Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Issachar · Chapter 3
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.
When, therefore, I grew up, my children, I walked in uprightness of heart, and I became a husbandman for my father and my brethren, and I brought in fruits from the field according to their season.
And my father blessed me, for he saw that I walked in rectitude before him.
And I was not a busybody in my doings, nor envious and malicious against my neighbour.
I never slandered any one, nor did I censure the life of any man, walking as I did in singleness of eye.
Therefore, when I was thirty-five years old, I took to myself a wife, for my labour wore away my strength, and I never thought upon pleasure with women; but owing to my toil, sleep overcame me.
And my father always rejoiced in my rectitude, because I offered through the priest to the Lord all first-fruits; then to my father also.