Epistle of Barnabas 7.8

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 24:366

Καὶ ἐμπτύσατε πάντες καὶ κατακεντήσατε καὶ περίθετε τὸ ἔριον τὸ κόκκινον περὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ, καὶ οὕτως εἰς ἔρημον βληθήτω. καὶ ὅταν γένηται οὕτως, ἄγει ὁ βαστάζων τὸν τράγον εἰς τὴν ἔρημον καὶ ἀφαιρεῖ τὸ ἔριον καὶ ἐπιτίθησιν αὐτὸ ἐπὶ φρύγανον τὸ λεγόμενον ῥαχήλ, οὗ καὶ τοὺς βλαστοὺς εἰώθαμεν τρώγειν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ εὑρίσκοντες· οὕτω μόνης τῆς ῥαχοῦς οἱ καρποὶ γλυκεῖς εἰσιν.

English · Claude translation

“And all of you spit on it and pierce it, and put the scarlet wool around its head, and so let it be driven into the wilderness.” And when this has been done, the one who carries the goat leads it into the wilderness, takes off the wool, and places it on a bush called rachel, whose shoots we are accustomed to eat when we find them in the countryside; so sweet are the fruits of the rachel alone.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 24:366 · 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

Lev 16:10 · allusion, medium confidence
Lev 16:21 · allusion, medium confidence

Notes

Translation notes

These details of the scapegoat rite are not in Leviticus 16; they come from Jewish tradition.
“Rachel”: a thorny bush, perhaps a kind of bramble; the name is otherwise unknown.

Cite this passage

Barn. 7.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/7/8/).

Plain text

Barn. 7.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/7/8/).