Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Issachar · 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.
Know ye therefore, my children, that in the last times Your sons will forsake singleness, And will cleave unto insatiable desire; And leaving guilelessness will draw near to malice; And forsaking the commandments of the Lord, They will cleave unto Beliar.
And leaving husbandry, They will follow after their own wicked devices, And they shall be dispersed among the Gentiles. And shall serve their enemies.
And do you therefore give these commands to your children, that, if they sin, they may the more quickly return to the Lord;
For He is merciful, and will deliver them, even to bring them back into their land.