Harvard physicist's take on the VMS

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Among the 15th‑century forgeries, I know the Gospel of Barnabas. Nothing else... And there are no problems with it. “Why wasn’t it made simpler?” — because the author wanted to pass it off as a genuine apocrypha. “Why are there strange discrepancies with the Bible?” — the author knew little about the Bible and may have been a Muslim.

I don't think it is correct to call it a "forgery".  

It is "pseudoepigraphic", that is, it claims to be written by someone else than the true author.  However, on that point, it is no more a forgery than the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.  Rather, it seems to be an attempt to produce a new Gospel that harmonizes contradictions of the four canonical ones and changes some doctrinal points.  Presumably the true author hoped that it would eventually be accepted as the canonical one, replacing the other four.

By the way, "genuine apocrypha" is a bit of an oxymoron, depending on what definition you use...

All the best, --stolfi