Epistle of Barnabas 5.10

Summary: Christ came in the flesh because no one could look on his glory directly.

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Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:356

εἰ γὰρ μὴ ἦλθεν ἐν σαρκί, οὐδʼ ἄν πως οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἐσώθησαν βλέποντες αὐτόν, ὅτε τὸν μέλλοντα μὴ εἶναι ἥλιον, ἔργου τῶν χειρῶν αὐτοῦ ὑπάρχοντα, ἐμβλέποντες οὐκ ἰσχύουσιν εἰς τὰς ἀκτῖνας αὐτοῦ ἀντοφθαλμῆσαι·

English · Claude translation

For if he had not come in the flesh, how could people have been saved by looking at him? For when they look at the sun, which will cease to exist and is the work of his hands, they cannot gaze directly into its rays.

About this passage

Source
Lake, LCL 24:356 · 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
Christology

Cite this passage

Barn. 5.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/5/10/).

Plain text
Barn. 5.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/5/10/).

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