Twelve deathbed speeches, one from each son of Jacob, each confessing the sin that marked his life. The book opens with Reuben — Jacob's firstborn — gathering his sons to admit the thing he has kept hidden in his heart.
The opening of the Testament of Reuben is live as a word-depth beta: every Greek word glossed with its sense and the flowing English beside it. Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, is dying; he gathers his sons and asks to be raised up so he can tell them what he has kept hidden in his heart. This is a long book (twelve testaments); it grows with reader demand.
❦ Read the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs now, freeA taste of the format — open the reader above to read all of The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs word by word.
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are among the most human of the ancient pseudepigrapha: twelve fathers, dying in turn, each naming his own besetting sin — Reuben's lust, Simeon's envy, Judah's weakness for wine and women, Joseph's hard-won chastity — and pleading with his children to do better. A Jewish work of the Hellenistic age, read and loved in the early church.
Reading it word by word in the original Greek, you hear the deathbed voice directly. This opening is from the Testament of Reuben, in the text of R. H. Charles's 1908 critical edition, read straight from his printed page.
Read our finished collection · the library · The Great Library Project
Reading is always free. Patrons and founders are the ones who keep it that way.