Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Judah · Chapter 10
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 after these things my son Er took to wife Tamar, from Mesopotamia, a daughter of Aram.
Now Er was wicked, and he was in need concerning Tamar, because she was not of the land of Canaan. And on the third night an angel of the Lord smote him.
And he had not known her according to the evil craftiness of his mother, for he did not wish to have children by her.
In the days of the wedding-feast I gave Onan to her in marriage;
and he also in wickedness knew her not, though he spent with her a year.
And when I threatened him he went in unto her, but he spilled the seed on the ground, according to the command of his mother, and he also died through wickedness.
And I wished to give Shelah also to her, but his mother did not permit it; for she wrought evil against Tamar, because she was not of the daughters of Canaan, as she also herself was.