The Epistle of Barnabas and the Two Ways of Teaching Authority

Abstract

Although much attention has been given to the literary development of the Two Ways form of paraenesis within theEpistle of Barnabas, comparatively little analysis of its function within the letter’s argument has been undertaken. This lacuna in scholarship is addressed by (i) analyzing the function of Two Ways imagery in chs. 1-17 and (ii) investigating the relationship between the Two Ways form in chs. 18-21 and the preceding argument. The Two Ways imagery throughout the letter aims to strengthen the communal identity of the audience by fostering a strong sense of in-group awareness. That is, it sharpens the contrast between those who accept the author’s negation of Jewish identity through scripture and those who do not. The Two Ways form found at the end of the letter (chs. 18-21) both recapitulates this imagery and seeks to orient the audience’s identity around the author’s teaching authority.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.