Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Joseph · Chapter 7
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.
But her heart was still set upon evil, and she looked around how to ensnare me,
and sighing deeply she became downcast, though she was not sick. And when her husband saw her, he said unto her: Why is thy countenance fallen? And she said unto him: I have a pain at my heart, and the groanings of my spirit oppress me; and so he comforted her who was not sick.
Then, accordingly seizing an opportunity, she rushed unto me while her husband was yet without, and said unto me:
I will hang myself, or cast myself over a cliff, if thou wilt not lie with me.
And when I saw the spirit of Beliar was troubling her, I prayed unto the Lord, and said unto her:
Why, wretched woman, art thou troubled and disturbed, blinded through, sins? Remember that if thou kill thyself, Asteho, the concubine of thy husband, thy rival, will beat thy children, and thou wilt destroy thy memorial from off the earth.