Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Judah · Chapter 15
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.
He that committeth fornication is not aware when he suffers loss, and is not ashamed when put to dishonour.
For even though a man be a king and commit fornication, he is stripped of his kingship by becoming the slave of fornication, as I myself also suffered.
For I gave my staff, that is, the stay of my tribe; and my girdle, that is, my power; and my diadem, that is, the glory of my kingdom.
And indeed I repented of these things; wine and flesh I eat not until my old age, nor did I behold any joy.
And the angel of God showed me that for ever do women bear rule over king and beggar alike.
And from the king they take away his glory, and from the valiant man his might, and from the beggar even that little which is the stay of his poverty.