Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

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The wills of the twelve patriarchs are a pseudepigraphic script. It is conceived as farewell speeches by the twelve sons of Jacob , who are considered to be the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel . In its final form it is Christian and can be dated to the third century.

Sources and tradition

The patriarchal wills are only preserved in medieval manuscripts . The best text quality is still offered by the Greek manuscripts, but research has given them different ratings. There are critical editions of texts by Charles and de Jonge (see below).

In addition to the Greek tradition, there are translations into Armenian, Slavic and modern Greek. Today, these versions are generally regarded as side lines that depend on Greek tradition and that have only limited value for the reconstruction of any original text.

Assumptions of a Semitic (ie here: Aramaic or Hebrew) original have not been able to establish themselves in science, even if this cannot be ruled out. Mostly, however, one starts from a basic Greek script that can be assigned to Hellenistic Judaism .

Notwithstanding this, there is a Hebrew testament Naphtali , the Midrash Wayissa'u and passages in the Book of Jubilees that show a connection with the patriarchal wills . However, they are not to be evaluated as a template.

The situation is different with the Aramaic Levi Document , fragments of which were found in the Cairo Geniza and in Qumran . Parts of it can sometimes be found literally in the patriarchal wills. However, it cannot be determined to what extent the Aramaic Levi document itself was a “will”, or whether it was only used in part by the authors of the patriarchal wills.

Emergence

There is some scientific dispute about its origins. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, based on RH Charles, the theory prevailed that the wills of the twelve patriarchs were originally Jewish scripts from the Maccabees , which were later revised by Christian additions (interpolations) . The main witness of this theory is the Armenian version, which has far fewer Christian passages than the Greek witnesses.

From the middle of the 20th century this view was increasingly questioned. In his dissertation from 1953 M. de Jonge published his thesis that there is no basic script, but that the patriarchal wills were created by a Christian editing of Jewish material. This line of argument was intended to provide evidence of the thesis that the high priority given to the Armenian text documents was not justified.

Although this is also admitted by other researchers, they do not share the conclusions drawn from it. New attempts were made by Hultgård, Becker and, most recently, Ulrichsen to defend the interpolation theory and to reconstruct a basic Jewish script based solely on the Greek witnesses. In addition to text- critical arguments , especially literary-critical arguments are brought into the field, which had already brought Schnapp to an interpolation theory independent of Charles.

But this method was also fundamentally called into question, not least because of the very different basic scripts that were reconstructed through it. So it was only a matter of time before a draft for a synchronous interpretation of the testaments of the twelve patriarchs was presented, in which the juxtaposition of Jewish and Christian passages is not viewed as the result of interpolation or editing, but as an intended unity. According to this, the patriarchal wills would be a Jewish Christian script that consciously tries to combine the Jewish and the Christian.

Form and content

The wills of the twelve patriarchs are typical farewell speeches as we know them from biblical literature. They begin with the description that the patriarchs gather their relatives around them at the hour of their death in order to give them a final warning on the way, and end accordingly with the announcement of death and a short note about their funeral.

Typically, the ancestor's speech begins with a review of his or her life. A tendency, typical of pseudepigraphic literature, to fill in the gaps within the biblical narrative material can be seen here. So Reuben unfolds the story with Bilha, his father's concubine; Levi names details from the Dina / Shechem episode, and the focus is always on the Joseph story, which is dealt with intensively by Joseph himself and Zebulun. The reader is told unknown details, but also feelings and motives of the people involved that do not appear in the biblical account.

These biographical notes are used as an opportunity to turn into serious moral exhortation. Either in the admonition to do better than to avoid one's own fathers and their vices (e.g. the fornication in Ruben or the envy of Simeon), or in the encouragement to live out their virtues (the simplicity in Issachar or the goodness of Joseph).

These admonitions are followed by promises for the future: threats of calamity and exile if the descendants should not keep the words of their ancestors, and promises of a return to the country, closeness to God, if they are converted again and follow the words of their fathers. These passages sometimes show apocalyptic features because visions are portrayed or salvation is presented as a victory over Beliar and his spirits.

Especially in the prophecies of the future, Christian elements also come across. Both the passages concerning the guilt of the descendants and the promises of future salvation are repeatedly pointed out in such a way that they can actually only be interpreted in terms of Jesus Christ. To what extent these elements represent secondary additions is controversial.

theology

ethics

The ethics of the patriarchal wills do not differ significantly from what is already known from Hellenistic Judaism or early Christianity. Virtue and decency are the focus of admonitions, envy and fornication are reprehensible. In addition to these generalities, a few abnormalities can be determined:

Compassion and mercy play a major role. The ability to empathize becomes an important measure of moral behavior. The brothers were guilty of compassion for Joseph, but the latter took pity on his brothers because he felt compassion for them and forgave them their guilt.

Related to this is the emphasis on love ( agape ) in the context of ethical admonitions. As otherwise only in a few Jewish writings of this time, we encounter the double commandment of love, the demand to love God and man. Whether the patriarchal wills thus become a key witness for the fact that this topos existed before Jesus also depends on the answer to the question of the history of its origins.

Eschatology

In eschatology , a final devotion from God is announced after the judgment. It is noticeable that the conversion required for this is not so much a religious renewal, i.e. that faith or worship would be renewed (as was demanded in other Jewish reform movements), but that a purely moral conversion is in the foreground. In the final version, the promise of salvation applies to Israel and the heathen peoples alike, but some scholars consider this universalism of salvation to be Christian.

The statement that God himself will appear as a human being at the end of time and visits and accompanies his people in humility and humility must be viewed with certainty as Christian. What is clearly meant here is Jesus Christ.

It is different with the announcement of a Savior from Levi and Judah. This figure, which was initially quite human, is only related to Jesus in a Christian way in a few passages. Royal priestly savior figures can be found either as an idea of ​​an ideal duo of two messiahs (e.g. from Aaron and Israel in the Qumran writings) or as a figure in the reports of the Maccabees' priesthood and finally in recourse to Melchizedek as the idealized Priest-King of the Fatherhood.

Christian theology

Interpreted on the Christian level it is striking that there is no talk of a replacement of Israel by the Gentile peoples, but that both addressees remain of God's saving actions. It is fitting that precisely where there is talk of Israel's guilt for the death of Jesus, the patriarchs are declared innocent of this action. So the guilt and responsibility are not blamed on the people's collective, but on a specific group of a specific generation. By destroying the temple, God has rightly punished these guilty parties in the view of the patriarchal wills, and now the time for God to turn to his people is imminent.

The idea that God himself visits his people in the human form of Jesus Christ is quite unusual, at least for the 3rd century, because representatives of such ideas were condemned by Tertullian and Hippolytus as "Patripassiani / Theopaschites". Indeed, in a passage in the wills that alludes to the death of Jesus, there is literal reference to the “suffering of the Most High”.

The genealogical derivation of Jesus from the tribes Levi and Judah is also highly unusual for Christian authors. While Jesus' sonship of David was a fixture in the Christian tradition, nothing is read about a Levitic descent of Jesus in the known Christian sources. If a priestly royal dignity of Jesus should be asserted, one did so with recourse to Psalm 110 with regard to the figure of Melchizedek - for example the letter to the Hebrews. There the Levitical priesthood is represented as a kind of detour, while the Melchizedek priesthood represents the true high priesthood from prehistoric times to the end times. To link Jesus Christ genealogically with the tribe of Levi, of all places, and to tie it back twice to the Jewish people and their salvation history, is completely extraordinary for the 3rd century.

These peculiarities make a Jewish-Christian authorship plausible, at least for the final Christian figure.

literature

Text output
  • Jürgen Becker: The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs , JSHRZ III / 1, Gütersloh 2. A. 1980, 1–162.
  • RH Charles: The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs , Oxford 1908.
  • Harm W. Hollander / Marinus De Jonge: The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs . A Commentary, SVTP 8, Leiden / New York / Cologne 1985.
  • Marinus de Jonge: The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs , PVTG I / 2, Leiden 1978.
  • HCKee: Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs , in: JH Charlesworth (ed.): The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 1, Garden City, NY 1983, 775-828.
  • ME Stone: The Testament of Levi , A first Study of the Armenian Mss. Of the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs in the Convent of St. James, Jerusalem 1969.
Studies
  • Jürgen Becker: Studies on the genesis of the wills of the twelve patriarchs , Brill: Leiden 1970.
  • Hultgård, Anders: L'eschatology of the testament of the Douze Patriarches . 1. - Interpretation of the text, Uppsala [u. a.]: Almqvist & Wiksell Internat., 1977. - 396 pp. - 2. - Composition de l'ouvrage, textes et traductions, 1982. - 319 pp.
  • Marinus de Jonge: The Main Issues in the Study of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs , in: Jewish Eschatology, Early Christian Christology and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Leiden: Brill 1991, 147-163.
  • Marinus de Jonge: The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs . A Study of their Text, Composition and Origin, Assen: van Gorcum 1953
  • Philipp Kurowski: The human God from Levi and Judah The testaments of the twelve patriarchs as a source of Jewish-Christian theology, TANZ 52, Tübingen: Francke 2010
  • Friedrich Schnapp: The wills of the twelve patriarchs examined , Halle 1884
  • Jarl H. Ulrichsen: The basic script of the testaments of the twelve patriarchs  : an investigation into the scope, content and character of the original script, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991. - 368 p. (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Historia religionum; 10)

Web links

Text output
  • Robert Sinker: engl. Transl. , In: Alexander Roberts / James Donaldson / A. Cleveland Coxe: Ante-Nicene Fathers , Vol. 8, Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co. 1886 other edition
Secondary literature