Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Asher · Chapter 7
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.
Become not, my children, as Sodom, which sinned against the angels of the Lord, and perished for ever.
For I know that ye shall sin, and be delivered into the hands of your enemies; and your land shall be made desolate, and your holy places destroyed, and ye shall be scattered unto the four corners of the earth. And ye shall be set at nought in the dispersion vanishing away as water.
Until the Most High shall visit the earth, coming Himself and breaking the head of the dragon in the water. He shall save Israel and all the Gentiles
Therefore do ye also, my children, tell these things to your children, that they disobey Him not.
For I have known that ye shall assuredly be disobedient, and assuredly act ungodly, not giving heed to the law of God, but to the commandments of men, being corrupted through wickedness.
And therefore shall ye be scattered as Gad and Dan my brethren, and ye shall know not your lands, tribe, and tongue.