Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Joseph · 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.
And afterwards she sent me food mingled with enchantments.
And when the eunuch who brought it came, I looked up and beheld a terrible man giving me with the dish a sword, and I perceived that (her) scheme was to beguile me.
And when he had gone out I wept, nor did I taste that or any other of her food.
So then after one day she came to me and observed the food, and said unto me: Why is it that thou hast not eaten of the food?
And I said unto her: It is because thou hast filled it with deadly enchantments; and how saidst thou: I come not near to idols, but to the Lord alone.
Now therefore know that the God of my father hath revealed unto me by His angel thy wickedness, and I have kept it to convict thee, if haply thou mayst see and repent.