Gospel of Barnabas

The opening of the Gospel of Barnabas from a 16th-century Italian manuscript with Arabic-language marginalia The Gospel of Barnabas is a non-canonical, pseudepigraphical gospel, written during the Late Middle Ages and attributed to the early Christian disciple Barnabas, who (in this work) is one of the apostles of Jesus. It is about the same length as the four canonical gospels combined and largely harmonizes stories in the canonical gospels with Islamic elements such as the denial of Jesus' crucifixion. The gospel presents a detailed account of the life of Jesus. It begins with the nativity of Jesus, which includes the annunciation by the archangel Gabriel to Mary which precedes Jesus' birth. The gospel follows his ministry, ending with the message of Jesus to spread his teachings around the world. Judas Iscariot replaced Jesus at the crucifixion.

The gospel survives in three manuscripts (Aramaic, Italian and Spanish), each dated to the Middle Ages. It is separate from the Epistle of Barnabas and the Acts of Barnabas. The earliest known mention of the Gospel of Barnabas has been discovered in a 1634 manuscript by a Morisco which was found in Madrid, and the earliest published reference to it was in the 1715 book Menagiana by the French poet Bernard de la Monnoye.