Sophia Scriptura

Epistle of Barnabas 12.6

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 made the bronze serpent as a type of Jesus.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:384

πέρας γέ τοι αὐτὸς Μωϋσῆς ἐντειλάμενος· Οὐκ ἔσται ὑμῖν οὔτε χωνευτὸν οὔτε γλυπτὸν εἰς θεὸν ὑμῖν. αὐτὸς ποιεῖ, ἵνα τύπον τοῦ Ἰησοῦ δείξῃ. ποιεῖ οὖν Μωϋσῆς χαλκοῦν ὄφιν καὶ τίθησιν ἐνδόξως καὶ κηρύγματι καλεῖ τὸν λαόν.

English · Claude translation

Indeed, though Moses himself commanded, “You shall have neither a molten nor a carved image for your god,” he himself makes one, in order to show a type of Jesus. So Moses makes a bronze serpent and sets it up gloriously and calls the people by proclamation.

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

Cite this passage

Barn. 12.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/12/6/).

Plain text
Barn. 12.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/12/6/).

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