Epistle of Barnabas 8.1

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: The red heifer rite is a type of the cross.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:368

Τίνα δὲ δοκεῖτε τύπον εἶναι, ὅτι ἐντέταλται τῷ Ἰσραὴλ προσφέρειν δάμαλιν τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἐν οἷς εἰσὶν ἁμαρτίαι τέλειαι, καὶ σφάξαντας κατακαίειν, καὶ αἴρειν τότε τὴν σποδὸν παιδία καὶ βάλλειν εἰς ἄγγη καὶ περιτιθέναι τὸ ἔριον τὸ κόκκινον ἐπὶ ξύλον ʽἴδε πάλιν ὁ τύπος ὁ τοῦ σταυροῦ καὶ τὸ ἔριον τὸ κόκκινονʼ καὶ τὸ ὕσσωπον, καὶ οὕτως ῥαντίζειν τὰ παιδία καθʼ ἕνα τὸν λαόν, ἵνα ἁγνίζωνται ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν;

English · Claude translation

And what do you think is the type in this, that Israel was commanded that men in whom sins are complete should offer a heifer, and slaughter and burn it, and that then children should take the ashes and put them into vessels, and tie the scarlet wool and the hyssop on a stick (see again the type of the cross and the scarlet wool), and so the children should sprinkle the people one by one, so that they might be purified from their sins?

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 24:368 · 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 19:2 · allusion, high confidence
Num 19:9 · allusion, medium confidence
Num 19:18 · allusion, medium confidence
Heb 9:13 · echo, medium confidence

Cite this passage

Barn. 8.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/8/1/).

Plain text

Barn. 8.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/8/1/).