Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Levi · Chapter 16
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 now I have learnt that for seventy weeks ye shall go astray, and profane the priesthood, and pollute the sacrifices.
And ye shall make void the law, and set at nought the words of the prophets by evil perverseness. And ye shall persecute righteous men, and hate the godly the words of the faithful shall ye abhor.
And your holy places shall be laid waste even to the ground because of him.
And ye shall have no place that is clean; but ye shall be among the Gentiles a curse and a dispersion until He shall again visit you and in pity shall receive you.