Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Joseph · Chapter 3
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.
How often did the Egyptian woman threaten me with death! How often did she give me over to punishment,
and then call me back and threaten me, and when I was unwilling to company with her, she said to me: Thou shalt be lord of me, and all that is in my house, if thou wilt give thyself unto me, and thou shalt be as our master.
But I remembered the words of my father, and going into my chamber, I wept and prayed unto the Lord.
And I fasted in those seven years, and I appeared to the Egyptians as one living delicately, for they that fast for God's sake receive beauty of face.
And if my lord were away from home, I drank no wine; nor for three days did I take my food, but I gave it to the poor and sick.
And I sought the Lord early, and I wept for the Egyptian woman of Memphis, for very unceasingly did she trouble me, for also at night she came to me under pretence of visiting me.