Who Was Barnabas in the Bible?

Who was Barnabas?

His given name was Joseph, but the apostles renamed him Barnabas — a name Luke translates for his readers as "son of consolation" or "son of encouragement" (Acts 4:36). The Greek parakleseos covers both meanings: the word paraclete (used of the Holy Spirit in John 14:16) is closely related. Whether his contemporaries meant to honor his comforting presence or his prophetic encouragement is not entirely clear, but both fit what we know of the man. Barnabas was a Levite from Cyprus — an island in the northeastern Mediterranean. He was therefore from a priestly tribe, though not himself a priest in the Jerusalem temple. He appears in Acts for the first time in a story about radical generosity: he sold a field he owned and brought all the money to the apostles' feet (Acts 4:36-37). Luke places this immediately before the contrasting story of Ananias and Sapphira, who pretended to give everything while secretly keeping back part of the price. The contrast highlights Barnabas not only as generous but as genuinely, transparently so. His most consequential act of encouragement came perhaps three or four years after the crucifixion, when Saul of Tarsus — the man who had supervised the stoning of Stephen and made it his mission to destroy the church — arrived in Jerusalem claiming to be a believer. The disciples were afraid. The word Luke uses — phobounto, they feared him — is the same word used for the disciples hiding from the authorities after the crucifixion. They did not believe Saul's conversion was real. They could not trust him. Barnabas took Saul and brought him to the apostles. He told them Saul's story: the road to Damascus, the blinding light, the voice of the risen Jesus, the changed man who had then preached boldly in Damascus in the very synagogues where he had intended to arrest believers. Barnabas vouched for Paul. He put his own credibility on the line for a man who had been Christianity's most dangerous enemy. Without that act, Paul might have remained an outsider to the Jerusalem church indefinitely, and the subsequent mission to the Gentiles might have taken a very different shape. When the church in Jerusalem heard that a multiethnic congregation was forming in Antioch — Jews and Greeks worshipping together, which was socially revolutionary — they sent Barnabas to investigate. He arrived, saw the grace of God at work, and was glad (Acts 11:23). Then he went to Tarsus to find Paul and brought him to Antioch, where the two of them taught together for a full year. Antioch is where "the disciples were called Christians first" (Acts 11:26). Barnabas and Paul were the pastors of the church where the name "Christian" was coined. From Antioch, the Holy Spirit directed the church to commission Barnabas and Paul specifically for the first organized missionary journey (Acts 13:1-3). They were the church's two most prominent leaders, and both were sent. They sailed to Cyprus first — Barnabas's home territory — then to the mainland of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), planting churches in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe before returning. It was a journey of roughly two years, marked by healings, riots, a stoning (Paul), synagogue controversy, and the conversion of Gentiles at every stop. On this first journey, John Mark — Barnabas's cousin (Colossians 4:10) — had come along as an assistant and then left midway, returning home to Jerusalem from Perga. The reason is not given. When a second missionary journey was proposed, the question of John Mark became the fracture point. Paul refused to take someone who had deserted them on the first journey. Barnabas wanted to give Mark another chance. The disagreement was sharp — the Greek word paroxysmos, a word for acute conflict from which we get "paroxysm" — and the two men separated. Barnabas took Mark and sailed back to Cyprus. Paul took Silas and went overland through Syria. What looks at first like a failure was, in the economy of Providence, a multiplication: two missionary teams instead of one, covering twice the ground. And the ending of John Mark's story vindicates Barnabas's judgment. Years later Paul writes: "Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry" (2 Timothy 4:11). And in Colossians 4:10 Paul refers to Mark as his "fellowlabourer." Barnabas saw something in John Mark that Paul could not yet see — and he was right. Paul mentions Barnabas once more, in 1 Corinthians 9:6, with a note suggesting Barnabas was still active in ministry and still, like Paul, working with his own hands to support himself financially. This is the last canonical reference to Barnabas alive. Tradition holds that he returned to Cyprus and was martyred in Salamis around AD 61, stoned by a Jewish mob during a synagogue service. The Epistle of Barnabas — an early Christian text probably dating to the late 1st or early 2nd century — is attributed to him by some traditions, though most modern scholars doubt he wrote it.

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