Apostle Barnabas

Barnabas, whose given name was Joseph (also rendered Joses in some manuscripts of Acts), was a Jewish Levite from the island of Cyprus and a leading figure in the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem in the first decades of the first century. The Acts of the Apostles records that he sold a field and laid the proceeds at the apostles' feet, an episode presented as a model of generosity within that church. The Twelve gave him the name Barnabas, which Acts explains as meaning 'son of encouragement' or 'son of consolation,' a designation that fits his later work as a mediator and as a sponsor of new converts. He is not numbered among the Twelve chosen during Jesus' Galilean ministry, but later Christian tradition, especially in the East, often counted him among the Seventy (or Seventy-Two) disciples and treated him as an apostle in the wider New Testament sense of a commissioned missionary.

After Saul of Tarsus converted and sought to join the disciples in Jerusalem, many still feared him because of his former persecution of the church. Barnabas took Saul, brought him to the apostles, and reported Saul's experience on the road to Damascus and his subsequent preaching, a step that was decisive for Paul's acceptance in Jerusalem. When word reached Jerusalem that Gentiles and Hellenized Jews had accepted the faith in large numbers at Antioch in Syria, the Jerusalem church sent Barnabas to investigate. Acts describes him as a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. He rejoiced at what he found, exhorted the believers, and then went to Tarsus to seek Saul. The two taught together in Antioch for about a year, and it was there that the disciples were first called Christians. During a famine in the reign of the emperor Claudius, the Antiochene church sent relief to Judea by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

Barnabas, Saul (Paul), and John Mark—identified in Colossians as a kinsman of Barnabas—were set apart by the church at Antioch for a missionary journey. They sailed to Cyprus, preached in the synagogues, and at Paphos encountered the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus and the magician Elymas (Bar-Jesus). From Cyprus they crossed to Asia Minor and preached at Perga, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, meeting both conversions and hostility, including the stoning of Paul at Lystra. After returning to Antioch they became involved in the dispute over whether Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law. Barnabas and Paul went up to Jerusalem; the assembly commonly called the Council of Jerusalem decided that Gentiles need not be circumcised. According to Galatians, James, Cephas, and John gave Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship for the mission to the Gentiles. A later incident at Antioch, also recorded in Galatians, saw Barnabas carried away when Cephas withdrew from table fellowship with Gentiles. A subsequent disagreement with Paul over taking John Mark on a second journey led the two colleagues to part: Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus, which is his last appearance in the narrative of Acts. Paul's letters still mention him as a known fellow worker who, like Paul, often earned his own living.

The New Testament is silent about Barnabas's death. Later tradition, especially on Cyprus and in the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas (generally dated to the fifth century), held that he continued to preach on the island and was martyred at Salamis, where he was said to have been stoned. A tomb identified as his, said to contain a copy of the Gospel of Matthew, was reported near Salamis in the late fifth century, in the time of the emperor Zeno; the discovery was cited in support of the autocephaly of the Church of Cyprus. An early Christian text known as the Epistle of Barnabas circulated under his name, but modern scholarship generally treats it as a separate work of the late first or early second century rather than as his own composition. Barnabas has been venerated as a saint and apostle from an early date in both Eastern and Western Christianity. His principal feast is 11 June. He is the patron saint of Cyprus and is also associated with Antioch; he is invoked as a peacemaker, in keeping with his New Testament role as a bridge between Paul and the Jerusalem apostles and between Jewish and Gentile missions.