Epistle of Barnabas 10.3

Summary: The pig stands for people who remember God only in need.

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Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:374

τὸ οὖν χοιρίον πρὸς τοῦτο εἶπεν· οὐ κολληθήσῃ φησίν, ἀνθρώποις τοιούτοις, οἵτινές εἰσιν ὅμοιοι χοίρων· τουτέστιν ὅταν σπαταλῶσιν, ἐπιλανθάνονται τοῦ κυρίου, ὅταν δὲ ὑστεροῦνται, ἐπιγινώσκουσιν τὸν κύριον, ὡς καὶ ὁ χοῖρος ὅταν τρώγει τὸν κύριον οὐκ οἶδεν, ὅταν δὲ πεινᾷ κραυγάζει, καὶ λαβὼν πάλιν σιωπᾷ.

English · Claude translation

So he mentioned the pig for this reason: you shall not cling, he means, to people who are like pigs; that is, when they live in luxury they forget the Lord, but when they are in want they acknowledge the Lord, just as the pig, when it eats, does not know its master, but when it is hungry it cries out, and when it has received food it is silent again.

About this passage

Source
Lake, LCL 24:374 · 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
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.

Cite this passage

Barn. 10.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/10/3/).

Plain text
Barn. 10.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/10/3/).

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