Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Gad · Chapter 8
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.
Do ye also therefore tell these things to your children, that they honour Judah and Levi, for from them shall the Lord raise up salvation to Israel.
For I know that at the last your children shall depart from Him, and shall walk in O wickedness, and affliction and corruption before the Lord.
And when he had rested for a little while, he said again; My children, obey your father, and bury me near to my fathers.
And he drew up his feet, and fell asleep in peace.
And after five years they carried him up to Hebron, and laid him with his fathers.