Epistle of Barnabas 12.5

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.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:384

πάλιν Μωϋσῆς ποιεῖ τύπον τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, ὅτι δεῖ αὐτὸν παθεῖν, καὶ αὐτὸς ζωοποιήσει, ὃν δόξουσιν ἀπολωλεκέναι, ἐν σημείῳ πίπτοντος τοῦ Ἰσραήλ, ʽἐποίησεν γὰρ κύριος πάντα ὄφιν δάκνειν αὐτούς, καὶ ἀπέθνησκον ἐπειδὴ ἡ παράβασις διὰ τοῦ ὄφεως ἐν Εὔᾳ ἐγένετοʼ, ἵνα ἐλέγξῃ αὐτούς, ὅτι διὰ τὴν παράβασιν αὐτῶν εἰς θλῖψιν θανάτου παραδοθήσονται.

English · Claude translation

Again Moses makes a type of Jesus, showing that he must suffer, and that the one they will think they have destroyed will himself give life, by a sign when Israel was falling (for the Lord made every kind of snake bite them, and they were dying, since the transgression happened through the serpent in Eve), in order to convince them that because of their transgression they would be handed over to the affliction of death.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 24:384 · 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

Num 21:6 · allusion, high confidence
Gen 3:1 · echo, medium confidence

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (digitization slips: a closing parenthesis mark rendered as an accent, and full stops where the sentence continues): ἐγένετὀ. ἵνα ἐλέγξῃ αὐτούς. ὅτι → ἐγένετοʼ, ἵνα ἐλέγξῃ αὐτούς, ὅτι.

Cite this passage

Barn. 12.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/12/5/).

Plain text

Barn. 12.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/12/5/).