Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Zebulun · Chapter 8
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.
Have, therefore, yourselves also, my children, compassion towards every man with mercy, that the Lord also may have compassion and mercy upon you.
Because also in the last days God will send His compassion on the earth, and wheresoever He findeth bowels of mercy He dwelleth in him.
For in the degree in which a man hath compassion upon his neighbours, in the same degree hath the Lord also upon him.]
And when we went down into Egypt, Joseph bore no malice against us.
To whom taking heed, do ye also, my children, approve yourselves without malice, and love one another; and do not set down in account, each one of you, evil against his brother.
For this breaketh unity and divideth all kindred, and troubleth the soul, and weareth away the countenance.