that one. It originated in either Italy or Spain and was printed in Istanbul, which at that time (around 1500) was the only place it could be printed.

Of course it's pseudo-epigraphical, but then all the scriptures are. The difference is that The Gospel of Barnabus was written about 1400 years after the event, whereas the other Gospels were written only 2-300 years after the event.

There are of course other non canonical (apocryphal) gospels - the most famous being the Gospel of Mary Magdalene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mary  or the Hippy Bible, and the Gospel of Thomas. Some of these may easily predate the canonical gospels.

They are all interesting from a historical perspective for both believers and historians.

http://aggreen.net/bible/noncanon.html

Haha who would a funk it. The vatican calling religious documents hoaxes?

muso wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 8:03am:

They are all interesting from a historical perspective for both believers and historians.

Yes, although it would be more interesting if we knew why it was written in the first place.

It's the height of stupidity though for falah to suggest that the existence of this book could lead to the global collapse of Christianity.

Frances wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 11:45pm:

muso wrote on May 27th, 2012 at 8:03am: They are all interesting from a historical perspective for both believers and historians. Yes, although it would be more interesting if we knew why it was written in the first place. It's the height of stupidity though for falah to suggest that the existence of this book could lead to the global collapse of Christianity.

It is not my suggestion, but that of media outlets.

muso wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 8:03am:

Frances - yes that was my understanding too. There are several copies of the "Gospel of Barnabus" around apart from that one. It originated in either Italy or Spain and was printed in Istanbul, which at that time (around 1500) was the only place it could be printed. Of course it's pseudo-epigraphical, but then all the scriptures are. The difference is that The Gospel of Barnabus was written about 1400 years after the event http://aggreen.net/bible/noncanon.html

A bit premature isn't it to give the book an age before it has been tested?

falah wrote on May 28^th, 2012 at 9:11am:

It is not my suggestion, but that of media outlets.

Repeated by yourself, with a heading referring to the possible global collapse of Christianity.  Do you seriously expect us to believe that you are not suggesting this crap as well?

Frances wrote on May 28^th, 2012 at 9:54am:

falah wrote on May 28th, 2012 at 9:11am: It is not my suggestion, but that of media outlets. Repeated by yourself, with a heading referring to the possible global collapse of Christianity.  Do you seriously expect us to believe that you are not suggesting this crap as well?

It just reflects falah's 'optimism' in the face of unrelenting reality.

Falah you could ignore, but the media across the middle east falling for it is kind of revealing.

Frances wrote on May 28^th, 2012 at 9:54am:

falah wrote on May 28th, 2012 at 9:11am: It is not my suggestion, but that of media outlets. Repeated by yourself, with a heading referring to the possible global collapse of Christianity.  Do you seriously expect us to believe that you are not suggesting this crap as well?

I posted it as more of a sort of question rather than a suggestion.

But it does raise the whole thorny issue for  Christians of the existence of other Gospels. Why did the church choose to put only four of them in the Bible in the 4th century?


Quote:

List of Gospels Completely preserved Gospels     Gospel of Mark (canonical)     Gospel of Matthew (canonical)     Gospel of Luke (canonical)     Gospel of John (canonical)     Gospel of Thomas (Gnostic)     Gospel of Truth (Gnostic)     Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians (Gnostic; Sethian)     Gospel of Nicodemus (also known as the "Acts of Pilate")     Gospel of Barnabas     Gospel of Gamaliel[1] Infancy Gospels     Gospel of the Nativity of Mary     Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew     Infancy Gospel of Thomas     Infancy Gospel of James     Arabic Infancy Gospel     Syriac Gospel of the Boyhood of our Lord Jesus [2] Partially preserved Gospels     Gospel of Judas     Gospel of Peter     Gospel of Mary     Gospel of Philip Fragmentary preserved Gospels     Dialogue of the Saviour     Papyrus Egerton 2     Gospel of Eve     Fayyum Fragment     Gospel of Mani     Oxyrhynchus Gospels     Gospel of the Saviour (also known as the Unknown Berlin gospel)     Gospel of the Twelve Reconstructed Gospels     Gospel of the Ebionites     Gospel of the Egyptians     Gospel of the Hebrews     Secret Gospel of Mark     Gospel of Matthias     Gospel of the Nazoraeans     Gospel of Q (also known as the "Q document")     Signs Gospel     Cross Gospel Lost Gospels     Gospel of Bartholomew     Gospel of the Seventy     Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms     Gospel of Perfection     Gospel of Marcion     Gospel of Basilides     Gospel of Andrew     Gospel of Apelles     Gospel of Cerinthus     Gospel of Bardesanes     Gospel of the Encratites[3]     Gospel of the Gnostics[4]     Gospel of Hesychius[5]     Gospel of Lucius[5]     Gospel of Longinus     Gospel of Manes     Gospel of Merinthus[6]     Gospel of Scythianus     Gospel of Simonides     Gospel of Tatian     Gospel of Thaddaeus[7]     Gospel of Valentinus[8]     The Clementine Gospel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gospels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha

freediver wrote on May 28^th, 2012 at 6:45pm:

Frances wrote on May 28th, 2012 at 9:54am: falah wrote on May 28th, 2012 at 9:11am: It is not my suggestion, but that of media outlets. Repeated by yourself, with a heading referring to the possible global collapse of Christianity.  Do you seriously expect us to believe that you are not suggesting this crap as well? It just reflects falah's 'optimism' in the face of unrelenting reality. Falah you could ignore, but the media across the middle east falling for it is kind of revealing.

You'd know something about unrelenting reality wouldn't you.

Let's see, Christians have been entrenched in their faith for how long?  Do you honestly think a new book, even if it was confirmed as real, would change beliefs that for some sects are several centuries old?  Where you high when you chose to create this thread, and if so, please PM me the number for your dealer because that brotha's got the straight dank nugz.