Barnabas and the god of thunder

Like so many of that early Christian crowd, we know little of Barnabas. A central figure in the Jerusalem community, he became even more famous as an apostle, a word which literally indicates he was sent out to teach new cultures about Jesus and the life he offered. He ended up doing a great deal of work with Paul in reaching out to the Gentile world beyond Jerusalem. That’s about all we know from scripture. 

Except …

One time, when Barnabas and Paul were traveling together through a place called Lystra, the audience compared them to Zeus and Hermes after they healed someone. Paul, always the mouthy one, was obviously Hermes, the messenger and spokesman of the Greek gods. But Barnabas! They thought Barnabas was like Zeus, god of thunder and ruler of the gods. Paul talked, but Barnabas acted and called the shots.

How interesting to wonder if we wrongly credit Paul for so much in the early church. Perhaps he was the loud one, but people then could see then what we can’t, that maybe Barnabas had the power and the ideas. Definitely, we’ve only received one thin slice of those early days—one suspiciously lacking in the women who are so much more prevalent around Jesus in the gospels—and perhaps, in this one small detail, we might see something of the person of Barnabas: quietly powerful, and content to let others speak on his behalf. 

Even more, consider: there’s a story about Zeus and Hermes traveling together, one that seems likely to have been well known, and it is being referenced in grouping them as a pair in Acts. Ovid tells this version in his Metamorphosis.^[1] Zeus and Hermes, hearing that people are violating the sacred hospitality rights of strangers, disguise themselves as mortals and go to see whether this is true. The region where this happens, in one version of the myth, is quite near where Barnabas and Paul are standing—no wonder there’s a priest of Zeus handy to come offer a sacrifice in the Acts. The region loves that story—it’s their story. 

While this myth is beautiful and interesting on its own, it is striking to see it drawn on in chapter 14 of the Acts of the Apostles. Were Barnabas and Paul seen not only as divine, but also testing, seeing if the Greeks could live up to the morality they professed? The book of Acts suggests that the crowd labels Barnabas and Paul as divine because they performed a healing, but the crowd seems adamant to thank them by sacrificing to them—perhaps the memory of the Zeus story is long and deeply cherished. Barnabas and Paul don’t want to receive a sacrifice, but they say that their living faith is also already present in this region, even in their old traditions, in their “following their own ways” but also in the rain and fruitful harvest, in being filled with food and a heart full of joy—which is to say, in hospitality. In the hospitality of these people, they see Jesus unnamed but already active.

In other words, calling Barnabas ‘Zeus’ seems to bless the Zeus and Hermes myth—its emphasis on hospitality and food and the joy of the couple who extend hospitality—while also refusing to identify God or Jesus with these Greek traditions in any literal sense.

What might this mean about Barnabas? Perhaps it means that Barnabas, like Paul, was thinking hard about how Gentiles fit into the Christian family. Like Paul preaching in Athens, Barnabas in Lystra thought that Gentile stories and customs had something to offer because God already spoke in them. Christianity, for Barnabas, seems to have meant a conversion that transformed and recontextualized, rather than erased, a culture. In this story in Acts, we meet Christ in all parts of the world—Christ is not threatened by difference, but is visible in and through it. Hospitality, wherever we find it, is Christ already at work in the world.

I wonder how we might, like Barnabas, look to meet Christ in wherever we wander today.

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^[1] “Zeus went there, disguised as a mortal, and Hermes … setting aside his wings, went with his father…. A thousand houses they approached, looking for a place to rest: a thousand houses were locked and bolted. But one received them: it was humble it is true….” Ovid, Metamorphosis Book VIII (swapping in the Greek for the Roman names of Jupiter and Mercury for clarity)