Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Judah · Chapter 6
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 when I was at the waters of Kozeba, the men of Jobel came against us to battle.
And we fought with them and routed them; and their allies from Shiloh we slew, and we did not leave them power to come in against us.
And the men of Makir came upon us the fifth day, to seize our spoil; and we attacked them and overcame them in fierce battle: for there was a host of mighty men amongst them, and we slew them before they had gone up the ascent.
And when we came to their city their women rolled upon us stones from the brow of the hill on which the city stood,
And I and Simeon hid ourselves behind the town, and seized upon the heights, and destroyed this city also.