Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Levi · Chapter 9
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 after two days I and Judah went up with our father Jacob to Isaac our father's father.
And my father's father blessed me according to all the words of the visions which I had seen. And he would not come with us to Bethel.
And when we came to Bethel, my father saw a vision concerning me, that I should be their priest unto God.
And he rose up early in the morning, and paid tithes of all to the Lord through me.
And so we came to Hebron to dwell there.
And Isaac called me continually to put me in remembrance of the law of the Lord, even as the angel of the Lord showed unto me
And he taught me the law of the priesthood, of sacrifices, whole burnt-offerings, first-fruits, freewill-offerings, peace-offerings.