The Gospel of Barnabas is an apocryphal gospel. That is, it is a life of Jesus purportedly written by a first-hand observer that is at variance with the picture(s) presented in the Bible. However, it is unique among apocrypha in that it is a Muslim gospel; that is, it presents Jesus as a human prophet, not the son of God, and as a forerunner of Muhammad. According to western scholarship, it is a fourteenth-century forgery, extant now only in Spanish and Italian manuscripts, but even among scholars there is disagreement as to whether or not some some of the material contained in the book is older. The Gospel has been picked up by some modern Muslims, though, as an authentic and ancient record of events, and there are many different printed versions available from various Muslim publishing houses, all based heavily on the version by the Raggs presented here.
