Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Judah · Chapter 18
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 I know what evils ye will do in the last days.]
Beware, therefore, my children, of fornication, and the love of money, and hearken to Judah your father.
For these things withdraw you from the law of God, And blind the inclination of the soul, And teach arrogance, And suffer not a man to have compassion upon his neighbour.
They rob his soul of all goodness, And oppress him with toils and troubles, And drive away sleep from him, And devour his flesh.
And he hindereth the sacrifices of God; And he remembereth not the blessing of God, He hearkeneth not to a prophet when he speaketh, And resenteth the words of godliness.
For he is a slave to two contrary passions, And cannot obey God, Because they have blinded his soul, And he walketh in the day as in the night.