Paper delivered by Prof. Goutzioudis at the 3rd Hagiological Conference on the subject: ‘The Apostolic Fathers and their Era’, which was held in Smyrna and Ephesus (4-8 May 2017) The name of the Apostle Barnabas was linked to the authorship of the work in question by Clement the Alexandrian, Origen, Didymus, Hieronymus and other ecclesiastical writers. There are indications in the text that it can’t, in fact, have been composed by the apostle himself, and point more to the identity of a Gentile Christian with a good knowledge of Jewish tradition. The anonymous author must have been a teacher in the community to which the epistle is addressed*. Even very early on the attribution was viewed with suspicion and Eusebius is ...
