Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Joseph · Chapter 17
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.
Ye see, therefore, my children, what great things I endured that I should not put my brethren to shame.
Do ye also, therefore love one another, and with long-suffering hide ye one another's faults.
For God delighteth in the unity of brethren, and in the purpose of a heart that takes pleasure in love.
And when my brethren came into Egypt they learnt that I had returned their money unto them, and upbraided them not, and comforted them.
And after the death of Jacob my father I loved them more abundantly, and all things whatsoever he commanded I did very abundantly for them,
And I suffered them not to be afflicted in the smallest matter;
and all that was in my hand I gave unto them. And their children were my children, and my children as their servants; and their life was my life, and all their suffering was my suffering, and all their sickness was my infirmity. My land was their land, and their counsel my counsel.