Primary source · Koine Greek
The Homilies of Basil
Basil the Great · c. AD 368–378
What this text is
The preacher of Caesarea at full force — on the famine, to the rich, and on the barn-builder of Luke 12: 'the bread you hold back belongs to the hungry.'
Interlinear passages
Word-for-word glosses of the original; the complete public-domain translation is linked below.
The lemma — Luke 12:18 as Basil reads it
καθελῶI will pull downμουmyτὰςtheἀποθήκαςbarnsκαὶandμείζοναςgreater onesοἰκοδομήσωI will build
Public-domain translations
Literal gloss of the Greek (Hom. 6)
The bread you are holding back belongs to the hungry; the coat in your chest to the naked; the shoes rotting in your house to the barefoot; the silver buried in the ground to the needy. You wrong as many as you could help.
Manuscript witnesses
Byzantine homiliary tradition
9th c. onwardThe Hexaemeron, the psalm homilies, and the great social sermons in the liturgical collections.
Patrologia Graeca, vol. 29 (Migne)
1857Standard pre-critical text of the corpus.
Provenance
Caesarea of Cappadocia, c. AD 363–378 — the Hexaemeron and the moral homilies
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Basile de Césarée: Homélies sur l'Hexaéméron (SC 26 bis)Stanislas Giet, 1968Critical edition with French translation.
- Saint Basil: Exegetic Homilies (FOC 46)Agnes Clare Way, 1963Faithful English translation.