Returning to my series on theological texts that interpret the creation story using intertextuality (read the start of this post for a definition), I want to look at how an early Christian letter called the Epistle of Barnabas interpreted the creation of Adam as pointing to salvation in Christ.

The author of Barnabas most likely wrote between about A.D. 70 and 135. He’s almost certainly not the biblical Barnabas, but we’ll call him that for convenience.

Old Testament Background

Barnabas specializes in allegorical interpretation, meaning that he interprets a given Old Testament text by explaining that certain words in the passage really refer to something different than a casual reading might suggest. This is a method that was popular among Greeks and some Jews (like Philo), although Barnabas turns the method against the Jews. To figure out what he’s doing, first we have to review the OT passages he’s using. Barnabas focuses on three scriptural texts in particular:

Genesis 1:26-28: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”Genesis 2:7: “Then Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”

Exodus 33:1-3: “Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, “To your descendants I will give it.” I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jubusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey…’”

The key to fitting these three passages together is recognizing a wordplay on the Greek word we transliterate as “geo”. The word can be translated into English as “earth”, “land” (as in “the land of Oz”), or “ground,” corresponding approximately to its three senses in our words geocentric, geopolitical, and geology. (Geopolitical is admittedly a stretch.) The word shows up in all three senses in the passage we’ll look at from Barnabas. Note that this wordplay does not work in Hebrew (the original language Genesis and Exodus were written in), but since Barnabas was apparently reading the text in Greek translation, it does work for him.

The ambiguity of this word affects the interpretation of any number of Bible passages. So for example, “The meek shall inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5) could refer to the whole planet, but in Psalm 37:11 the same line seems to refer to the land of Israel. Or for another example, the fifth commandment promises long life in the (promised) land in exchange for obedience to parents, but Ephesians 6:2, written for Gentiles, seems to interpret this as long life on this earth.

So as it turns out, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the word for “ground” in Gen 2:7 –– the stuff man was made of –– is the same word as the promised “land” in Ex 33:1. In fact, all the words in bold in the three passage quoted above are the exact same word in Greek. This opens up room for Barnabas to make some interesting connections.

Particularly notice how the word “form” (both noun and verb) shows up repeatedly. I’m quoting (with adjustments) from Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers:

(8) What does the other prophet, Moses, say to [Israel]? “Behold, thus says the Lord God: ‘Enter into the good land, which the Lord promised by oath to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and take possession of it as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (9) But now learn what knowledge has to say: set your hope upon Jesus, who is about to be revealed to you in the flesh. For man is suffering earth [ = land], for Adam was formed out of the face of the earth.

(10) What, therefore, does “into the good land, a land flowing with milk and honey” mean? … (11) Inasmuch as he renewed us, then, by the forgiveness of sins, he made us into another type of person, so that we should have the soul of children, as if he were forming us all over again. (12) For the Scripture speaks about us when he says to the Son: “Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them rule over the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.”

And when he saw that we were formed well, the Lord said: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” These things he said to the Son. (Barn. 6.8–12)

The Theological Claim

A big part of Barnabas’s argument in the 21-chapter letter is that Israel failed to understand what God was saying to them through Moses and the scriptures. He (incorrectly) reads passages such as Isaiah 1:11, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says Yahweh,” as indicating that God was trying to do away with animal sacrifices, but Israel just wasn’t listening (Barn. 2.5). This is ironic, of course, because in reality it’s Barnabas that doesn’t understand what Isaiah was getting at. But the important thing to recognize is that Barnabas wants to appropriate the Hebrew Scriptures as always talking about Jesus, almost always at the Jews’ expense.

In this case, Israel misunderstood the promise that the prophet Moses had delivered to them in Exodus. They thought he was concerned with a real land, but “knowledge” (i.e., correct allegorical interpretation; 6.9) has something different to say: Jesus, not the land of Israel, is the real purpose behind all these promises.

To make the jump from Moses to Christ, Barnabas uses the idea of the land: humans are nothing but “suffering earth” (2.9), because they were formed out of earth, and Christ shared in this earth/land/ground when he took on flesh. Now, just as God formed the first man from the dust of the earth, so also a new creation/formation takes place in Christ (6.11).

So when Moses spoke of a “land” that Israel was going to, he actually was saying that God would reenact creation, the moment God formed the first man from the dust of the earth. Under Christ, the forgiveness of sins is an act of re-creation or re-formation, by which God takes hold of the dirt from which we are made and forms a new person, with the soul of a child (6.11). In Barnabas’s opinion it is this that Moses meant when he spoke of a land to which God would lead Israel (6.8); only their hard hearts prevented them from realizing it.

After establishing the connection between creation and salvation, Barnabas teases out the implications by bringing in another passage on creation from Genesis 1: “And when he saw that we were formed well, the Lord said: ‘Increase and multiply and fill the earth.’ These things he said to the Son” (6.12).

Just as God told the first humans he formed to fill the earth, so also when God recreates humanity through the suffering of Christ, he gives the same command to the Son. A creation so good is not intended to keep to itself; taken from the dust of the ground, it should become a gift for every land across the earth. And so Christ sends us into the world.

Implications for the Church

The New Testament does cite innumerable OT passages that it claims are fulfilled in Christ. Paul even claims, broadly, that “in [Christ] every one of God’s promises is a ‘yes’.” But the Epistle of Barnabas takes that approach to Scripture a step further. The claim here is not simply that the promised land in Exodus prefigured the coming of Christ (as in Hebrews 4), but rather that the people of Israel were foolish and blind for thinking that God was concerned with giving them an actual land in the first place. True, God did give them a real land, but that wasn’t what God cared about.

Barnabas makes the same kind of argument concerning scripture after scripture from the OT, a good example being the Isaiah passage mentioned above. As the letter drags on, the practice becomes tiresome, and it becomes increasingly clear that Barnabas lacks not only an understanding of the various OT passages in context but also an appropriate respect for the people of Israel. Barnabas cites some scriptures that don’t exist, interprets other scriptures arbitrarily so that they always favor Christians, dabbles in numerology, and relentlessly attacks not only the choices and beliefs but also the sincerity and integrity of the Jewish people.

It would be easy to dismiss the Epistle of Barnabas on these grounds, but in reality the line is not all that sharp between it and some of the New Testament texts. It was probably written later than everything in the NT, but not by much. What’s more, hints of Barnabas’s tendencies were already present in texts that were received into the canon, and at least one early church father (Clement of Alexandria) cited Barnabas almost as if it were scripture. Ultimately, most of us would argue that wisdom and the Holy Spirit prevailed in the selection of the scriptures that were deemed suitable for public reading in the church (i.e., the canon). I can only hope that it was Barnabas’s contempt for the Jews, and not just its late date, that kept it from being included.

In a sense, though, Barnabas simply takes certain arguments from the New Testament scriptures to their logical conclusion, and it is here that I think it can serve as a warning for churches now.

The understanding of the truth of Scripture among fundamentalists and evangelicals in the United States can be troubling sometimes. We have a tendency –– and for good reasons –– to approach Scripture as absolute truth. But the problem with making truth absolute is that then you have to carry it to its logical conclusions.

But Scripture, when you really get down to it, often reflects more of a discussion among competing voices than it does absolute truth. Certainly, there are parts of Scripture I would claim to reflect absolute truth, but they are surrounded by any number of passages that need to be interpreted with nuance and open-mindedness.

Some of these questions are fairly trivial. If we’re studying who wrote the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), our conclusions should not hinge solely on whether Jesus said the five books came from Moses. When Jude quotes 1 Enoch, a patently fictional apocalyptic writing that was popular in the first century, we must not insist that Adam’s great great great great grandson Enoch actually spoke those words. These kinds of claims, in my opinion, take Scripture to be something that it is not.

But in other places, the logical conclusions that certain readings of Scripture might lead us to have more serious consequences, and Barnabas is a good example. When Luke tells us that Jesus “opened [the apostles’] minds to understand the scriptures” (24:45), it’s no great leap for us to fall into the attitude of Barnabas and wonder at the Jews’ stupidity for failing to see what was written in front of them all along. Or when Revelation describes a violent overthrow of all non-Christians at the end of time, it is not hard to see why so many Christians over the centuries have tolerated violence because it seemed to support Christian causes.

Barnabas’s sin, ultimately, is the spiritualization of OT scriptures to the almost complete exclusion of their original meaning, and it is a sin often mimicked by Christians today. It’s ok to suggest that God ultimately is most concerned with us being poor in spirit, but if that leads us to neglect teachings concerning those who are actually poor, we are taking certain scriptures too far. It’s ok (and in my opinion, correct) to hold that Scripture contains truth that God wishes to communicate to the church and the world, but if we use it to shut down communication with secular voices or to ridicule those who disagree, I believe we are missing our calling.

I like to think that these misuses (in my opinion) of Scripture simply come from not reading it carefully enough, but the attitudes and positions I see on the American political/religious landscape –– among people who apparently read the Bible quite carefully –– suggest otherwise.

Hopefully, my treatment of the topic here –– in contrast to the approach Barnabas chose –– is respectful enough that it won’t shut out the people whose views I’m criticizing. Some of these questions are too important to polarize over.