His name was Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus. The apostles gave him the nickname Barnabas, "son of encouragement" (Acts 4:36). He was, in many ways, the bridge between the earliest Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem and the wider Gentile mission that would follow.
In Acts
Barnabas first appears in Acts 4:36–37, selling a field and laying the proceeds at the apostles' feet. He reappears in Acts 9:26–27, when the recently converted Saul of Tarsus arrives in Jerusalem and the disciples are afraid of him. Barnabas vouches for him. Without that act, Paul's integration into the church might never have occurred as it did.
Barnabas is sent to Antioch to investigate reports of Gentile conversions (Acts 11:22–24). He brings Paul from Tarsus to help teach there. The two men are sent out together on what is traditionally called Paul's first missionary journey (Acts 13–14). They later separate over whether to take John Mark with them a second time (Acts 15:36–41) — a disagreement sharp enough that the two never travel together again.
Later Life and Death
The New Testament says nothing more about Barnabas after Acts 15. Paul refers to him in 1 Corinthians 9:6 and Galatians 2:1, 9, 13. Later tradition places his death by stoning in Cyprus, probably around AD 60–70, though the sources are late. The apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas is not by him.
Sources
- Acts 4, 9, 11, 13–15; 1 Cor. 9:6; Gal. 2:1, 9, 13.
- Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 889.