Epistle of Barnabas 8.6

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

Summary: Hyssop means healing in evil days.

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Greek text · Lake, LCL 24:370

διὰ τί δὲ ἅμα τὸ ἔριον καὶ τὸ ὕσσωπον; ὅτι ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ ἡμέραι ἔσονται πονηραὶ καὶ ῥυπαραί, ἐν αἷς ἡμεῖς σωθησόμεθα· ὅτι καὶ ὁ ἀλγῶν σάρκα διὰ τοῦ ῥύπου τοῦ ὑσσώπου ἰᾶται.

English · Claude translation

And why the wool and the hyssop together? Because in his kingdom there will be evil and foul days, in which we shall be saved; for the one who suffers in the flesh is healed through the cleansing of the hyssop.

About this passage

Source: Lake, LCL 24:370 · 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.

Notes

Translation notes

“The cleansing of the hyssop” (τοῦ ῥύπου τοῦ ὑσσώπου): literally “the dirt of the hyssop”; the phrase is obscure.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (digitization slip against Lake's printed text (wrong vowel)): ὑσσύπου → ὑσσώπου.

Cite this passage

Barn. 8.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/8/6/).

Plain text

Barn. 8.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/barnabas/8/6/).

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