Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Asher · Chapter 1
About this work
A collection of farewell discourses attributed to the twelve sons of Jacob, combining ethical exhortation, autobiographical retelling, and eschatological material. The transmitted text preserves Jewish traditions alongside Christian material or interpolation, and its compositional history remains debated.
- Author
- Anonymous
- Date
- Second Temple Jewish material; transmitted form includes later Christian elements.
- Origin
- Unknown
- Genre
- Testamentary Literature / Pseudepigrapha
- Textual language
- Greek textual tradition; earlier sources and layers are debated.
- Translator
- R. H. Charles
- Translation / Edition
- R. H. Charles translation, first published 1908.
The copy of the Testament of Asher, what things he spake to his sons in the hundred and twenty-fifth year of his life.
For while he was still in health, he said to them: Hearken, ye children of Asher, to your father, and I will declare to you all that is upright in the sight of the Lord.
Two ways hath God given to the sons of men, and two inclinations, and two kinds of action, and two modes (of action), and two issues.
Therefore all things are by twos, one over against the other.
For there are two ways of good and evil, and with these are the two inclinations in our breasts discriminating them.
Therefore if the soul take pleasure in the good (inclination), all its actions are in righteousness; and if it sin it straightway repenteth.