Epistle of Barnabas 14.3

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.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:390

καὶ εἶπεν κύριος πρὸς Μωϋσῆν· Μωϋσῆ Μωϋσῆ, κατάβηθι τὸ τάχος, ὅτι ὁ λαός σου, ὃν ἐξήγαγες ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου, ἠνόμησεν. καὶ συνῆκεν Μωϋσῆς, ὅτι ἐποίησαν ἑαυτοῖς πάλιν χωνεύματα, καὶ ἔρριψεν ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν, καὶ συνετρίβησαν αἱ πλάκες τῆς διαθήκης κυρίου.

English · Claude translation

And the Lord said to Moses, “Moses, Moses, go down quickly, for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt has acted lawlessly.” And Moses understood that they had again made themselves molten images, and he threw them out of his hands, and the tablets of the covenant of the Lord were broken.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 24:390 · 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

Exod 32:7 · allusion, high confidence
Exod 32:19 · allusion, high confidence
Deut 9:12 · allusion, high confidence
Deut 9:17 · allusion, medium confidence

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (punctuation slip in the digital text (a quotation follows); punctuation slip in the digital text (the sentence continues)): πρὸς Μωϋσῆν. Μωϋσῆ → πρὸς Μωϋσῆν· Μωϋσῆ; Αἰγύπτου. ἠνόμησεν → Αἰγύπτου, ἠνόμησεν.

Cite this passage

Barn. 14.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/14/3/).

Plain text

Barn. 14.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/14/3/).