Epistle of Barnabas 4.10

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: Do not live in isolation; gather and seek the common good.

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Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:352

φύγωμεν ἀπὸ πάσης ματαιότητος, μισήσωμεν τελείως τὰ ἔργα τῆς πονηρᾶς ὁδοῦ. μὴ καθʼ ἑαυτοὺς ἐνδύνοντες μονάζετε ὡς ἤδη δεδικαιωμένοι, ἀλλʼ ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ συνερχόμενοι συνζητεῖτε περὶ τοῦ κοινῇ συμφέροντος.

English · Claude translation

Let us flee from all vanity; let us utterly hate the works of the evil way. Do not withdraw by yourselves and live alone, as though already justified, but come together and seek together what is for the common good.

About this passage

Source
Lake, LCL 24:352 · 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)
Topics
Ethics

Cite this passage

Barn. 4.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/4/10/).

Plain text
Barn. 4.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/4/10/).

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