Update on Epistle of Barnabas, Barker, and Mormons

[Apologeticsislying]

I left the first 3 pages in if you read my first post you can skip down to "Excursus the First" Enjoy! It is a marvelous topic! I'm sorry all the italics didn't come through the copy process to post it here. Makes me mad. It's way too long to add them all in, again, apologies, but it won't hurt your reading of it.

The Former-Canonical Epistle of Barnabas: Ancient Christian Exegesis, Modern Divergent Interpretations – Just What Did Early Christians Actually Believe as Their World-View?
By Kerry A. Shirts

Preface
You can’t read very far into the independent Methodist biblical scholar Margaret Barker’s materials before you begin running into an utterly fascinating new interpretation into the largely lost and forgotten world-view of early Christians which modern scholars have not yet agreed upon, let alone investigated with any sort of thoroughness which ought to characterize their discipline. Her approach answers a lot of quite tough questions, and provides some of the most fascinating connections with the early Christians, the Gnostic discoveries , the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the First Temple ancient Judaism of the Old Testament. Her ancient Enoch, Melchizedek, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and pseudepigraphic linguistic, historical, and spiritual analysis into the world-view of early Christian belief is eye opening! I will investigate all these interesting lines as I have time, but it is to her ideas of the Epistle of Barnabas, I turn, which used to be in the canon of some early Christian groups before the later councils lost their wisdom and understanding as had their earlier cousins of Second Temple Judaism (according to the author(s) of the Enoch books) and threw it out.

I cannot possibly do anything like an exhaustive analysis of the epistle, nor of the variegated and sometimes contradictory views of many modern biblical scholars concerning its meaning, but there is enough available to justify going into it a bit and discovering just why there is so much difficulty coming to anything like a kind of consensus about what Barnabas was all about and its meaning for early Christians. Is there anything in this nearly forgotten little piece of written faith that can be a valuable in our learning the early Christian world view? Indeed there is, especially concerning issues about Jesus, the Melchizedek King, the Son of God, and Scapegoat, and the deification of human beings in the ancient holy of holies in the First Temple, the world-view of the First Temple which early Christians knew about and believed. There are hints of these themes throughout Barnabas as we shall see. The vocabulary in Barnabas appears to be that of temple theology as Barker calls it in her examination of “temple texts” as she calls them, in Isaiah, the Psalms, Deuteronomy, Malachi, and in the New Testament, and several Early Church Father’s teachings. The entire background world-view of the New Testament Christians and Jesus’ life was the First Temple, according to Barker, which I will examine through the Epistle of Barnabas as she understands it, along with other scholarship discussing divergent views and interpretations.

The Greek manuscript mainly used in this study will be that of Tischendorf’s Sinaitic version, as translated by Samuel Sharpe, and Bart Ehrman’s translation in the Loeb edition, with other translations of various scholars as they have presented them, in order to note differences, similarities and comparisons.(1) The Sinaitic version was in the biblical Codex Sinaiticus, discovered in 1862, published by Tischendorf.(2)

Clement of Alexandria, one of the early Christian Church Fathers, in the Stromata quoted Barnabas as authoritative scripture, his most interesting sentence being “These then in what respects the Lord, continuing in purity, there rejoice along with them, wisdom, (Σοφια) understanding, (Συνεσις) intelligence, (Επιστημη) knowledge (Γνωσις).”(3) These four principle ideas are the world view of the First Temple (Solomon’s) according to Margaret Barker in sources I will cite throughout this research, to be sure. Origen, another early Christian Father “seems to rank it among the Sacred Scriptures (Comm. In Rom. i.24)”(4) And in his Contra Celsus, Origen uses the epistle of Barnabas and other writings of Peter and Paul to refute Celsus’s claim that they were wicked apostles.(5) In the Clementine Recognitions, Clement describes how he met Barnabas and how he confuted the philosophers of his day with his wisdom instead of using philosophic discourse and syllogisms to make his case, he just described his actual experience, which impressed Clement about Barnabas’s character, honesty and knowledge.(6)

The provenance of Barnabas is fairly established based on internal factors of what it says. Of course there is a range of years since exactly pinning down ancient texts is nigh unto impossible to do, however we have a pretty good idea of the time we are looking at with Barnabas because the text does indicate the temple has already been destroyed, (16: 3-4) and the possibility that it would be built back up again (“they who destroyed this temple, shall themselves build it up”)(7), a very real possibility, until Hadrian (117-38 CE) “had a Roman shrine constructed over the temple’s ruins. Most scholars have concluded, on these grounds, that the book was written sometime during the first half of the second century, possibly around 130 CE.”(8) This being said, as L. Michael White has noted, Barnabas is never mentioned as the author of the epistle, nor is he in it at all. It was assigned to him probably because he was Paul’s missionary companion.(9) John Dominic Crossan notes that “New Testament writings are never used in Barnabas, neither explicitly nor tacitly, which would argue for an early date, perhaps even before the end of 1 CE.”(10) Others using other internal data have argued, based on Barnabas 4: 4-5 a composition date around the reign of Nerva (96-98 CE).(11)

One thing is certain, Barnabas as well as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, quoted from Enoch material which is not at Qumran, nor in any of the extant Enoch texts we do possess today.(12) George W. E. Nickelsburg noted that when Barnabas quotes Enoch concerning the destruction of the temple he says λέγει γάρ ή γραϕή – “For scripture says…” (16:5). He loosely quotes 1 Enoch 91:13 again introducing it as scripture: γεγραπται γαρ – “For it is written,” 16:6. And at 4:3 Barnabas quotes a text of uncertain origin, describing the tribulation at the end of time, and says this is “concerning which it is written, as Enoch says,” which “indicates that the author’s community ascribed scriptural authority to the writings of Enoch the prophet.”(13) Not only Enoch and Barnabas, but the Shephard of Hermas was considered scripture early on, and the most popular early Christian writing, having been found with the Epistle of Barnabas attached to Codex Sinaiticus with the pattern that along with Codex Claromontanus, a western biblical manuscript, which inserts between the New Testament book Philemon and Hebrews the texts of the end of the Letter of Barnabas, the Shephard of Hermas, The Acts of Paul, and the Apocalypse of Peter, as we realize there was no set canon or an undivided Christianity in the early centuries.(14) Caroly Osiek makes a stellar point when she notes “If similarities can be detected between Hermas and James, Barnabas, the Didache, Elchasai, and the Ascension of Isaiah, it is difficult to see how it can be considered ‘not in the current’ of Christian tradition. It would seem that our notions of the Christian tradition need to be widened.”(15) Margaret Barker has taken up that challenge and her clarion call of bringing in the new background, which is the old forgotten one, is the ancient Judaic First Temple theology which she has elaborated on in over 14 books so far, which we are investigating in this research, focusing on her views of the Epistle of Barnabas’ teachings.

The Epistle of Barnabas was considered genuine especially among Alexandrian Christians from the time of Clement of Alexandria (approx.. 200 CE). “The first external reference to the Epistle of Barnabas comes from Clement of Alexandria, and so the work was widely known and considered authentic by the end of the second century.”(16) As such, Birger A. Pearson says “it is one of the most important sources we have for early-second-century (or even first century) Christianity in Alexandria.”(17) The LDS scholar John Gee flippantly describes it as “largely a pastiche of scriptural quotations; he simply strings one scripture after another.”(18) He gives the impression that there isn’t much here worth considering, when in fact, there are enormous ramifications on careful analysis. Gee merely skims the surface of Barnabas with no actual work into what Barnabas alludes to in so many of his interesting interpretations of scripture and history, which, to Barnabas was central to his understand of Christ, as we shall see.

Barnabas belongs to a corpus of writings called the apostolic fathers, a 17th century scholarly designation, consisting of several early Christian works such as 2 letters of Clement of Rome, Ignatius’s seven letters, the Didache, the epistle of Barnabas, The Shephard of Hermas, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, a letter of Polycarp, and the Epistle to Diogentus, all supposedly carrying on the apostles work after they were gone, but earlier than the full blown theological systems developed later in the patristic period of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian. Burton Mack has called into question the entire “myth” of the apostolic fathers as a singular collection of documents since these are supposed to support the idea of apostolic succession in a linear fashion without interruption. The myth is that “there was a continuous line of teaching from Jesus, through the apostles, and on to the bishops who were thus able to guarantee the truth of the Gospel and pass it on to their own successors.”(19) We won’t concentrate on this aspect of our problems involving scriptural and historical exegesis so much as the interesting First Temple background Barker has brought forward to our attention, along with the fascinating doctrines which were “purged” by the Deuteronomists, (following Josiah’s lead) according to Barker, from the First Temple, which was the actual mission of Jesus to restore to Israel.(20) “The theme here is Christ restoring the unity which, as we shall see, was represented by the holy of holies, the place of light…”(21) The hints, the ideas, without being fully developed, are in the Epistle of Barnabas, among other writings of the early Christians, which is what caused me to write this research.

Excursus The First
Barnabas quotes Enoch in a few places, and other Old Testament texts, but not as the texts we possess now indicate. He also has some different ways of reading some of the Old Testament passages, and interpreting them as foreshadowings of Jesus, also of which we do not have as our current Old Testaments read either. The Massoretic text of the Hebrew has been corrupted, and we have to reconstruct the meaning with the help of the Septuagint Greek as well as other readings from various apostolic fathers who also appear to have had texts similar to Barnabas, but different than our scriptures which have been handed down to us today. But sometimes both are simply opaque and so we have to do the best we can reconstructing them based on the other texts that do makes sense, or which we can read and grasp what they are trying to tell us. Rather than being a Christian conspiracy of changing everything to match Christian teachings, Barker gives Barnabas the benefit of the doubt that he had scriptures which were different than ours today. “The Letter of Barnabas quoted five other ‘lost’ prophecies, and also regarded 1 Enoch as scripture.”(22) She mentions the dialogue that the early Christian apologist Justin had with Trypho where he accuses the Jews of taking things out of the scriptures because they were useful to Christians for information on Christ.(23) Lets take a look at Justin and this larger issue of tampering with scripture.

Trypho and many Jews have rejected the LXX translation and so Justin accuses the Jews of the “attempt to frame another [version].”(24) The issue of what is scripture as well as what constitutes “correct” or “orthodox” doctrine in Jesus’ day and thereafter for the next few centuries is tricky. Walter Bauer’s in-depth discussion of “orthodoxy vs heresy” is extremely valuable to demonstrate that it wasn’t about having “the truth” and reading the scriptures “correctly” that was at issue in early Christianity. There was no one single correct “canon” of scripture, with the rest of the literally hundreds of other sacred writings being labeled as apostate or merely apocryphal. “What constitutes ‘truth’ in one generation can be out of date in the next.” And he proposed rightly so that “’orthodoxy’ designates the preference of the given majority, while ‘heresy’ is characterized by the fact that only the minority adhere to it. Majority and minority can change places.”(25)

What we are dealing with in earliest Christianity is “… the existence of rival groups at every turn, in virtually every region of Christendom…”(26) And this was true of the many Judaisms, having and hoping for their different Messiahs, with variegated world views from antiquity all the way to Christ’s day and beyond as Jacob Neusner has shown.(27) Gabriele Boccaccini demonstrated that not only did the Qumran Jews split from the Jewish priesthood of the Second Temple, but that there was a “parting of the ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism” as well.(28) Splitting of Jews from Jews, Christians from Jews and Christians from Christians have been the order of the day from the beginning of the history of Israel. James H. Charlesworth noted in his advertisement blurb on the back of Boccaccini’s book Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, “Josephus erroneously divided pre-70 C.E. Judaism into four sects: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots. I am convinced that there were at least a dozen groups within Judaism.” And, the controversial and detailed scholarship of Robert Eisenman’s incredible work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity has shown Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians, and Qumran Essenes, among other groups (not worrying about the many Gnostic groups!) also.(29) The magnificent efforts of E. P. Sanders and others in the 1980’s where various different groups were attempting to give their own group and community identification, and what made them who they are showing the cross-communications/contrasts of pagan groups with Christians and Jews and Egyptians, Epicureans, and Greeks, is not to be ignored.(30) Bart Ehrman demonstrated conclusively that the rival groups constantly practiced forging their own scriptures and changing others’ sacred texts they had and used in order to outdo other groups’ authority, and maintain their own group cohesion.(31) The argument for who has the right scripture, right interpretation, right Christ has not died down even right up to our day.(32)

Which brings us to Justin’s argument against Trypho. We don’t get Trypho’s side of this, only Justin’s and he notes that Trypho will not accept the LXX (the Greek scriptures) because it was in the Greek that “by which this very man who was crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as God, and man, and as being crucified, and as dying.”(33) Now it probably wasn’t the claim that someone was crucified that bothered the Jews. Crucifixion had occurred for quite some time in the Roman empire as that was one method of theirs to deal with insurgents and bandits, and enemies. Some scholars even claimed the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls was not only a divine being (A. Dupont-Summer), but that he had been persecuted and crucified (John Allegro), which was before Justin had even been born.(34) R. de Vaux, another Dead Sea Scroll scholar has, however, said plainly, “not one of the Dead Sea Scrolls makes any illusion, even remotely, to his crucifixion.”(35)

Josephus describes how after Demeter won a major fight against Alexander Janneus where Demeter slew “all of Alexander’s mercenaries,” they gathered again to fight and Demeter was afraid so he flew, which gave Alexander the victory by besieging the city Bethome, and then brought the men to Jerusalem and “did one of the most barbarous actions in the world to them; for as he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes.”(36) According to Charlesworth, it was probably this incident which was referred to in the 4QpNah fragments. 3-4 col I lines 6-7, the reference to the lion of wrath who would “hang men up alive” and the reference to “one hanged alive upon a tree.” He says “this hanging (tlh) probably refers to crucifixion.”(37) Even women were crucified before the time of Jesus, eighty women were “hanged” (Aramaic slb, Hebrew tlh) near Askelon, about the time of Alexander Janneus, by Simon b. Shetah.(38) And the remains of a crucified man just outside Jerusalem have been found where he was crucified just like Jesus (the nail was still in the foot bone) “sometime in the first half of the first century C.E., whose name was Jehohanan…palpable proof of crucifixion in first-century Palestine…”(39)

No what was bothering the Jews, if Justin can be believed, is how the Christians were using the scriptures to justify their views concerning Jesus. Justin shows how the Jews have taken out entire sections of Esdras, (concerning the law of the Passover, it being “Our Savior and our refuge”), and from Jeremiah, a much more fascinating section was removed. Justin quotes Jeremiah “And from the sayings of Jeremiah they have cut out the following: ‘I [was] like a lamb that is brought to the slaughter: they devised a device against me saying, Come, let us lay on wood on His bread, and let us blot him out from the land of the living; and His name shall be no more the remembered.” Justin says it is in some of the scriptures of the synagogues however, and here is Justin’s punch line – “and since from these words [that were removed] it is demonstrated that the Jews deliberated about the Christ Himself, to crucify and put Him to death, He Himself is both declared to be led as a sheep to the slaughter, as was predicted by Isaiah, and is here represented as a harmless lamb; but being in a difficulty about them, they give themselves over to blasphemy. And again, from the sayings of the same Jeremiah these have been cut out: ‘The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own salvation.”(40)

What are we to make of this when we read in our English Bible “But I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me saying, Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.”?(41) Did Justin translate בְּלַחְמֹו עֵץ נַשְחִיתָה “destroy the tree with the fruit thereof” incorrectly? No, he was using the Septuagint Greek translation δευτε και εμβαλωμεν ξυλον εις τον αρτον αυτου “Come let us put wood into his bread…”(42) All this is what the Jews were taking out of scripture. It appears that some Christians were reading a foreshadowing of events in Christ’s life which originally were contextually dealing with threats to Jeremiah. The Jews were attempting to minimize Christian Christological readings by simply getting rid of the offending passages! But, why are the two translations so very different? Margaret Barker has some insight into this as well.

In John 6 we see Jesus giving the people a lesson on the Presence. There is wordplay here between “bread” (lehׅem) which can also mean flesh or fruit. “It could be the flesh of a sacrifice, as in the words of Ben Sira 7.31c which has been read as the flesh, lehׅem, of sacrifices, or it could be the fruit of a tree, as in Jeremiah 11:19; ‘let us destroy the tree with its fruit,” lehׅem. The fruit of the Tree of Life could have been the bread of the tree of life, which is the food Jesus promised to his faithful followers (Rev 2.7).”(43)

Barker describing Justin’s issue with Trypho mentions that “by the mid-second century, the older Greek version of the scriptures were being replaced by new translations, and that parts which the Christians were using as messianic texts had been removed. The Jewish scholar denied this. Justin quoted words deleted from 1 Esdras which cannot be found in any text today, but were known to Lactantius, and words deleted from Jeremiah which, again, cannot be found in any text today but which were quoted by Irenaeus. [“As Jeremiah declares, ‘The Holy Lord remembered His dead Israel, who slept in the land of sepulture; and He descended to them to make known to them His salvation, that they might be saved.”(44)] The word ‘from a tree’ had been deleted from Psalm 96:10, he said, so that it no longer read ‘The LORD reigns from the tree.’”(45) Justin claimed that other and newer translations were being made, which, following Barker, must have been the Theodotian and Aquila versions. She further adds “Significant parts of the LXX which have been declared a true rendering of the Hebrew, had been removed. Scripture was a battle ground, and at least one community was altering Scripture to strengthen its claims.”(46) The ultimate issue became “Christians had to discern between true and false Scripture in Jewish texts.” And “The unacknowledged problem at the heart of Western Christian biblical study is that the Church, and especially the Western Church, has as its scriptures the Jewish canon and text of the Old Testament, when the evidence shows clearly that the earliest Church used very different scriptures.”(47)

When the Enoch texts were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and it was realized that the canonical Jude actually quoted them and used them, it was a shock to what we thought we actually knew about the Bible and the canon. “Biblical theologians and others, will now be forced to reassess our understanding of scripture, inspiration, and canon, since a book in the closed Christian canon quotes as prophecy a passage in a book rejected not only from the Jewish canon but also from the Protestant and Catholic canons, although it is in the canon of Ethiopian Jews (Falasha). Obviously, in the first century there was considerable fluidity regarding the limits of scripture, inspiration, and canon.” (48)

But there are two sides to the coin. We have as firm of evidence that the Christians likewise were changing the scriptures, adding and interpolating, deleting and rearranging scriptures to suit their own agenda. I shall present just a small sample of this much larger problem, which Barker also acknowledges, but I take my cue from James H. Charlesworth.
There are exceedingly many studies of this fascinating phenomenon, and Charlesworth being the outstanding scholar in this field is the perfect choice to showcase the problem from the Christian end of things.

The Christians were not so much interested in changing the Old Testament, nor the Apocrypha, according to Charlesworth, but they made hash in the Pseudepigrapha. Charlesworth ends ultimately in attempting to demonstrate this was their way of developing their “self-identification” apart from others, with their unique and interesting doctrinal stance concerning Jesus. It is to the additions that we find are easiest to locate. One example to give us our bearings in this hunt for additions is in IV Esdras 7.28 which says “For my son the Messiah shall be revealed…”; “but the Latin has been changed by a Christian to ‘For my Son Jesus shall be revealed…’ Similar brief interpolations of one word or a short phrase are abundant [also] in the Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers.”(49) Deliberate changes, even by a mere word, or even a different translation, or association with another word not thought of before, can have both subtle and dramatic effects on doctrinal beliefs or even historical claims as demonstrated extensively by Bart Ehrman, Emanuel Tov, P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., Ronald S. Hendel, James D. G. Dunn, and a host of other scholars.(50)

The Christians were not so free and easy with the actual scriptures as they were with the pseudepigrapha, five of which have extensive alterations which he examines. I will only give a couple samples as that suffices for now to get the gist of the issue. Everyone, Jews and early Christians alike, were changing things up, rearranging, editing, re-writing and re-translating texts in vying for their “self-identification.” That leaves us today in quite the quandary of figuring out who is what, what is what, why this happened, if that happened, etc. It is not an easy task, and many errors have been made, and we are sure many more will be, but the effort to try and understand is our lot, is our task, and is our enjoyment. David E. Aune has demonstrated this same theme of the use of ancient traditions, legends and lore, with the writing of the Gospels themselves in order to “remold Jesus traditions in line with Messianic motifs…”(51)

The additions he emphasized are those which were made “most likely date from the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 to approximately the end of the second century AD,”(52) which is our era for the Epistle of Barnabas, who was already aware of several differences, and perhaps used scripture we no longer have for our examination so we have to be cautious about accusing him of subterfuge where none may be intended nor had.(53)

The first example is in the Synagogal Prayers. “…it is relatively easy to discern and remove the fabricated veneer of the Christian interpolations. The passage about which it is most difficult to decide whether it is originally Jewish or a Christian addition is prayer 10.9f., 14; the easiest interpolations to identify are the Christian additions ‘through Christ’ (δια Χριστου) that abound throughout, cf. 3.27 ‘through Jesus Christ’, 6.13 ‘through Christ in the Spirit’, 13.1 ‘through your only Son Jesus Christ, our Lord…’ The Christian scribe has confessed his identity by clarifying the means by which one should… interpret the previous actions of God (especially in creation)…”(54)

“The emphasis upon the fulfillment of scripture is part of one of the major emphases brought forth by the Christian scribes who altered many of the Jewish apocrypha; they wished to clarify what was to them not only the proper but the only means of interpreting the ‘old’ scriptures. They emphasized on the one hand that the Christ event was not something new but that Christ had been operating throughout holy history (Heilsgeschichte) from the beginning and that the great visionaries of the past had actually seen him. This emphasis is boldly presented in an interpretation, χαι εμϕανισας αυτω τον Χριστον σου, at 12.62:
You are the one who delivered Abraham from ancestral godlessness, and appointed him heir of the world, and showed (εμϕανισας ) to him your Christ (Χριστον σου).(55)

There were two polemical statements in the Synagogal Prayers (as there were in the Dead Sea Scrolls Pesher technique, which is quite similar to this Christian method here at work) that we have evidence for. In 13.8b, the nation Israel is redefined so that it is delimited to ‘your people who have believed in Christ (του εις Χριστον πιστευσαντος λαου σου)’. Similarly, in 16.1, the prayer for the dead is not for all who have died, nor for all believers who have died, but only on behalf of ‘those our brothers who are at rest in Christ (εν Χριστω)…’. This self-definition probably became fully polemical as the Jewish-Christian community that continued to recite these prayers disassociated itself from the vast majority of Jews. Note the interpolation of χαι Χριστοχτονων αιρεσεως εξειλω in 7.14
For you have rescued (us) from the ungodliness of many gods, and you have delivered (us) from the heresy of the Christ-murderers; You have set (us) free from the ignorance that has gone astray.

They are distinguishing themselves from others in their attempted self-definition…”it is most likely a very Jewish type of Christianity in distinction and separation from burgeoning rabbinic Judaism.”(56)

And another interpolation will direct us to the Epistle of Barnabas in an interesting way concerning the Sabbath, one of the subject Barnabas was interested in. “The scribe and his community’s search for self-definition and identity is reflected in an interpolation of 5.4-8; the added line emphasize that Wisdom (η σοϕια) must be defined as exclusively Christian and that the only way to interpret Prov. 8:22 is in terms of the identity between Christ and Wisdom. The interpolation recites the appearance, baptism, and suffering of Wisdom, and in particular stresses his(!) resurrection on the Lord’s day (διο και την αναστασιμον εορτην πανηγυριζοντες τη χυριαχη) and how through him the Lord (God) brought the Gentiles to himself ‘for a treasured people, the true Israel.’ (δι αυτου γαρ προσηγαγου τα εθνη εαυτω εις λαον περιουσιον τον αληθινον ΄Ισραηλ). Following this lengthy interpolation, the Jewish stratum recites the importance of the Exodus and the Sinai event and concludes with the importance of Sabbath as a day of rest (σαββατον λαρ εστιν αταπαυσις δημιουργιας). The remainder of the prayer is a Christian interpolation which – picking up the earlier added stress on resurrection of Wisdom on the Lord’s day – emphasizes in a polemical way, that the Sabbath must be redefined and reinterpreted by the following day, ‘the Lord’s day,’ – which ‘surpasses’ it (ων απαντον η χυριαχη προυχουσα). This polemically inspired self-definition can be seen by simply lifting up for view verses 19 and 20.
‘For (the) Sabbath is a rest from creation, a completion of the cosmos, a seeking out of laws, thankful praise to God on behalf of those things which he has freely given to men. All of which the Lord’s day surpasses, showing forth: the Mediator Himself, the Supervisor, the Law-giver, the cause of resurrection, the first-born of all creation, the divine Word…

As for the Qumran Essenes, so for this early Christian (and probably his community) the search for identity seems to have been primarily through an emphasis upon an exclusive means of reinterpreting ancient traditions. The sacred day is changed from Saturday, the Sabbath, to Sunday, the day of the Lord’s resurrection for the Christians (cf. Rev 1.10).”(57)
Barnabas’s view of the Sabbath are quite interesting, though coinciding with the Synagogal Prayers, in some respects, there are some significant differences from them, and the scriptures. He says right at the outset of his discourse that the Sabbath is written about in the Ten Commandments given to Moses “face to face on Mount Sinai.” (εν οις ελαλησεν εν τω ορει Σινα προς Μοσην κατα προσωπον).(58) This is quite important on one of the main themes Barker has elaborated on for decades, namely the earlier older Temple Tradition always had “seeing the Lord” as one of its basic tenants, if not its core concept, while the Deuteronomist reformers after Josiah’s purge of Temple theology, took this out. “The Deuteronomists – so called because they promoted the viewpoint of Deuteronomy – were devotees of the Moses strand of Israel’s religion and hostile to both temple and the monarchy.”(59) They had emphasized that when the commandments were given on Sinai, “The Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of the words, but saw no form (temunah); there was only a voice.” (Deut. 4:12)… the Deuteronomists and their heirs warned against the secret things, denied that atonement was possible, and denied that the ‘form’ of the Lord was ever seen, yet these are fundamental of the older temple cult.”(60) She noted elsewhere “The Deuteronomy texts… emphasizes that there was only a voice at Sinai. The presence of the Lord was not a vision to inspire them, but a voice giving commandments that had to be obeyed.”(61) But “Seeking the Lord had been at the heart of temple worship” in the monarchy days of Israel. And it is what the Gospel of John shows Jesus was doing, restoring the temple to Israel, the First Temple.(62) The name Israel “meant the one who sees God ‘seeing the Divine Light, identical with knowledge which opens wide the soul’s eye…”(63) Barnabas, as we see, is firmly in the First Temple traditions, not the later additional “apostate” views of the Deuteronomists, as the Books of Enoch called the Second Temple generation returning from Exile to rebuild the temple after Babylonian captivity. Much more on this later.
We shall deal with this “seeing the Lord” in greater detail later also, for now back to the main concept in this excursus, the different scriptures the ancients had than we do. We have seen then, and will see so very much more later, that the Jews were manipulating the scriptures which Christians used to verify and build upon their theological understandings of Jesus Christ, as they viewed him and his life’s mission. We have also seen that the early Christians, likewise, were not above returning tit for tat, and changing things in sacred writings which the Jews had in order to justify their beliefs. We today are up against a two sided sword when it comes to this topic, which means we must tread carefully, fully acknowledge when the evidence does not fit and when we speculate, as well as verify when a particular view, whether Jewish or Christian is correct, so far as we can grasp. It calls for vigilance. One more example will suffice to see how issues and arguments were manipulated as written materials were also manipulated.

In the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs are numerous Christian changes, mostly additions and interpolations in order to add or change the original meanings. “The Testament of Simeon 6.7 reads as follows: ‘Then I shall arise in gladness and I shall bless the Most High for his marvels, because God has taken a body, eats with human beings and saves human beings (οτι θεος σωμα λαβον, και συνεσθιων ανθρωποις εσωσεν ανθρωπους). The purpose of these interpolations is to specify how the future revelation has been fulfilled and to delimit and define God’s ‘marvels’ so that they point specifically to the Christian claim that Jesus was God incarnate.”(64)



Endnotes

1. Samuel Sharpe, ΒΑΡΝΑΒΑ ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗ, The Epistle of Barnabas from the Sinaitic Manuscript of the Bible, Williams and Norgate, 1880. This translation includes the complete Greek manuscript which is quite helpful. Hereafter cited as Sharpe Barnabas; Bart Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, II, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 2003. This also has the Greek text.
2. Bart Ehrman, Apostolic Fathers, II, p. 9-10. Hereafter cited as Ehrman AF II.
3. Clement of Alexandria, “The Stromata or Miscellanies,” 2:6, in The Rev. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, editors, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, The Writings of the Fathers down to A. D. 325, Vol. 2, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. reprinted, Nov. 1979. Hereafter cited as ANF. The General Index, Vol. 9 to the ANF demonstrates Clement quoting Barnabas several times on numerous subjects in Vol. 1, pp. 137-149, (the epistle itself), Vol. 2, pp. 354, 355, 362, 366, 372, 459, and in vol. 4, p. 97, 424. Cf. Harry Y. Gamble, “The New Testament Canon: Recent Research and the Status Quaestionis,” in The Canon Debate, Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders, editors, Hendrickson Publishers, 2002: “Clement of Alexandria considered it too, as an apostolic letter (Strom. 2.6, 7.5)” p. 289; Bart Ehrman, Lost Scriptures, Books that Did Not Make it into the New Testament, Oxford University Press, 2003: “The Letter of Barnabas was one of the most important writings for proto-orthodox Christianity. Some churches regarded it as part of the New Testament canon; it is included among the books of the New Testament in the fourth-century Greek manuscript, codex Sinaiticus.” P. 219.
4. Sharpe Barnabas, p. vii. Also Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament, Fifty Four Formative Texts, Signature Books, 2006: 1108 – “Codex Claromontanus preserves an Egyptian canon list from around 300 with Barnabas between Jude and the Revelation…”
5. “Origen Against Celsus,” Book I. LXIII, (p. 424) in ANF, Vol. 4.
6. “Clementine Recognitions,” ANF, vol. 8: 1.7. (pp. 78ff).
7. Sharpe, Barnabas, p. 50).
8. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures, p. 219.
9. L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004: 326.
10. John Dominic Crossan, The Cross that Spoke, The Origins of the Passion Narrative, Harper & Row, 1988: 121. LDS scholar John Gee says otherwise, noting Barnabas quotes many Old Testament books and prophets, to be sure, but also Matthew and Romans, although the “citations of these passages differ from the later standard text.” “The Corruption of Scripture in Early Christianity,” in Early Christians in Disarray, Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy, FARMS, 2005: 191. We shall see that Barnabas echoes many New Testament themes, even though it doesn’t directly quote any New Testament Gospel.
11. Crossan, Cross that Spoke, p. 121. Also Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, 1998: 569. Richard Carrier largely agrees to the date 130 CE, and says “it surely dates to the period 130-132 CE.” In On the Historicity of Jesus, Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014: 315 n. 44.
12. Margaret Barker, The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005: 9-10. See James VanderKam, Enoch, A Man For All Generations, University of South Carolina Press, 1995: 174; R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, Makor Publishing, 1912: lxxxi, 199 n.56.
13. George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible, Fortress Press, 2001: 87.
14. Carolyn Osiek, The Shephard of Hermas, Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible, Fortress Press, 1999: 5-6.
15. Osiek, Shephard of Hermas, p. 38.
16. White, From Jesus to Christianity, p. 327.
17. Birger A. Pearson, Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt, T & T Clark, 2004: 50.
18. John Gee, “Corruption of Scripture,” p. 191.
19. Burton Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament?, The Making of the Christian Myth, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995: 243.
20. Margaret Barker, On Earth as it is in Heaven, Temple Symbolism in the New Testament, T & T Clark, 1995: 62-71; Barker, The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God, SPCK, 2007: 1-3; Barker, Temple Mysticism, An Introduction, SPCK, 2011: 1-13; Barker, Temple Theology, An Introduction, SPCK, 2004: 1-11, among other of her works which we will make use of throughout this paper.
21. Margaret Barker, King of the Jews, Temple Theology in John’s Gospel, SPCK, 2014: 7.
22. Margaret Barker, Christmas, The Original Story, SPCK, 2008: 19.
23. Margaret Barker, Christmas, The Original Story, p. 19.
24. Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho,” ANF, vol. 1: 71.
25. Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, edited by Robert Kraft and Gerhard Krodel, translated by Georg Strecker, 2nd edition, Fortress Press, 1971: xxii. Fascinating discussion of this with Marcion’s canon verses all others is in Jason D. BeDuhn, The First New Testament, Marcion’s Scriptural Canon, Polebridge Press, 2013. See also Joseph B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, A Defining Struggle, University Couth Carolina Press, 2006; James E. Brenneman, Canons in Coflict, Negotiating Texts in True and False Prophecy, Oxford University Press, 1997; Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, Their History and Development, SCM Press, 1990; Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders, editors, The Canon Debate, Hendrickson Publishers, 2002; Craig A. Evans, Non-Canonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation, Hendrickson Publishers, 1992; David R. Cartlidge, David L. Dungan, editors, Documents for the Study of the Gospels, 2nd revised and enlarged, Fortress Press, 1992; Willis Barnstone, The Other Bible, Ancient Esoteric Texts, HarperSanFrancisco, 1984; Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer, editors, The Gnostic Bible, New Seeds, 2006; John Dominic Crossan, The Cross that Spoke, The Origins of the Passion Narrative, Harper & Row, 1988.
26. Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, Oxford University Press, 1st paperback, 1996: 9. Cf. Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan, Vintage Books, 1995: chapter VI.
27. Jacob Neusner, William S. Green, Ernest Frerichs, Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1993: Preface, indicating numerous Judaisms as well as Christianities, it is no longer possible to speak of any singular overall group anymore than it is possible to indicate there was ever only one Messiah who was understood to have existed. Cf. Frank R. Zindler, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew, American Atheist Press, 2003, for interesting discussion of the different Jesus’s in early Christianity also.
28. Gabriele Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism, William B. Eerdmans, 1998.
29. Robert Eisenman, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians, Element Books, 1996: chapter 1. Cf. Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities, The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford University Press, 2003, discussing Ebionites, Marcionites, early Christian Gnostic groups, etc. See James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism, New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries, Doubleday, Anchor Bible Series, 1988: 5 – “The Judaism of Jesus’ day was richer and more variegated than we had supposed.”
30. E. P. Sanders, Ben F. Meyer, A. I. Baumgarten, Alan Mendelson, editors, Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 3 vols., Fortress Press, 1981-1982.
31. Bart Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why the Bible Authors are Not Who We Think They Are, HarperOne, 2011.
32. Olav Hammer, editor, Alternative Christs, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
33. Justin “Dialogue with Trypho, ANF, 1:71, (p. 234).
34. As found in James H. Charlesworth, editor, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Doubleday, Anchor Bible Series, 1992: Joe Zias and James H. Charlesworth, “Crucifixion: Archaeology, Jesus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” p. 274.
35. Charlesworth, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 277.
36. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 8:14. (Whiston translation)
37. Charlesworth, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 277-278.
38. Charlesworth, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 278.
39. Charlesworth, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 284-285.
40. Justin “Dialogue with Trypho, ANF, 1:71, (p. 234-235).
41. The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament, Four volumes in one, edited by John R. Kohlenberger, III, Regency Reference Library, 1987, Jeremiah 11:19, Volume Four, Isaiah – Malachi, (p. 166). See also John R. Kohlenberger, The NIV Triglot Old Testament, Zondervan Publishing House, 1981: Jeremiah 11:19 where he gives the Massoretic Text translation – “Let us destroy the tree and its fruit…”
42. Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English, Hendrickson Publishing, 5th printing, 1995: (Jeremiah 11:19) p. 917. The Hebrew apparatus of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, by Professor Dr. Hans Peter Ruger, A. Alt, O Eissfeldt, P. Kahle, R Kittel, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, also has בְּלַחְמֹו עֵץ נַשְחִיתָה
43. Margaret Barker, King of the Jews, Temple Theology in John’s Gospel, SPCK, 2014: 248. “Some of the oldest material in 1 Enoch is a prophecy from the archangel Raguel who showed Enoch the fragrant tree that would be transplanted back to the temple after the judgement, to feed the righteous and holy ones, the chosen. (1 Enoch 24: 4-5) The Book of Revelation says that the tree of life was seen again in the Temple, and Jesus promised that it would provide food for his faithful followers.” (p. 249).
44. Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” ANF, vol. 1, Book 4:22, (p. 493-494).
45. Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest, The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy, T & T Clark, 2003: 295.
46. Barker, The Great High Priest, p. 296.
47. Barker, The Great High Priest, p. 297-298.
48. James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism, New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries, Doubleday, Anchor Bible Series, 1988: 45. In this light, it is fascinating to see that Jude actually changed Enoch’s prophecy in order to fit it to Christ! See James H. Charlesworth, “From Messianology to Christology, Problems and Prospects,” in James H. Charlesworth, editor, The Messiah, Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, (The First Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins), Fortress Press, 1992: 8 – “The author of Jude could not simply shift from God to Jesus a prediction about the accomplishments of the coming one in the end time (eschaton), as described in the Books of Enoch (1 Enoch 1:9) He had to change the prophecy in order to have Jesus fulfill the prediction.”
49. James H. Charlesworth, “The Christian Additions to the Apocryphal Writings,” in E. P. Sanders, A. I. Baumgarten, and Alan Mendelson, editors, Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, Aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period, (3 vols), Fortress Press, 1981: 2:27-28. Hereafter cited as “Christian Additions.”
50. Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Oxford University Press, 1993; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Fortress Press, 1992; P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., Textual Criticism, Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible, Fortress Press, 1986; Ronald S. Hendel, “When the Sons of God Cavorted with the Daughters of Men,” in Herschel Shanks, editor, Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, Random House, 1992; Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord, The Lady of the Temple, Vol. 1, Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2012; Margaret Barker, Temple Themes in Christian Worship, T & T Clark, 2007; Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, Mohr Siebeck, 2005; Bleddyn J. Roberts, “The Old Testament: Manuscripts, Text and Versions,” in John Maier, Vincent Tollers, editors, The Bible in its Literary Milieu, William B. Eerdmans, 1979; Al Wolters, “Sopiyya (Prov. 31:27) as Hymnic Participle and Play on Sophia,” in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 104, No. 4 (December) 1985: 577-587; Mark H. Gaffney, Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, The Initiatory Teachings of the Last Supper, Inner Traditions, 2004; Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, Why We May Have Reason For Doubt, Sheffield Press, 2014; Dennis R. MacDonald, Two Shipwrecked Gospels, The Logoi of Jesus and Papias’s Exposition of Logia About the Lord, Society of Biblical Literature, 2012; J. K. Elliott, “Κηφας: Σιμων Πετρος: ό Πετρος: An Examination of New Testament Usage,” in Novum Testamentum, Vol. XIV, Fasc. 4 (October) 1972: 241-256; Dr. Robert W. Wall, “The Finger of God: Deuteronomy 9.10 and Luke 11.20,” in New Testament Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (January) 1987: 144-150; James D. G. Dunn, “Spirit-and-Fire Baptism,” in Novum Testamentum, Vol. XIV, Fasc. 2, (April) 1972: 81-92; J. M. Wedderburn, “Philo’s ‘Heavenly Man,’” in Novum Testamentum, Vol XV, Fasc. 4, (October) 1973: 301-326; Stephen Gero, “The Spirit as a Dove at the Baptism of Jesus,” in Novum Testamentum, Vol. XVIII, Fasc 1 (January) 1976: 17-35; Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism, E. J. Brill, 2002; Fred L. Horton, The Melchizedek Tradition, A Critical Examination of the Sources to the Fifth Century A.D. and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Cambridge University Press, 1976; Charles A. Gieschen, Angelmorphic Christology, Antecedents and Early Evidence, E. J. Brill, 1998; Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series, 1981; G. Levi Della Vida, “El ‘Elyon in Genesis 14:18-20,” in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. LXIII, 1984: 1-9; M. Delcor, “Melchizedek From Genesis to the Qumran Texts and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in Journal for the Study of Judaism, Vol. 1-3, (1972-1974): 115-135; Margaret Barker, The Great Angel, SPCK, 1992; Andrei Orlov, “Melchizedek Legend of 2 (Slavonic) Enoch,” in Journal for the Study of Judaism, XXXI, (2000): 23-38; Michael L. Barre, “Textual and Rhetorical-Critical Observations on the Last Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13-53:12),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 62, 2000:1-27; J. C. O’Neill, “The Man From Heaven: SibOr 5.256-259,” in Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 9 (1991): 87-102; Stephan Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov, editors, Theosis, Deification in Christian Theology, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, Pickwick Publications, 2006; Cornelis Van Dam, The Urim and Thummim, A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel, Eisenbrauns, 1997. Every single one of these studies, and hundreds, even thousands more, discuss and show the vital importance of just one different word change in myriads of biblical subjects from antiquity to today. Sometimes several different interpretations and words can also make a difference in meaning. I’ve been reading in this kind of literature for years, and it is utterly impossible to exhaust it.
51. David E. Aune, “Christian Prophecy and the Messianic Status of Jesus,” in James H. Charlesworth, editor, The Messiah, p. 414.
52. Charlesworth, “Christian Additions,” p. 30.
53. Samuel Sharpe [see note 1] in his analysis of Barnabas constantly accused Barnabas of “absurd and trifling interpretations of scriptures,” (p.vii), “many silly vaunts of superior knowledge,” (p. viii), “show his cleverness in handling scripture,” (p. ix), “The writer’s fondness for a strained interpretation of Scripture,” (p. xi), “more fanciful is finding the Greek name of Jesus…” (p. xi), “the forced allegories with which he ventures to explain the Bible,” (p. xii… “forced?!”), “boast of superior knowledge, inherited from Gnosticism,” (p. xxii), “His epistle shows few signs of original thought, [was it supposed to?] except in his foolish conceits and far-fetched interpretations of passages in the Hebrew scriptures,” (p. xxv), “though we cannot overlook the faults of this Epistles arising from the author’s conceit of his superior knowledge,” (p. xxvii). We can certainly forgive Sharpe for his judgement as he had no access to the incredible gnostic finds and discoveries (in the 1880’s) which we possess today giving us far greater context than Sharpe ever had. There is nothing conceited in the Epistle of Barnabas at all, and it’s an inestimable important document for Alexandrian Christianity in the first few centuries of the era after Christ.
54. Charlesworth, “Christian Additions,” p. 31.
55. Charlesworth, “Christian Additions,” p. 32-33.
56. Charlesworth, “Christian Additions,” p. 33.
57. Charlesworth, “Christian Additions,” p. 33-34.
58. Samuel Sharpe, Barnabas, p. 49.
59. Barker, Temple Theology, p. 5.
60. Barker, Temple Mysticism, p. 54-55.
61. Barker, On Earth as it is in Heaven, Temple Symbolism in the New Testament, T & T Clark, 1995: 4.
62. Barker, King of the Jews, Temple Theology in John’s Gospel, SPCK, 2014: 521.
63. Margaret Barker, The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God, SPCK, 2007: 7.
64. Charlesworth, “Christian Additions,” p. 37.

[Hagoth]

Really interesting research, Kerry.

Very interesting that the early Christians were accusing the Jews of editing precious truths about their religion out of scripture, just as the Mormon church claims early Christians were doing to distort the truth from the iteration revealed by Joseph Smith.

I am fascinated with the notion of rival groups of Jews and Christians, particularly of Christians, because this is a narrative that we hear very little about today. In fact, the primary message of modern Christian churches is that there was a single, clear message, and that (name the church) is the modern preservation of that message. But the examples you give suggest that the Christians themselves were just as guilty of changing and reinterpreting earlier scripture to fit their needs. As you pointed out: "Bart Ehrman demonstrated conclusively that the rival groups constantly practiced forging their own scriptures and changing others’ sacred texts they had and used in order to outdo other groups’ authority, and maintain their own group cohesion. The argument for who has the right scripture, right interpretation, right Christ has not died down even right up to our day."

Going back the other direction there are also hints that the Jews were borrowing from earlier "scriptures," like Babylonian creation myths and modifying them to fit their needs. I believe I have used this phrase before, but again, it's turtles all the way down.

[Apologeticsislying]

Thank you for the feedbacks, they truly help. I have discovered something which I think is sensational about Barnabas that, so far as I know, (very little , but oh well) no other scholar has elaborated on so I suspect I might be able to make my little contribution to early Christian studies in the world.

Stay tuned, more hopefully coming out either tonight or tomorrow night. It takes time to analyze the Greek ya know...... ah what fun to delve into it all again however. And more enlightening than worrying about whether something confirms Mormonism or not. NO, I can now go all out with ALL the information, not just slickly gather and analyze only that which confirms Joseph Smith or Mormonism or some such. I have no other agenda than to explore and learn, and oh what a difference this is making! Oh wait..... I lied. I do sort of have an agenda. I find Margaret Barker's ideas of Barnabas intriguing so I am seeing how well they hold up. I mean, if that's an agenda that is. Oh there is a fabulous discussion between Crossan and Koester that I can't hardly wait to elaborate on later in the paper (book?). For now there is plenty to see in the Greek. When I get to Isaiah's suffering servant OH MY GOSH........ There are boatloads of ideas with that one man!

[Random]

And more enlightening than worrying about whether something confirms Mormonism or not.

I'm sure that is very freeing. A search for knowledge should never be tied to confirming preset beliefs imo.