Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Dan · Chapter 6
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.
And now, fear the Lord, my children, and beware of Satan and his spirits.
Draw near unto God and unto the angel that intercedeth for you, for he is a mediator between God and man, and for the peace of Israel he shall stand up against the kingdom of the enemy.
Therefore is the enemy eager to destroy all that call upon the Lord.
For he knoweth that upon the day on which Israel shall repent, the kingdom of the enemy shall be brought to an end.
For the very angel of peace shall strengthen Israel, that it fall not into the extremity of evil. And it shall be in the time of the lawlessness of Israel, that the Lord will not depart from them, but will transform them into a nation that doeth His will, for none of the angels will be equal unto him. And His name shall be in every place in Israel, and among the Gentiles.
Keep, therefore, yourselves, my children, from every evil work, And cast away wrath and all lying, And love truth and long-suffering.