Epistle of Barnabas 12.7

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

ἐλθόντες οὖν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐδέοντο Μωϋσέως, ἵνα περὶ αὐτῶν ἀνενέγκῃ δέησιν περὶ τῆς ἰάσεως αὐτῶν. εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς αὐτοὺς Μωϋσῆς· Ὅταν, φησίν, δηχθῇ τις ὑμῶν, ἐλθέτω ἐπὶ τὸν ὄφιν τὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ ξύλου ἐπικείμενον καὶ ἐλπισάτω πιστεύσας, ὅτι αὐτὸς ὢν νεκρὸς δύναται ζωοποιῆσαι, καὶ παραχρῆμα σωθήσεται. καὶ οὕτως ἐποίουν. ἔχεις πάλιν καὶ ἐν τούτοις τὴν δόξαν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα καὶ εἰς αὐτόν.

English · Claude translation

So they came together and begged Moses to offer a prayer for them, for their healing. And Moses said to them, “When,” he says, “any of you is bitten, let him come to the serpent that is placed on the tree, and let him hope, believing that though it is dead it can give life, and he will be saved at once.” And so they did. Again you have in these things also the glory of Jesus, that all things are in him and for him.

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 21:7 · allusion, high confidence
Num 21:8 · allusion, high confidence
John 3:14 · echo, medium confidence
Col 1:16 · echo, medium confidence

Topics

Christology

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (digitization slip against Lake's printed text (wrong diacritic); punctuation slip in the digital text (the sentence continues)): ἐδέοντο Μωῦσέως → ἐδέοντο Μωϋσέως; φησίν. δηχθῇ → φησίν, δηχθῇ.

Cite this passage

Barn. 12.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/12/7/).

Plain text

Barn. 12.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/12/7/).