Messiah College professor goes in search of Barnabas

By JOHN HILTON Daily Record/Sunday News – 28/2/13

As a historian, Michael Cosby knows he has to set the record straight on the little-known biblical figure Barnabas. As a human being who was welcomed with open arms during his four months in Cyprus, he isn’t looking forward to it.

Professor of New Testament and Greek at Messiah College in Cumberland County, Cosby won a prestigious Fulbright Grant to piece together a history of how Cypriot beliefs about Barnabas have developed over the centuries. He and his wife spent four months on the Mediterranean island south of Turkey in late 2011.

Cosby said he turned his attention to Barnabas after his textbook on Paul, “Apostle on the Edge: An Inductive Approach to Paul,” was published in 2009.

“I discovered that very little scholarship exists on Barnabas, even though he was probably one of the five most significant leaders in the early decades of the church,” Cosby said.

An apostle and mentor to Paul, Joseph Barnabas appears mainly in Acts, a Christian history of the early church. Mainly known for his benevolence, there is very little recorded history of Barnabas, who died in the first century.

He is a heroic figure in his native Cyprus, where all schoolchildren are taught a few basic stories about Barnabas, Cosby said. When word spread that an American professor was seeking information on him, the Cypriots were eager to help.

But by the time Cosby finished his research, he was pretty sure the most influential parts of the story concerning Barnabas aren’t true.

“This keeps me awake at night,” Cosby said of how to report his research. “They worship Barnabas. For me to point out that most of what they believe about Barnabas is based on legend is not going to go down well.”

Cosby is working on a scholarly article about his research and plans to write a book soon.

Story doubts

According to the legend, Barnabas appeared in a dream to direct Anthemios, the Archbishop of Constantia, to a tomb with Barnabas’ body and a manuscript of Matthew’s Gospel. Anthemios presented the Gospel to Emperor Zeno at Constantinople in 488 and received from him the privileges of the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus.

Privileges are largely cermonnial perks of dress and protocol that distinguish an archbishop from a regular bishop. The story is the basis for the power the archbishop of the Cypriot church maintains to the present day.

But the more research Cosby did, the more he began to doubt significant parts of the story.

In the late fifth century, the Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, on the mainland just east of Cyprus, was seeking to gain control of the island and have the authority to appoint its bishops. Anthemios likely produced the copy of Matthew’s Gospel that he took to Emperor Zeno as part of an elaborate scheme to maintain the independence of the island’s church, Cosby said.

Cosby found no evidence prior to 1560 of the royal privileges jealously guarded today by Cypriot archbishops. These privileges seem to have been invented in the years just prior to the Ottoman Turk conquest of Cyprus in 1570, he said.

“Because Barnabas is important to the identity of the island, I was shocked to discover that no Cypriot scholar had explored how stories about Barnabas developed over the centuries,” Cosby wrote in a journal article.

So why does a disputed story from the fifth century matter? It matters more than you might think.For starters, Cosby said the legend of Barnabas is so woven into the mix of religion and politics on the island, that the Cypriots draw much of their national identity from his legacy.

“The Cypriot archbishops have re-created Barnabas into a national savior who confers on them their independence, power and authority,” Cosby said.

Joseph Huffman, professor of European history at Messiah, said it is not unusual to turn up research results that fail to match oral histories.

“It’s very much like archaeology,” he said. “There’s a lot of layers you have to peel back. … If you spend a lifetime researching things from the past, you find that you never knew what you never knew what you never knew.”

History is viewed much differently in the United States, Huffman noted, since nearly everything has been recorded in some form and we have one language. In Europe, historians deal with dozens of languages and history that stretches back 2,000 years.

“Sometimes these things have present import and they make people unhappy,” he said. “People don’t like to have their history messed with.”

National pride

During his stay on the island, Cosby found many Cypriots citing Barnabas for inspiration in their ongoing battle with their Turkish neighbors. Violent clashes between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots led to the Turkish invasion and occupation of the northern third of the island in 1974.

The island has been divided in a tenuous peace accord ever since.

Reflecting on his work, Cosby said he has one regret. Instead of writing his grant proposal to encompass four months of research, he said he should have asked for one year.

Once he started the research, it was like peeling back the layers of an onion, he said. Cosby said he didn’t anticipate finding such strong evidence of revisionist history associated with Barnabas.

As for why Barnabas was so eclipsed by Paul to the point of virtual anonymity, Cosby said it is likely a product of the fiery Paul being so different from his mentor.

Still, he said the lessons from the conciliatory Barnabas are relevant today more than ever.

“In a world torn by ethnic strife, religious people could use more models of leaders who listen to both sides of arguments and develop compromise solutions,” Cosby said.

The full story

According to the History of the Cyprus Church, in 488, Barnabas appeared in a dream to the Archbishop of Constantia, Anthemios, and revealed to him the place of his sepulchre beneath a carob-tree.

The following day Anthemios found the tomb and inside it the remains of Barnabas with a manuscript of Matthew’s Gospel on his breast. Anthemios presented the Gospel to Emperor Zeno at Constantinople and received from him the privileges of the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus, privileges not given to any other Orthodox clergy.

The privileges include: the purple cloak, which the Greek archbishop of Cyprus wears at festivals of the church, the imperial sceptre and the red ink with which he affixes his signature.

Anthemios then placed the venerable remains of Barnabas in a church he founded near the tomb. Excavations near the site of a present-day church and monastery have revealed an early church with two empty tombs.

According to legend, they are the tombs of St. Barnabas and Anthemios. St. Barnabas is venerated as the Patron Saint of Cyprus.

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