Saint Barnabas the Apostle
Today in the Orthodox Church, the eleventh of June, is the feast-day of Mitrofan (Chang) of Beijing and the two hundred twenty one martyrs with him in China, who were killed in the Yihetuan uprising. The Orthodox Christians of Beijing, originally Russian Cossacks of Albazin who intermarried with the indigenous Evenki people and were put under the Manchu Banner system, may be considered the spiritual heirs of Guo Ziyi, the Nestorian Christian general under the Tang Emperor Minghuang. I say this not in the sense that they were hæretical, but in the sense that they understood themselves as being fully Chinese and fully Christian. They were Chinese patriots faithful to the Qing Emperor, just as Guo Ziyi was loyal to the Tang Emperor.
But the connexion of China to Syria today is also significant, in that the Chinese Albazinians whose Orthodox faith led them to martyrdom was intimately connected with a Silk Road history. The Gate of Saint Thomas which that Apostle used to spread the Gospel from Damascus through Persia all the way to Kerala in India, was also used to bear the Gospel to the Chinese through the efforts of the monk Alopen (or Aluoben 阿罗本). The bearing of the Gospel over the Northern route, the Tea Road, by the Cossacks from Russia, was the next stage in that same mission.
The source and fount of that mission is also celebrated today, because the Orthodox martyrs of China share a feast-day with the Apostle Bartholomaîos of the Twelve and also with the Holy Apostle Barnabas, ‘a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto the Lord’. One of the Seventy whose deeds are committed to us by Luke the Evangelist in his Book of the Acts in Holy Scripture, he is membered particularly in Antioch and Cyprus.
Saint Barnabas [Gk. Βαρνάβας, Ar. Bârnâbâ بارنابا, Heb. Bar-Nabā’ בר-נבא], born Joseph, was a Jewish native of Cyprus, of the tribe of Levi, and may have been an uncle of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark. Despite having been an observant Jew before his conversion, Barnabas belonged firmly to the ‘radical’ party in the Early Church, the party that believed the message of Christ was meant to be spread amongst the Gentiles without their having to first conform to the whole body of Jewish law. He is first mentioned in Acts 4, just after the disciples divided up all things equally amongst themselves so that no one had want: ‘Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.’ Barnabas was one of those who possessed land and estates near Jerusalem, and he led by example. He sold all of these and gave the proceeds to the community without holding anything back.
Saint Barnabas next appears in the ninth chapter of Acts, after Apostle Paul – then Saul, hitherto an enemy of the followers of Jesus – was healed of his blindness in Damascus. It was Barnabas who convinced the other disciples that Paul was no longer their enemy, but a friend: ‘But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.’
From then, Saint Barnabas appears most prominently in Acts as a helper and fellow-traveller of Saint Paul. In the eleventh chapter we are told he was sent to Antioch by the disciples in Jerusalem in order to encourage the believers there, and he worked there together with Peter and Paul for several years. His name is mentioned alongside both of the Leaders of the Apostles in both cities. Barnabas was also in charge, along with Paul, of sending money for the relief of the needy Church of Jerusalem from the comparatively-wealthy Antioch during a period of famine. While they were in Jerusalem, Herod slew James the son of Zebedee, and then had Apostle Peter taken to prison together with the other chief apostles and placed under guard – both of which actions were calculated to increase his local popularity. An angel of the Lord, however, led Barnabas, Paul and Peter out of the prison. They hid at the home of ‘Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark’, who was Barnabas’s relative. When they returned from Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul took with them this same John Mark.
Led by the Holy Spirit, Saints Barnabas and Paul left Antioch together for Cyprus to build up the Church, accompanied by John Mark. They were stuck for some time at Paphos where they were confronted by a sorcerer named Elymas. Elymas was stricken blind for a year after having attempted to prevent Barnabas and Paul from speaking with the Roman governor of Cyprus, named Sergius the Lesser, and then attempting to discredit the apostles with the governor.
They then travelled to Pergamos in Anatolia and from there to Pisidian Antioch, where they preached first to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles. Jealous of their success in preaching to great throngs of the Gentiles, the Jews began to circulate rumours about Barnabas and Paul to the Roman authorities, and had them expelled from the city. Barnabas and Paul made their way from thence to Ikonion (Konya), where they preached in the synagogues. They swayed a number of both the Jews and the Greeks to belief in Christ, but the remaining Jews and Gentiles both rose up against them and planned to stone them to death, and so they withdrew to Lystra to preach the Gospel there.
While in Lystra there was a man who met them, who had been born lame, and whose feet were crippled from birth. Saint Paul, looking upon him, commanded the man to stand up and walk, and stand and walk he did. When the people of Lystra saw this, they were much afraid, and began to worship Saint Barnabas as Zeus, and Saint Paul as Hermes. The pagan priest of Zeus went and gathered cattle and garlands with which to make sacrifice to them, but Saints Barnabas and Paul, on hearing of this, went out into the crowd and tore their clothes, telling them that they were but passionate men like themselves, and through their preaching and healing sought only to turn them away from vain sacrifices towards the living God. The people listened to them, and did not offer sacrifice. However, several anti-Christian messengers from Pisidian Antioch and Ikonion came to Lystra and swayed the people against Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas; and indeed they took Paul and stoned him nearly to death, and had him thrown out of the city. The disciples protected Saint Paul’s body, though, and he went back into the city and took Barnabas back with him to Derbeia.
Saint Barnabas was also at the forefront of the deliberations over whether or not the Gentiles could accept the faith of Christ without instruction in the Jewish law, including circumcision. The Book of Acts tells us that, at the Council of Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas were both of the party that said the Gentiles could be saved without the entirety of the Law and without being circumcised. The Council agreed with them, though it retained the Mosaic strictures against fornication, idolatry, eating blood and eating meat from animals that had been strangled.
Barnabas and Paul continued to teach and preach in Antioch, and eventually Saint Paul asked Saint Barnabas if he would take another voyage with him, to visit the churches they had set up in their previous voyages and see how they were faring. Saint Barnabas agreed, but wanted to take John Mark with him. Paul was not amenable to this idea, because Mark had not accompanied them into Pamphylia. Paul and Barnabas fell out with each other over this dispute, and Barnabas took Mark and left for Cyprus; while Paul took Silas with him and ministered to the churches in Syria and Cilicia. It would appear that the rift between Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas was later healed, since Paul mentions Barnabas in favourable terms in his first epistle to the Corinthians.
At any rate, after the events related to us in the Book of the Acts, Barnabas continued his mission in Cyprus, where he multiplied the number of the believers, and undertook voyages into Italy, being perhaps the first of the Apostles to preach in Rome and later setting up a church in Mediolanum – that is, Milan. Upon his return to Cyprus, his fellow Jews on the isle who did not accept Christ instigated the pagans against him. The traditional narrative has it that Barnabas was tortured and then stoned to death at Salamis; another tradition says that he was placed in a halter and then dragged through the streets before being burned to death. In either event, Barnabas’s body was found unharmed by his kinsman Mark, who buried him in a secluded cave that was anchored by the roots of a carob tree. Mark placed in his arms a copy of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, which the Apostle had copied by his own hand.
According to Church historian Dr Andrea Mitsidi, in the year 478 a certain Archbishop Anthemios of Cyprus was visited three times in a vision by Saint Barnabas, who led him to the cave in which John Mark had buried him. The wondering Archbishop, upon awakening, found the carob tree as it had been shown to him, and upon digging among its roots found the cave, and found also the intact incorrupt body of the holy Apostle, still hugging to him the Gospel of Saint Matthew. This Gospel, the Archbishop Anthemios took with him and presented to the Emperor Zēnō. The Emperor thereupon granted the three Imperial privileges to the Church of Cyprus: the porphyry mantle which is worn by the Archbishop of Cyprus on feast-days; the cinnabar ink with which the Archbishop of Cyprus affixes his signature; and the Imperial sceptre which the Archbishop of Cyprus is permitted to carry. The autocephaly of the Church of Cyprus was thereby assured.
The holy Apostle Barnabas is therefore remembered with particular fondness by the Orthodox Churches of Cyprus and of Antioch, in both of which cities he was active and instrumental in establishing the Christian faith. Holy Apostle Barnabas, tireless servant of God in the spread of the Gospel in Cyprus and in Syria and in Asia Minor, pray unto Christ who established the world that our souls may be saved!
Apolytikion of Apostle Barnabas, Tone 3:
Holy Apostles Bartholomew and Barnabas,
Entreat the merciful God
To grant our souls forgiveness of transgressions.
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