Barnabas

(son of consolation) (Acts 4:36) — a Levite, a native of Cyprus, an apostolic man, companion of the Apostle Paul, by tradition one of the Seventy Apostles. He was originally called Joses; but since he had a remarkable power of speech and persuasion, and at the same time brought comfort to the unfortunate, he was surnamed Barnabas, which in the Syriac tongue means “son of consolation.” St. Luke the Apostle and Evangelist calls him “a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith” (Acts 11:24).

Barnabas presented St. Paul to the apostles and told them of his miraculous conversion. Trust in him on the part of the leading Christians was so great that he was specially sent to Antioch, so that he might bring reliable news of the successes of the Gospel in that famous city, where the disciples of Christ were first named Christians. Further, we see that he traveled with Paul to many cities, and on one occasion the pagans took him for Jupiter in human form. Truly St. Barnabas the Apostle was one of those great men who sacrificed all their possessions and all their spiritual strength for the success and spread of the Gospel.

He was a faithful and pious apostle, a renowned confessor, an unfailing companion of St. Paul the Apostle (Acts 9, 13, 14, 15) and shared, equally with the other apostles, the labors and sufferings that were inevitably bound up with the early spread of Christianity. Tradition says that the Apostle Barnabas preached the Gospel in Alexandria, where, as is known, his kinsman Mark also labored, and that he died a martyr’s death (was stoned to death) at the hands of unbelieving Jews in his homeland, in the city of Salamis, on the island of Cyprus.

His death is placed in the year 76 A.D., and, as tradition relates, the relics of St. Barnabas the Apostle were discovered in the reign of Zeno (in 478), together with the Gospel of St. Matthew upon his breast. Under the name of Barnabas there is known a certain epistle, written, in the opinion of some, to believing Jews, and in the opinion of others, to Christians from among the pagans. In the opinion of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome, it is a genuine work of Barnabas, though it is not counted among the canonical books.

Its appearance is dated to the 70th year A.D. In the Sinaitic Codex of Tischendorf it stands at the end of the New Testament books, together with the book “The Shepherd” (of Hermas). The memory of St. Barnabas the Apostle is celebrated by the Church on January 4 and June 11.