Studies On The Testaments Of The Twelve Patriarchs

R. H. Charles (1855-1931) was Professor of Biblical Greek at Trinity College Dublin (1898-1906), He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1906, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1910. In 1925 he was the first recipient of the British Academy Medal for Biblical Studies. Charles also received honorary degrees from the Universities of Belfast in 1923 and Oxford in 1928. His publications include: 'The Apocalypse of Baruch, ' 'The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, ' and 'The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English' (2 vols.)

An excerpt from the INTRODUCTION - General Character of the Book: The book purports to give the last words, at the approach of death, of each of the twelve patriarchs to his sons. It is evident that the general idea of the book is based upon Jacob's last words to his sons as recorded in Gen. xlix. 1-27. Just as Jacob portrays the character of his sons and declares to them what shall befall them, so in our book each of the patriarchs is represented as describing, in some sense, his own character and as foretelling what shall come to pass among his posterity in the last times. From this latter point of view the book partakes of the character of a prophetic-apocalyptic work. In six of the testaments, those of Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Dan, Naphthali and Joseph, there is a certain correspondence between our book and Gen. xlix. regarding the characters of the patriarchs; as for the remaining six patriarchs no such correspondence exists.

Excerpt from The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs The many laborious years of study of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs see at last their close in the present volume. The labour involved has been very great, at times indeed oppressive, but it has not been without its own compensations; for the toil has been frequently lightened by the joys of discovery, and the task of research has been often one of sheer delight. The pleasures of foxhunting are not to be compared with those of the student in full quest of some truth, some new fact showing itself for the first time within his intellectual horizon. But to return. Many of the problems arising from our text had hitherto been wholly unattempted, or else had been wrongly solved in the past - in large part owing in earlier years to the lack of documentary authorities, and in later years to the large demand on the scholar's time that the mastery of these would have entailed. Short but valuable contributions and suggestions have recently been made by Schnapp, Conybeare, Kohler, Gaster, and Bousset, and not a few of the conclusions arrived at by these scholars have been confirmed by my own investigations. The main questions as regards the date, original language, and object of the author, are, I am convinced, now practically settled beyond the range of dispute. Other questions arise in the text that call for further study and research. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This volume, which appears on the occasion of Marinus de Jonge's retirement as Professor of New Testament at Leiden University, brings together twenty essays which he wrote recently for various periodicals and collective works. A number of articles deal with the expectation of the future in Jewish sources, like Ps. Sol., the Qumran Scrolls and Josephus. Closely connected with these are some essays on the question of how such titles as 'Christ', and 'Son of David' came to be applied to Jesus. Eleven essays delve into various important aspects of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: eschatology, ethics, paraenesis, but also their use of Jewish source material and their view of the history of God's dealing with man, a view related to that held by Justin and Hippolytus. This book throws light on the Jewish origins of early Christian theology and on its relationship with the Hellenistic culture in which it developed. The book also includes Marinus de Jonge's bibliography.