First, thanks for the praise on Thomas.

I actually had to do some digging on the Gospel of Barnabas.  There’s not all that much info on it available, mostly because—even by the usual standards of apocryphal scripture—G’Barn is a blatantly bad forgery that was almost instantly derided as both heretical and half-assed.  If you want a serviceable [if understandably superficial] intro to the subject, try the Wikipedia entry for it.

Of course, I’d be happy to write one up for you, which will also be serviceable and superficial, but a whole lot more sarcastic...

The Gospel of Barnabas

First, if you would actually like to read the Gospel of Barnabas, here is a translation of it.

It’s no secret that in the first few centuries there was a flood of “biblical” literature churned out and ascribed/accredited to various Apostolic figures, almost all of it being fake.  Personally, I’m of the opinion that most things were held as authoritative not because they were authentic, but because some “Church Father” agreed with it.  After all, there is smoking gun evidence that even if something was authentic, they would denounce it if they didn’t agree with it.  However, with the Gospel of Barnabas, it’s a fairly safe bet that this isn’t the case: G’Barn is both glaringly fake and disagreeable.

Actually, I should qualify that: the version in existence now is blatantly fake.  In all likelihood, there were two Gospel of Barnabases, written over  1,000 years apart, and we only have copies of the second one.  Let’s backtrack a second to explain.

Like I said, in the first few centuries a slew of Gospels, Apocalypses, and Epistles appeared, all of them ascribed to some figure in the “authentic” narrative.  All the Apostles have one (at least!) accredited to them, so various heretics who joined late in the game had to start scrounging around for some of the more obscure figures to which to attribute their scribblings.  Barnabas is actually a good choice for this.  His real name was Joseph [“Barnabas” is a title, meaning “Son of Encouragement”} and was Mark’s cousin [Colossians 4:10].  He was Paul’s traveling companion, and is even referred to as an Apostle [Acts 14:14] so his influence was pretty big—at least until he and Paul parted ways over an argument (Acts 15:36-40).  An Epistle of Barnabas had been floating around for centuries, and was even deemed to have been authentic and part of the Canon well into the 5^th Century, until evidence became overwhelming that it was spurious.

Not surprisingly, there was also a Gospel of Barnabas floating around at the same time.  We only know it existed—not what it actually said—because it is indexed on some lists of material the emerging Catholic Church considered to be heretical.  The earliest reference I could find for it was on the 6^th-Century Decretum Gelasianum [technically, ‘Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis’, but that’s a mouthful].  This is a catalogue of Gospels and Epistles the author considered to be acceptable to be read to the masses, as well as those which he didn’t approve of.  In the latter case, there is a “Gospel under the name Barnabas.”  Why the compiler of this list didn’t approve of it is unknown.

Interesting side-note: in the 7^th Century, another such “good and bad” list [the so-called “List of the 60”] not only has the “Gospel According to Barnabas” on its index of disapproved literature, but the Revelation of John is also frowned upon.

So, by the end of the 6^th Century, a Gospel of Barnabas was in existence, and apparently had enough circulation that someone thought it important to reference it on a list of heterodox material.  As said, we do not know anything about it why it was disapproved, just that it was.

Now, jump forward 1,000 years to Spain, where seemingly out of the blue another Gospel of Barnabas appears and begins finding some small circulation.  It’s pretty safe to say that this G’Barn isn’t the one from the earlier lists because of some of the content in it that time-stamps it to having been written after June 8^th, 632 [the date Mohammed died.]

I cite the last because, in this Gospel of Barnabas, Mohammed is mentioned by name.  Indeed, in it Jesus denies he himself is the Messiah, and when asked “How shall the Messiah be called?” Jesus answers “Mohammed is his blessed name.”

 Obviously, the Gospel of Barnabas is a harmonization of Christianity and Islam, and even contains the Shahadah, the Muslim profession of faith: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.”  Jesus is portrayed as being a Prophet, but not actually the Son of God.  This is straight out of the Quar’an, as is the Gospel of Barnabas’ assertion that Jesus was not crucified [per G’Barn, Judas Iscariot was mistakenly nailed up there instead.]

Since Spain had long been a hotbed of Islamic activity—the Moors had conquered it and were not expelled until 1614—it is not surprising that something like the Gospel of Barnabas would originate there.  It strikes me as an attempt to evangelize Islam to the remaining Christians in Spain.

A Hell of a Sermon

by saint

Maybe a month or so ago, I had some neighbors who used to run a poker pit at their place.  Almost every night, they’d be up until dawn playing cards, and every half hour would take a smoke break out on their patio to bitch about the last series of hands.  Lucky me, I was within earshot of this, and since there is a known proportion between alcohol consumption and vocal volume, I got to overhear them a lot more than I wanted to.

One night, one of them was leaving, and he and his friend had this exciting exchange:

Nitwit #1: “Where’re you going?”

Nitwit #2: “Straight to Hell if I don’t change my ways.”

Nitwit #1: “Well, don’t change your ways, and I’ll see you there.”

That stunned me on several levels, enough that I thought it worth mentioning here.

The whole point of Hell is that you are stuck in a place where you are not having fun.  Ever go to a party that sucks?  You don’t know anyone there—and after a couple of conversations you realize you don’t want to know any of them; the music’s terrible; the keg’s flat; there are no snacks except stale Cool Ranch Doritos; and your friend that took you to this place ended up getting lucky and going home with someone—leaving you stuck there.  Got the idea?

Hell will make you wish you were at that party.

Admittedly, I have mixed feelings over what Hell is.  Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote a play called Huis Clos (“Closed Door”; sometimes it is called “No Exit” or “Dead End”) about three people in Hell.  He portrays Hell as psychological.  For example, one of the characters is intensely narcissistic, and the place they are in has no mirrors.  I like the idea of a fungible, customizable Hell, which certainly makes more sense—and would be more effective—than just a generic torture chamber with fire, brimstone, and a guy with a pointy tail poking you with a pitchfork.

That said, there are too many flaws in the concept of Hell, especially in terms of what gets you there.

It’s easy enough to dismiss Hell as a man-made concept created as a control mechanism: “do what we say, or when you die you go to this place.”  That’s obviously flawed, especially if you tack on the extension that it is ultimately God who sends you there.  If we posit the existence of God and further stipulate that God can do anything, then one has to wonder what a God who can do anything would want.  The only answer that makes sense would be “God wants us to love Him of our own free will.”  In other words, love God without expectation of a reward for doing so, not because you are trying to avoid some type of punishment.  Otherwise, it’s a coerced love, and as anyone knows, any type of contract or agreement made under coercion or duress is invalid.  In other words, if we love God because of self-interest (ie: we don’t want to go to Hell) it isn’t true love.

The Bible itself has probably the only answer to this: God is to be feared [Proverbs 1:7, etc.]  If He can come up with something like Hell and send you there for such offenses as eating a ham sandwich or walking more than 1,000 paces on a Saturday, then yeah: Fear this Entity, because He’s not sane by human standards.

...meanwhile, moving back to the mysteries of metaphysical World Domination...

Alternate Logic
[Part 1]

The following is a neat little logical paradox.  I can’t take credit for discovering this.  An overly-complicated (and exceedingly left-brained/mathematical) version was posited by French mathematician Jules Richard in 1905.  Three years later, Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson came up with a right-brained variant [using language].  Since I hate both math and the French, I’ll go with the Grelling-Nelson variation, especially since it is easier to explain and grasp.

First, let’s start with definitions...

An adjective is a word that describes a word.

Examples:      blue sky,
                                    heavy load
                                    loud sound

Adjectives usually describe nouns, but (and this will be important in a minute) they can also describe other adjectives.

Examples:      dark green car
                                    incredibly stupid person
                                    very dangerous situation

It is possible to sort adjectives into different categories, based on arbitrary criteria.  

Examples:      an “odd adjective” is an adjective that has an odd number of letters in it
                                    an “even adjective” is one that has an even number of letters in it
                                    a “vowelized adjective” is one that starts with a vowel
                                    a “consonated adjective” starts with a consonant

Examples:      multi-syllable
                                     purple
                                     odd

Examples:      vowelized [using the above definition]
                                     orange
                                     Japanese [ie: this word is in English, and even then, the Japanese refer to themselves as “Niponese”]

In other words, if I perform Experiment X and get Result Y, I have not actually proven that X always yields Y.  At best, I have proven it conditionally true: in that one instance, X yielded Y.  I could perform the experiment again and get a different result.  Or—and more importantly—there could be some outside variable I am not aware of that is affecting the experiment, and once that variable is removed, my results change.  It is impossible to know all the variables that could affect anything, so it is impossible to make an absolute statement that X will always yield Y.