Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Zebulun · 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.
Observe, therefore, the waters, and know when they flow together, they sweep along stones, trees, earth, and other things.
But if they are divided into many streams, the earth swalloweth them up, and they vanish away.
So shall ye also be if ye be divided.
Be not ye, therefore, divided into two heads, for everything which the Lord made hath but one head, and two shoulders, two hands, two feet, and all the remaining members.
For I have learnt in the writing of my fathers, that Ye shall be divided in Israel, And ye shall follow two kings, And shall work every abomination....
And your enemies shall lead you captive, And ye shall be evil entreated among the Gentiles, With many infirmities and tribulations.
And after these things ye shall remember the Lord, and repent, [And He shall cause you to return]; for He is merciful and compassionate. And He setteth not down in account evil to the sons of men, because they are flesh, And the spirits of deceit deceive them in all their deeds.