Epistle of Barnabas 13.3

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: Understand the meaning of Isaac and Rebecca.

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Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:388

αἰσθάνεσθαι ὀφείλετε, τίς ὁ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ τίς ἡ Ῥεβέκκα, καὶ ἐπὶ τίνων δέδειχεν, ὅτι μείζων ὁ λαὸς οὗτος ἢ ἐκεῖνος.

English · Claude translation

You ought to understand who Isaac is and who Rebecca is, and concerning whom he has shown that this people is greater than that one.

About this passage

Source: Lake, LCL 24:388 · 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)

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (punctuation slip in the digital text (the sentence continues)): ἡ Ῥεβέκκα. καὶ ἐπὶ → ἡ Ῥεβέκκα, καὶ ἐπὶ.

Cite this passage

Barn. 13.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/13/3/).

Plain text

Barn. 13.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/13/3/).

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