Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Simeon · Chapter 4
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 my father asked Concerning me, because he saw that I was sad; and I said unto him, I am pained in my liver.
For I mourned more than they all, because I was guilty of the selling of Joseph.
And when we went down into Egypt, and he bound me as a spy, I knew that I was suffering justly, and I grieved not.
Now Joseph was a good man, and had the Spirit of God within him: being compassionate and pitiful, he bore no malice against me; but loved me even as the rest of his brethren.
Beware, therefore, my children, of all jealousy and envy, and walk in singleness of soul and with good heart, keeping in mind Joseph your father's brother, that God may give you also grace and glory, and blessing upon your heads, even as ye saw in Joseph's case.
All his days he reproached us not concerning this thing, but loved us as his own soul, and beyond his own sons glorified us, and gave us riches, and cattle and fruits.