Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Issachar · 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 words of Issachar. For he called his sons and said to them: Hearken, my children, to Issachar your father; Give ear to the words of him who is beloved of the Lord.
I was born the fifth son to Jacob, by way of hire for the mandrakes.
For Reuben my brother brought in mandrakes from the field, and Rachel met him and took them.
And Reuben wept, and at his voice Leah my mother came forth.
ow these (mandrakes) were sweet-smelling apples which were produced in the land of Haran below a ravine of water.
And Rachel said: I will not give them to thee, but they shall be to me instead of children. For the Lord hath despised me, and I have not borne children to Jacob.
Now there were two apples; and Leah said to Rachel: Let it suffice thee that thou hast taken my husband: wilt thou take these also?