Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Joseph · Chapter 14
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.
Now the Memphian woman was looking through a window at me while I was being beaten, for her house was near, and she sent unto him saying: Thy judgement is unjust; for thou dost punish a free man who hath been stolen, as though he were a transgressor.
And when I made no change in my statement, though I was beaten, he ordered me to be imprisoned, until, he said, the owners of the boy should come.
And the woman said unto her husband: Wherefore dost thou detain the captive and well-born lad in bonds, who ought rather to be set at liberty, and be waited upon?
For she wished to see me out of a desire of sin, but I was ignorant concerning all these things.
And he said to her: It is not the custom of the Egyptians to take that which belongeth to others before proof is given.
This, therefore, he said concerning the merchant; but as for the lad, he must be imprisoned.