Letter 47: The knowledge of God feeds others and grows by being shared.

Evagrius PonticusUnknown priest, correspondent of Evagrius Ponticus|c. 390 AD|Evagrius Ponticus|From Kellia, Egypt|AI-assisted
Evagrius Ponticus; priesthood; knowledge of God; wisdom; mercy; teaching; bread; poor
Recipient identification follows the Evagrius CPG 2437 parallel edition where named; uncertain labels are recorded conservatively. Source text is Frankenberg's Greek retroversion from the Syriac transmission, licensed CC BY 4.0; source Syriac length 334 chars, Greek retroversion length 492 chars.

You have a treasure, and you are not feeding us. Instead, you have hidden your water jar from us. Tell us what we should think about the Scripture that says, "The spirit of wisdom loves humanity," or how the psalm's saying fits: "All day long the righteous person shows mercy and lends."

I know that the knowledge of God feeds others and is itself fed; when it gives, it receives. So break your bread for the hungry, and bring the poor who have no shelter into your house. The one who entrusted you with the gift of priesthood commands you to do this with your whole soul.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.

Latin / Greek Original

Greek retroversion from Syriac transmission (Frankenberg 1912, TAN/TEI CC BY 4.0):

υπαρχει σοι θησαυρος και ου τρεφεις ημας αλλα αφ' ημων την υδριαν σου αποκεκρυφας· και τι φρονωμεν ειπε ημιν περι του γεγραμμενου οτι φιλανθρωπον πνευμα σοφιας η πως αρμοζει το ειρημενον εν ψαλμωι οτι ολην την ημεραν ελεαι ο δικαιος και δανιζει ; εγω οιδα οτι η θεου γνωσις τρεφουσα τρεφεται και οταν διδωι λαμβανει· διαθρυπτε τοινυν πεινωντι τον αρτον σου και πτωχους αστεγους εισαγε εις τον οικον σου ο γαρ σοι το δομα της ιερωσυνης επιτρεψας ποιειν σε τουτο απο πασης της ψυχης σου κελευει

Syriac transmission available in the linked TAN/TEI source. The complete corpus is Syriac-transmitted; Greek survives only fragmentarily, so this display text is a retroversion witness.

Revision history

  1. 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import

    Initial corpus import from modern evagrius ponticus tan tei 33 62 v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Arithmeticus/TAN-Evagrius/master/cpg2437/cpg2437.syr.1912.frankenberg.xml

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