Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Joseph · Chapter 2
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.
And this chief captain of Pharaoh entrusted to me his house. And I struggled against a shameless woman, urging me to transgress with her; but the God of Israel my father delivered me from the burning flame.
I was cast into prison, I was beaten, I was mocked; but the Lord granted me to find mercy in the sight of the keeper of the prison.
For the Lord doth not forsake them that fear Him, Neither in darkness, nor in bonds, nor in tribulations, nor in necessities.
For God is not put to shame as a man, Nor as the son of man is he afraid, Nor as one that is earth-born is He [weak or] affrighted.
But in all those things doth He give protection, And in divers ways doth He comfort, (Though) for a little space He departeth to try the inclination of the soul.
In ten temptations He showed me approved, And in all of them I endured;