Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Judah · Chapter 7
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 the next day it was told us that the king of the city of Gaash with a mighty host was coming against us.
I, therefore, and Dan feigned ourselves to be Amorites, and as allies went into their city.
And in the depth of night our brethren came and we opened to them the gates; and we destroyed all the men and their substance, and we took for a prey all that was theirs, and their three walls we cast down.
And we drew near to Thamna, where was all the substance of the hostile kings.
Then being insulted by them, I was therefore wroth, and rushed against them to the summit; and they kept slinging against me stones and darts.
And had not Dan my brother aided me, they would have slain me.
We came upon them, therefore, with wrath, and they all fled; and passing by another way, they besought my father, and he made peace with them.