Letter 200

Nilus of AncyraThyrsus|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted

To Thyrsus the Scriniarius [an official keeper of records, a scriniarius].

"He shall go in," says the law, "to his brother's wife, and shall raise up seed" [Deuteronomy 25:5, the law of levirate marriage]. For every man, or rather every soul of a man, having received from God a spiritual husband -- that is, the innate law -- put him to death and buried him through negligence. Therefore out of necessity it called upon this man's brother, that is, the written law, to go in to the wife of the natural law, who had been left a widow by death, and to raise up seed for him who had perished through much sloth.

AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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

« Εἰσελεύσεται, φησὶν νόμος, πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, καὶ ἀναστήσει σπέρμα. » Πᾶς γὰρ ἄνθρωπος, ἤτοι πᾶσα ψυχὴ ἀνθρώπου ἄνδρα νοητὸν λαβοῦσα παρὰ Θεοῦ, δηλαδή τὸν ἐνδιάθετον νόμον, ἐνέκρωσε τοῦτον, καὶ ἔθαψε διὰ τῆς ἀμελείας. Ὅθεν χρείᾳ ἐκάλεσε τὸν τούτου ἀδελφόν, τουτέστι τὸ γραπτὸν νόμον εἰσελθεῖν πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ νόμου τοῦ φυσικοῦ, ὅστις ἀπενεκρώθη, καὶ ἐξαναστήσῃ σπέρμα τῷ τελευτηκότι διὰ νωθρίας πολλῆς.

Revision history

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

    Initial corpus import from modern nilus ancyra workflow v1.

    Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: project source import

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