Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Judah · Chapter 20
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.
Know, therefore, my children, that two spirits wait upon man the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.
And in the midst is the spirit of understanding of the mind, to which it belongeth to turn whithersoever it will.
And the works of truth and the works of deceit are written upon the hearts of men, and each one of them the Lord knoweth.
And there is no time at which the works of men can be hid; for on the heart itself have they been written down before the Lord.
And the spirit of truth testifieth all things, and accuseth all; and the sinner is burnt up by his own heart, and cannot raise his face to the judge.