Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Naphtali · Chapter 1
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.
The copy of the testament of Naphtali, which he ordained at the time of his death in the hundred and thirtieth year of his life.
When his sons were gathered together in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, while still in good health, he made them a feast of food and wine.
And after he was awake in the morning, he said to them, I am dying; and they believed him not.
And as he glorified the Lord, he grew strong and said that after yesterday's feast he should die.
And he began then to say: Hear, my children, ye sons of Naphtali, hear the words of your father.
I was born from Bilhah, and because Rachel dealt craftily, and gave Bilhah in place of herself to Jacob, and she conceived and bare me upon Rachel's knees, therefore she called my name Naphtali.