Barnabas (apostle)

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Statue of St Barnabas in the church of the National Palace in Mafra, Portugal
St. Barnabas Monastery Church and Icon Museum in Famagusta, Cyprus
Icon of St. Barnabas (1921), Famagusta Monastery Church Museum

Barnabas (Greek Βαρνάβας), who according to Acts 4,36  EU was actually called Joseph (according to some manuscripts Joses), was an apostle of early Christianity who, however, did not belong to the innermost circle of the "twelve" that Jesus of Nazareth was around during his lifetime had formed. The Acts According to he was from the Jewish Diaspora community in Cyprus and belonged to the priestly Israelite tribe of Levites to. He is one of the founding figures and leaders of the Christian community of Antioch and is considered the teacher ofPaul of Tarsus , who mentions him several times in his letters ( 1. Corinthians , Galatians ). Barnabas went on fundamental mission trips with Paul for the development of the Christian concept of missions and is one of the participants in the Apostolic Council .

According to the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas , Barnabas is said to have died a martyr in Cyprus, where he is considered the national saint. In this tradition, the year 61 is assumed to be the year of his death and the place given is Salamis near Famagusta . According to other legends, he is said to have preached in Rome , served as the first bishop of Milan and baptized Clement of Rome .

Life and testimonies

According to the information in the Acts of the Apostles of Luke , Joseph, called Barnabas, was a member of the early Jerusalem church , which he promoted with the proceeds from the sale of a good ( Acts 4:36 f.). His name Barnabas is interpreted as the "son of consolation", see the origin and meaning of the name . According to Acts 9.27, he made sure that Paul was accepted by the Jerusalem apostles. Historically, however, this is considered extremely controversial.

According to Acts 11: 22-30; 13.1 Barnabas worked missionary especially in Antioch. In the local community of Jewish and Gentile Christians he is active together with Peter and Paul, whom he himself introduces there, and others. In Acts 13 and 14 it is reported that he went on a missionary trip through Cyprus and southern Asia Minor with Paul as a companion . Barnabas was undisputedly one of the leading early Christian missionaries . He was also one of the participants in the apostolic convention (cf. Acts 15: 1-5 and Gal . 2 : 1-10).

The New Testament also reports on differences of opinion between Barnabas and Paul: On the one hand, it was about the possibility of a table fellowship of Jewish and Gentile Christians in Antioch ( Gal 2 : 11-13). On the other hand, there was a dispute about taking John Mark with him on another missionary journey (Acts 15: 36-41).

The " Barnabas Letter" probably did not come from him, since the letter was written with some certainty in the first half of the 2nd century. It contains unusual interpretations of the Old Testament (allegory) and polemics against Judaism. The early Christian author Tertullian attributed the letter to the Hebrews to Barnabas. In the Acts of Barnabas his missionary journeys and his martyrdom in Cyprus are recorded. The work dates from the 6th century. The Gospel of Barnabas , which is preserved in an Italian manuscript from the 16th century, was not written until the 14th-16th centuries according to the Christian view. Century. Another Spanish manuscript, only preserved in fragment, reports that a monk named Fra Marino is said to have secretly stolen the Gospel from the library of Pope Sixtus V. It proclaims Mohammed as the true prophet and Jesus as his forerunner, who did not die on the cross and is not God's son either. Therefore it is used on the Muslim side to reinforce their own religious positions. The Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis (496 AD), a list of permitted and forbidden books, proves that a “Gospel actually existed under the name of Barnabas in the old church. There it is assigned to the non-canonical (apocryphal) scriptures. A report appeared in the Turkish newspaper "Türkiye" on July 25, 1986, according to which an Aramaic manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas was discovered on Mount Mem in Uludere (southern Anatolia). Old church legends tell of the healing of the sick by Barnabas by introducing the Gospel of Matthew to the sick .

The fact that hardly any churches and monasteries were named after Barnabas is due to the fact that in the New Testament he recedes completely into the shadow of Paul. However, there is an order of Barnabites named after a Barnabas church.

St. Barnabas Monastery

Tomb of St. Barnabas in the crypt, an important Greek Orthodox pilgrimage site in the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus

About eight kilometers north of Famagusta and two kilometers west of Salamis is the St. Barnabas monastery and the tomb where the martyr Barnabas is venerated as the Cypriot national saint. The complex includes the monastery church, monastery building with the museum of icons and archeology and the grave church of the saint. The facility is located on the western edge of the Salamis necropolis, between the ancient city of Salamis / Constantia and the archaic city of Enkomi .

The monastery is said to have been built by Archbishop Philotheos in 1756, the current monastery church on top of an earlier building from the 10th century. After the last three monks left in 1976, the monastery church, which was left unchanged, was used as an icon museum and the monastery buildings as an archaeological museum.

The artefacts in the archaeological museum are in particular a very large number of extraordinary ceramics from Enkomi (around 7000 to 1000 BC) and Salamis , unless they have been brought to the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia or the British Museum in London .

Attributes, relics, patronages

Attribute : with Gospel of Matthew, stone
Places with relics : Milan , Prague , Namur , Cologne , Andechs , Cyprus
In the 17th century there were small relics of St. Barnabas in three Cologne churches. None of these relics can still be identified today. They are to be regarded as losses in the time of the Enlightenment or at the latest during the two world wars.
Patron saint of: Milan , Florence , Logroño
patron saint : the cooper / cooper , weaver

Remembrance day and peasant rule

Remembrance day

His Catholic, Protestant and Anglican Memorial Day is June 11th . It is a required day of remembrance in the general Roman calendar or a day of remembrance in the Evangelical calendar of names and in Lutheran Worship or in Common Worship.

Pawn rule

Two the feast appropriate Bauernregeln are:

  • With his sens' the Barnabas, come here and cut the grass.
  • When St. Barnabas brings rain, there will be rich blessings of grapes.

literature

Web links

Commons : Barnabas (Apostle)  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Barnabas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES San Barnaba (Italian); Bernabé Apostol (Spanish)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Son of a Levitical landowner, mentioned several times in the Bible, national saint of Cyprus
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC BC or 1st century
DATE OF DEATH 1st century