Category: Christian Saints and Feasts

English: Icon of St. Barnabas (1921), Museum St. Barnabas Salamis (Cyprus). Deutsch: Ikone des Barnabas (Apostel), Ikonen-Museum St. Barnabas (1921), Salamis (Zypern). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Barnabas (Ancient Greek: Βαρναβᾶς), born Joseph, was an early Christian, one of the earliest Christian disciples in Jerusalem. According to Acts 4:36 Barnabas was a Cypriot Jew. Barnabas‘ story appears in the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul mentions him in some of his epistles. Although the date, place, and circumstances of his death are historically unverifiable, Christian tradition holds that Barnabas was martyred at Salamis, Cyprus, in 61 AD. Barnabas is usually identified as the cousin of Mark the Evangelist on the basis of Colossians 4. Barnabas appears mainly in Acts, a Christian history of the early Christian church. The prosperity of the church at Antioch led the apostles and brethren at Jerusalem to send Barnabas there to superintend the movement. Barnabas wished to take John Mark along, but Paul did not, as he had left them on the former journey (15:37-38).

According to Hippolytus of Rome, John Mark is not Mark the Cousin of Barnabas, and Barnabas did not dispute with Paul because of personal favor to a blood relative, but due to his character as his nickname Barnabas (“Son of Encouragement”) indicates. Church tradition developed outside of the canon of the New Testament describes the martyrdom of many saints, including the legend of the martyrdom of Barnabas.

According to the History of the Cyprus Church, in 478 Barnabas appeared in a dream to the Archbishop of Constantia (Salamis, Cyprus) 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.

Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, ii, 20) also makes Barnabas one of the Seventy Disciples that are mentioned in the Gospel of Luke 10:1ff.

The Cypriot Church claimed Barnabas as its founder in order to rid itself of the supremacy of the Patriarch of Antioch, as did the Archbishop of Milan afterwards, to become more independent of Rome.

James the Less is a figure of early Christianity, one of the Twelve chosen by Jesus. He is also called “the Minor”, “the Little”, “the Lesser”, or “the Younger”, according to translation. He is not to be confused with James, son of Zebedee (“James the Great or Elder”). In the West he was for long (and still is) identified with James, the Lord’s brother, thought of by St Jerome and those who followed him as really the cousin of Jesus. The sources offer no certainty. Most New Testament scholars now would reject that identification of St James the Less (one of the Twelve, though a fairly insignificant member) with St James, an actual brother of Jesus, and leader of the early Christian Jewish community. As a result, while St James the Less continues to be commemorated with St Philip on May 1st in the Western calendars, increasingly St James the Brother of the Lord has been included in those Calendars, on October 23rd, for example, in most recent Anglican calendars.

Philip the Apostle (Greek: Φίλιππος; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲗⲓⲡⲡⲟⲥ, Philippos) was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to New Testament. Later Christian traditions describe Philip as the apostle who preached in Greece, Syria, and Phrygia.

In the Roman Rite, the feast day of Philip, along with that of James the Less, was traditionally observed on 1 May, the anniversary of the dedication of the church dedicated to them in Rome (now called the Church of the Twelve Apostles). The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Philip’s feast day on 14 November. One of the Gnostic codices discovered in the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 bears Philip’s name in its title, on the bottom line.