For centuries, the lost Jewish-Christian dialogue Jason and Papiscus was known only through various quotations and summaries from Patristic sources. This changed in 2011 with the publication of a newly discovered, large fragment of Jason and Papiscus known as the Sinaiticus fragment. The current article examines the Sinaiticus fragment, compares it to the previously known remnants of Jason and Papiscus and examines the information from the fragment in relation to other texts. Several important new observations are obtained as a result. This article—for the first time—unites the Sinaiticus fragment with all of the Patristic material related to Jason and Papiscus in one appendix, with all entries newly translated by the author with updated notes. This article also contains new digital images of the Sinaiticus fragment.

Scholars have not yet expounded on the importance and rationale of a key metaphor found in the Epistle of Barnabas: the circumcision of hearing (Barn. 9.1–3). In part, that is because the significance of this metaphor does not directly contribute to the theological outlook or background of Barnabas, which are topics that have largely preoccupied Barnabas scholarship. Yet, not only is this metaphor significant, but its significance lies in its social and communal implications. To explore these implications, I draw upon interdisciplinary research on canon and ritual. Research in these areas has independently demonstrated that canon and ritual are fundamental elements of any group, and I employ theoretical tools from these research areas to explain how Barnabas attempts to create and/or sustain his group by offering a new canon (or canonical interpretation) that could only be understood through the circumcision of hearing. Owing to the theoretical richness of canon and ritual, my study can also serve as a methodological template to examine the dynamics of other communal groups.

Although interpreters refer to the association between blackness and evil in ancient texts as essentially universal, specific reference by Christians to the counter-divine with the colour epithet ὁ μέλας is new with the Epistle of Barnabas. Black is applied as an honorific to certain Egyptian deities, but it is never used in Egyptian religion with reference to the counter-divine. Furthermore, black demons proliferate in late third- and fourth-century Egyptian monastic texts, but these witnesses postdate Barnabas. The first explicit reference to the devil as black after Barnabas is in Didymus the Blind, who interprets the reference as ‘Ethiopian’. Exploring the origin and background of this nickname for the counter-divine, this essay argues that Didymus accurately apprehends Barnabas’ intention: namely, that ‘the Black One’ does not merely reflect the universal association of blackness and evil in Roman antiquity, but, rather it reflects the appropriation of an ethnic stereotype in an apocalyptic context with distinctly anti-imperial resonances.