Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Zebulun · Chapter 6
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.
I was the first to make a boat to sail upon the sea, for the Lord gave me understanding and wisdom therein.
And I let down a rudder behind it, and I stretched a sail upon another upright piece of wood in the midst.
And I sailed therein along the shores, catching fish for the house of my father until we came to Egypt.
[And through compassion I shared my catch with every stranger.
And if a man were a stranger, or sick, or aged, I boiled the fish, and dressed them well, and offered them to all men, as every man had need, grieving with and having compassion upon them.
Wherefore also the Lord satisfied me with abundance of fish when catching fish; for he that shareth with his neighbour receiveth manifold more from the Lord.]
For five years I caught fish [and gave thereof to every man whom I saw, and sufficed for all the house of my father].