This was a fantastic mental trip and brain exercise, I enjoyed every moment of it.
I would only recommend The Gospel of Barnabas to those who have read any of the Bible translations.
The book should be read with all preconceptions and dogmas ignored.
If you approach the book with goodwill, it will surprise you. I read the various Bible translations with reservations - as to their authenticity - but The Gospel of Barnabas is different, here I am almost certain that the wording and message are close to the original. It is a special reading precisely because it was not moderated by the Council of Rome in 382 or the Third Council of Carthage in 397. Specifically, the teaching of The Gospel of Barnabas is so different from the biblical gospels that it could not be included in the biblical summary, so it was not modified, but simply omitted. Of course, it should be noted that between the first and fifth centuries there was an incredible amount of Gospel writing, which must have been a bit like the Matthias Corvinus legends we find in Hungary today. Many disappeared, many were born, many were true, many were false and a good five hundred years later no one knows the truth. So we shouldn't expect the exact words of Jesus from the book. Rather, let us look at how people around the first to fifth centuries wanted to see and depict the being of God. We also have a fantastic opportunity to compare events described in the Bible. Certainly, in many, many cases, we can conclude that yes, it could have happened that way. The Gospel of Barnabas is free from ambiguity, it is written for ordinary people and for that very reason it leaves no room for your imagination, no room for guesswork, everything must be understood as it is written. It does not contain passages that need to be proven or explained in a convoluted way. The wise and still relevant examples and guidelines are simply brilliant and cannot be argued with. The Gospel of Barnabas has the seed of truth, as does the Bible, and it is up to us to find the truth in them.
Moreover, is it original? Does the gospel, written around 500 AD, contain the words of Jesus? Five hundred years is a lot, and that’s how much time had passed between the current copy of The Gospel of Barnabas and Jesus. We don't know how many copies were there, nor how much was added or taken away by those who copied it.
The communication of The Gospel of Barnabas is entirely in black and white, which has often puzzled me, but I reminded myself that this communication was to people two thousand years ago, for whom it was the most effective way of telling the story. Thanks to modern day translators, the translation may not be a work of biblical eloquence, but rather a mirror translation, which was very useful in this case.