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TESTAMENTS OF THE THREE PATRIARCHS. This apocryphal work of the Hebrew Scriptures was first published by M. R. James (The Testament of Abraham, the Greek Text now first edited with an Introduction and Notes. With an appendix containing extracts from the Arabic Version of the Testaments of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by Barnes, Texts and Studies, ii. 2: Cambridge). The Greek testament of Abraham is preserved in two recensions from six and three MSS. respectively. This testament is also edited by Vassiliev in his Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina, 1893, i. 292–308 from a Vienna MS. already used by James. According to James, it was written in Egypt in the 2nd century, and was translated subsequently into Slavonic (Tichonrawow, Pamjatniki otretschennoi russkoi Literaturi, 1863, i. 79–90), Rumanian (Gaster, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1887, ix. 195–226), Ethiopic and Arabic.

This testament deals with Abraham’s reluctance to die and the means by which his death was brought about. As regards its origin James writes (op. cit., p. 5 5); “The Testament was originally put together in the second century by a Jewish Christian: for the narrative portions he employed existing ]ewish legends, and for the apocalyptic, he drew largely on his imagination.” He holds that the book is referred to by Origen, ''Hom. in Luc.'' xxxv. With the exception of x.–xi. the work is really a legend and not an apocalypse.

To the above conclusions Schürer, ''Gesch. des jüd. Volkes'', 3rd ed., iii. 252, takes objection. He denies the reference in Origen, and asserts that there are no grounds for the assumption of a partial Jewish origin. But the present writer cannot agree with Schürer in these criticisms, but is convinced that a large body of Jewish tradition lies behind the book. Indeed, Kohler (Jewish Quarterly Review, 1895, v. 581-606) has given adequate grounds for regarding this apocryph as in the main an independent work of Jewish origin subsequently enlarged by a few Christian additions.

TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (see : II. Old Testament), are an important constituent of the apocryphal scriptures connected with the Old Testament, comprising the dying commands of the twelve sons of Jacob.

They “were written in Hebrew in the later years of John Hyrcanus—in all probability after his final victory over the Syrian power and before his breach with the Pharisees—in other words, between 109 and 106. Their author was a. Pharisee who combined loyalty to the best traditions of his party with the most unbounded admiration of Hyrcanus. The Maccabean dynasty had now reached the zenith of its prosperity, and in its reigning representative, who alone in the history of Judaism possessed the triple offices of prophet, priest and king, the Pharisaic party had come to recognize the actual Messiah. To this John Hyrcanus, in whom had culminated all the glories and gifts of this great family, our author addresses two Messianic hymns. The writer already sees the Messianic kingdom established, under the sway of which the Gentiles will in due course be saved, Beliar overthrown, sin disappear from the earth, and the righteous dead rise to share in the blessedness of the living. Alas for the vanity of man’s judgment and man’s prescience! Our-book had hardly been published, when Hyrcanus, owing to an injury done him by the Pharisees, broke with their party, and, joining the Sadducees, died a year or two later. His successors proved themselves the basest of men. Their infamy is painted in lurid colours by contemporary writers of the 1st century, and by a strange irony the work, or, rather, fragments of the work of one of these assailants of the later Maccabees, has achieved immortality by finding a covert in the chief manifesto that was issued on behalf of one of the earlier members of that dynasty. This second writer singles out three of the Maccabean priest kings for attack, the first of whom he charges with every abomination; the people-itself, he declares, is apostate, and chastisement will follow speedily-the temple will be laid waste, the nation carried afresh into captivity, whence, on their repentance, God will restore them again to their own land, where they shall enjoy the blessedness of God’s presence and be ruled by a Messiah sprung from Judah. When we contrast the expectations of the original write rand the actual events that followed, it would seem that the chief value of his work would consist in the light that it throws on this obscure and temporary revolution in the Messianic expectations of Judaism towards the close of the 2nd century. But this is not so. The main, the overwhelming value of the book lies not in this province, but in its ethical teaching, which has achieved a real immortality by influencing the thought and diction of the writers of the New Testament, and even those of our Lord. This ethical teaching, which is indefinitely higher and purer than that of the Old Testament, is yet its true spiritual child, and helps to bridge the chasm that divides the ethics of the Old and New Testaments.

In the early decades of the Christian era the text was current in two forms, which are denoted by Hundefined and Hundefined in this article and in the edition of the text published by the Oxford University Press. “The former of these was translated not later than 50 into Greek, and this translation was used by the scholar who rendered the second Hebrew recension into Greek. The first Greek translation was used by our Lord, by St Paul, and other New Testament writers. In the second and following centuries it was interpolated by Christian scribes, and finally condemned undiscriminating along with other apocrypha. For several centuries it was wholly lost sight of, and it was not till the 13th century that it was rediscovered through the agency of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, who translated it into Latin, under the misconception that it was a genuine work of the twelve sons of Jacob, and that the Christian interpolations were a genuine product of Jewish prophecy. The advent of the Reformation brought in critical methods, and the book was unjustly disparaged as a mere Christian forgery for nearly four centuries. The time has at last arrived for this book, so noble in its ethical side, to come into its own.

Versions and MSS.—The two recensions of the Hebrew original, to which we have already referred, were translated into Greek, the former being attested by the Greek MSS. chi and the latter by a b d e f g, which groups for the sake of brevity we designate as and. The Greek version was in turn rendered into Armenian in the 5th or 6th century. The rendering was made, except in a limited number of passages, from. Of this version there are at least eleven MSS. known. Here again two types of text, Aundefined and Aundefined, are represented, but for the most part the differences originated within the Armenian. Finally about the 13th century the Slavonic Version was made from the form of the Greek Version. Here