Note 64 — Chapter IV · THE EVOLUTION OF THE CULT

Seeing that even conservative critics have admitted the probable priority of the Teaching to Barnabas, it is no straining of the probabilities to suggest that the Two Ways section of Barnabas is either a variant, inspired by the Teaching, on what was clearly a very popular line of homily,64 or an annexation of another Jewish homily of that kind. That in the Teaching is distinctly the better piece of work, as we should expect the official manual of the Apostles of the High Priest to be. It is inexact to say, as does Dr. M. R. James,65 that the section “reappears” in Barnabas. There are many differences, as well as many identities. The other is not a mere copy, but an exercise on the same standard theme, with “light and darkness” for the stronger “life and death.” It is a mistake to suppose that there was a definite “original” of “The Two Ways”: it is a standing ethical theme, evidently handled by many.66 If, then, the Teaching preceded Barnabas, it may already have contained, in its purely Jewish form, the Lord’s Prayer, which is so thoroughly Jewish, and items of the Sermon on the Mount, which is certainly a Jewish compilation. And the justified critical presumption is that it did contain them. The onus of disproof lies on the Christian side.