Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Levi · Chapter 10
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.
Now, therefore, observe whatsoever I command you, children: for whatsoever things I have heard from my fathers I have declared unto you.
And behold I am clear from your ungodliness and transgression, which ye shall commit in the end of the ages, deceiving Israel, and stirring up against it great evils from the Lord.
And ye shall deal lawlessly together with Israel, so He shall not bear with Jerusalem because of your wickedness; but the veil of the temple shall be rent, so as not to cover your shame.
And ye shall be scattered as captives among the Gentiles, and shall be for a reproach and for a curse there.
For the house which the Lord shall choose shall be called Jerusalem, as is contained in the book of Enoch the righteous.