Sophia Scriptura

Fragments (not preserved in Eusebius)

Fragmenta · Μελίτωνος ἀποσπάσματα

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Contents

These are only the fragments of Melito not already on this site. The preface to the Extracts and the passages from the Apology are in Eusebius, Church History 4.26. Melito's On Pascha is not on this site.

  1. 1Christ's signs after his baptism showed his hidden Godhead, and his thirty years before it showed his true manhood; he is one person with two essences.
  2. 2Isaac, bound and silent on the wood, was a type of the suffering Christ; the ram slain in his place ransomed him, as the Lord slain ransomed us.
  3. 3The ram caught in the Sabek tree prefigures the Lord on the cross at Jerusalem; as Sabek means remission, so Ezekiel's water of remission prefigures baptism, and martyrdom and baptism both bring remission of sins.

About this work

Author
Melito of Sardis
Attribution
authentic · Fragments quoted by later writers, some from works whose attribution is traditional.
Standing
Honoured by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by: Catholic, Orthodox.
Date
ca. 160-180 (approximate)
Written at
Sardis, Lydia (probable)
Language
Greek
Genre
other
Reference system
fragment number, in the order of Routh's printing
SBL abbreviation
Frag.Not yet checked
Clavis
CPG number not yet checked
Text from
M. J. Routh, ed., Reliquiae Sacrae, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1846) (Printed edition in the public domain; Tesseract OCR of a public-domain scan (Internet Archive))