Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Issachar · Chapter 5
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.
Keep, therefore, my children, the law of God, And get singleness. And walk in guilelessness, Not playing the busybody with the business of your neighbour,
But love the Lord and your neighbour, Have compassion on the poor and weak.
Bow down your back unto husbandry, And toil in labours in all manner of husbandry, Offering gifts to the Lord with thanksgiving.
For with the first-fruits of the earth will the Lord bless you, even as He blessed all the saints from Abel even until now.
For no other portion is given to you than of the fatness of the earth, whose fruits are raised by toil.
For our father Jacob blessed me with blessings of the earth and of first-fruits.
And Levi and Judah were glorified by the Lord even among the sons of Jacob;