ANNETTER YOSHIKO REED: "Muslim Gospel" Revealing the "Christian Truth" Excites the Da Vinci Code Set. Jesus Christ on a Cross: Not.
This is an excellent and very detailed account of the very late, apocryphal, Islam-influenced Gospel of Barnabas. New interest in this gospel was stimulated a couple of years ago with a report that an ancient Syriac copy of it had been seized from smugglers in Turkey. In reality that manuscript turned out to be an early modern copy of a Syriac version of the canonical Gospel of Matthew, and perhaps even a modern forgery of that. Nevertheless, the story continues to surface here and there. The Gospel of Barnabas also was in the news back in 2008 as a source used for an Iranian movie about Jesus.
Professor Reed's article was published in Religion Dispatches, but I'm happy to see that Salon has reprinted it. It deserves wide dissemination.
