Sophia Scriptura

Epistle of Barnabas 10.1

Anonymous · Epistle of Barnabas · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · place unknown · Read in context

Traditional ascription rejected: The letter names no author. From Clement of Alexandria (late second century) onward it was ascribed to Barnabas, Paul's companion (Acts 4:36), but its date and its hostility to Jewish practice make that unlikely; modern scholars treat it as anonymous.

Summary: Moses' food laws contain three moral teachings.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:374

Ὅτι δὲ Μωϋσῆς εἶπεν· Οὐ φάγεσθε χοῖρον οὔτε ἀετὸν οὔτε ὀξύπτερον οὔτε κόρακα οὔτε πάντα ἰχθύν, ὃς οὐκ ἔχει λεπίδα ἐν ἑαυτῷ, τρία ἔλαβεν ἐν τῇ συνέσει δόγματα.

English · Claude translation

Now when Moses said, “You shall not eat pig, nor eagle, nor hawk, nor crow, nor any fish that has no scales on it,” he received in his understanding three teachings.

About this passage

Source
Lake, LCL 24:374 · Kirsopp Lake, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, LCL 24 (London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1912), 340–407 · Greek text: K. Lake, The Apostolic Fathers (LCL, 1912), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0
Text
As printed in Lake, LCL 24. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.
Translation
Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-26 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Lake (LCL 24, 1912); made independently of existing English translations.
Compare
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)
Scripture

Notes

Translation notes

  • Chapter 10 reads the Jewish food laws as moral allegories: each unclean animal stands for a kind of person to avoid. The natural history is that of ancient popular belief.

Cite this passage

Barn. 10.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/10/1/).

Plain text
Barn. 10.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/10/1/).

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