One of the finest Byzantine works produced in West Asia, and one of the earliest Christian manuscripts with large miniatures, it is distinguished by the miniaturist's predilection for bright colours, movement, drama, and expressionism.

Recent scholarship has suggested that the manuscript, completed in 586 AD, was later partly overpainted by restorers and bound together with miniatures from other sources in the 15th or 16th century.

The miniatures of the Rabbula Gospels, notably those representing the Crucifixion, the Ascension and Pentecost, are full-page pictures with a decorative frame formed of zigzags, curves, rainbows and so forth.

There is a miniature of the Apostles choosing a new twelfth member (after the loss of Judas); this is not an event found in the Canonical Gospels (though it is mentioned in Chapter 1 of Acts) and is almost never seen in later art.

The artist was trained in the classical illusionist tradition, and is a competent and practiced hand rather than an outstanding talent; but surviving images from this period are so rare that his are extremely valuable for showing the style and iconography of his age.

The French Orientalist Edgard Blochet (1870–1937) argued that some of the folios of the manuscript, including the pictorial series, were an interpolation no earlier than the 10th or 11th century.