The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs as Witnesses to Pre-Christian Judaism: A Re-Assessment

Abstract

In regard to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the pendulum of scholarship has been swinging in the direction of treating these texts as Christian compositions that, therefore, cannot be used to illumine pre-Christian Judaism. This article reassesses this movement in light, first, of recent methodological propositions regarding determining the faith community in which a text had its origin and, second, of traditional methodological approaches to the question of the Christian material found in extant manuscripts of the Testaments. It also challenges the hyper-Christianization of the Testaments in modern scholarship, arguing that, in many cases, material is being designated as distinctively Christian simply because interpreters are not sufficiently aware of how their own lenses are coloring their readings. The Testaments remain an important witness to Hasmonean Jewish readings of Genesis, developments in ethical thought, and re-articulations of Israel's hope.