Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Levi · Chapter 5
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 thereupon the angel opened to me the gates of heaven, and I saw the holy temple, and upon a throne of glory the Most High.
And He said to me: Levi, I have given thee the blessings of the priesthood until I come and sojourn in the midst of Israel.
Then the angel brought me down to the earth, and gave me a shield and a sword, and said to me: Execute vengeance on Shechem because of Dinah, thy sister, and I will be with thee because the Lord hath sent me.
And I destroyed at that time the sons of Hamor, as it is written in the heavenly tables.
And I said to him: I pray thee, O Lord, tell me Thy name, that I may call upon Thee in a day of tribulation.
And he said: I am the angel who intercedeth for the nation of Israel that they may not be smitten utterly, for every evil spirit attacketh it.