Answering Islam - A Christian-Muslim dialog

Editions of the Gospel of Barnabas

The original edition and translation of the Italian text:

The Gospel of Barnabas,
Edited and Translated from the Italian MS. in the Imperial Library at Vienna,
by Lonsdale and Laura Ragg,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

This book contains a Preface and nearly seventy pages of Introduction evaluating content and background of this book. And it contains the original Italian text and the English translation on opposite pages. Soon after its first publication, Muslims have published editions that contain only the English translation of the Italian text, without the Preface, without the Introduction, and without the footnotes. Moreover, they made translations of the bare text into other languages, the Arabic translation appearing in 1908.

Unless otherwise noted, our discussions of the Gospel of Barnabas are always based on the original edition and translation provided by Lonsdale and Laura Ragg.


Online availability

Google Books has the original edition but due to different copyright laws in the USA and Europe, the full book seems to be available only in the USA.

The English translation only (without Preface, Introduction or footnotes, and with some minor typos from the OCR process) is available on Sacred Texts.

A version of the English text based on the translation by L. & L. Ragg, but with some changes, amendations and containing even more typos than the above is available on Prof. Blackhirst’s website dedicated to the Medieval Gospel of Barnabas.

Several Muslim websites propagate the Gospel of Barnabas as a/the true Gospel and provide updated / amended / modernized versions of the English translation, most prominently by Barnabas.net.