Epistle of Barnabas 10.7

Anonymous · Epistle of Barnabas · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · place unknown · Read in context

Summary: The hyena stands for adulterers and corrupters.

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Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:376

ἀλλὰ οὐδὲ τὴν ὕαιναν φάγῃ· οὐ μή, φησίν, γένῃ μοιχὸς οὐδὲ φθορεὺς οὐδὲ ὁμοιωθήσῃ τοῖς τοιούτοις. πρὸς τί; ὅτι τὸ ζῷον τοῦτο παρʼ ἐνιαυτὸν ἀλλάσσει τὴν φύσιν καὶ ποτὲ μὲν ἄρρεν, ποτὲ δὲ θῆλυ γίνεται.

English · Claude translation

Nor shall you eat the hyena. You shall not, he means, become an adulterer or a corrupter, nor become like such people. Why? Because this animal changes its nature every year, and is sometimes male, sometimes female.

About this passage

Source: Lake, LCL 24:376 · 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.
Topics: Ethics

Notes

Translation notes

The belief that the hyena changes sex is ancient folklore.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (digitization slip against Lake's printed text (missing elision mark)): παρ ἐνιαυτὸν → παρʼ ἐνιαυτὸν.

Cite this passage

Barn. 10.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/10/7/).

Plain text

Barn. 10.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/10/7/).

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