Overview

This work claims to be the last words of each of Jacob's 12 children. Each son makes a moral exhortation based on passages from Genesis or the later Jewish tradition about patriarchs. Obviously, these exhortations were not composed by the patriarchs themselves. They may have been composed by a Christian writer around the year 200, since undefined obviously Christian passages, but many scholars believe that they were written by a Jew in the Maccabees period and then adapted by a Christian editor.In each will, the patriarch first narrates his own life, emphasizing his virtues and his sins. Then he exhorts his descendants to imitate their achievements and to turn away from their mistakes. Then the patriarch reports prophetic visions of the future of his descendants; in these apocalyptic passages Enoch's writings are often mentioned or transcribed, yet the quotations are rarely found in the Ethiopian or Slovenian versions of Enoch's Manuscript.The literary style of all biographies follows the Old Testament pattern, with the addition of many details of Jewish culture. A great number of prophetic passages are apparently additions of Christian origin (i.e., New Testament), such as the prophecies about the incarnation, sanctification by water (i.e., baptism), and the crucifixion of the Most High, - all versions of the testamentary manuscripts contemplate these passages; in these prophecies, the Messiah (the Christ) is often identified as God. In view of this, it is easy to detect and stipulate that they are Christian passages.With notoriety, a tribute to the apostle Paul was found in a Greek version of Benjamin's Testament (although, of course, his name is not explicitly mentioned), however, such a tribute is absent from an ancient Armenian version of the text. The Christian theologian Tertullian seems to allude to this passage in one of his works; also supposing it to be a Christian interpolation of at least the beginning of the 2nd century A.D.; however, Tertullian's allusion is not clear if it even refers to this passage of tribute to Paul. On the other hand, it is recognized that a large part of the documents are genuine because of the form of writing that is employed.

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