Other ancient texts · Read in Jesus' day
Testament of Issachar
The Testament of Issachar is the fifth of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: a short deathbed speech in which Jacob's son Issachar retells the mandrake story of Genesis 30 and urges his sons to live in "simplicity" (singleness of heart), work honestly as farmers, and love God and their neighbour. People read it for its plain ethical teaching, which pairs love of God with love of neighbour much as Jesus later did, and for what it shows about Jewish moral teaching around the time of Jesus.
- 2nd century BC, with later Christian additions
- Greek (possibly Hebrew)
- Protestant Catholic Orthodox Ethiopian
Should it be in the Bible?
The case for
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Its ethics closely match the moral heart of the Hebrew Bible and the teaching of Jesus.
The evidence
T. Issachar 5:2 says "love the Lord and your neighbour, have compassion on the poor and weak," and 7:6 says "I loved the Lord with all my strength; likewise I loved every man as my own children." This joins Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 the same way Jesus does in Mark 12:29–31.
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It probably preserves real Jewish teaching from the late Second Temple period, the world Jesus and the apostles grew up in.
The evidence
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls are related patriarch texts: an Aramaic Levi Document (1Q21, 4Q213–214) and a Hebrew Naphtali text (4Q215). These show that testaments of Jacob's sons were being written before Christianity, and most scholars think Issachar holds a Jewish core with few obvious Christian additions.
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Early Christians valued and copied it as edifying reading.
The evidence
Origen (Homilies on Joshua 15.6, 3rd century) mentions "a certain little book called the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs" and uses it with respect. Greek, Armenian and Slavonic churches kept copying it, and Robert Grosseteste's Latin translation (c. 1242) spread it widely in medieval Europe.
The case against
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No Jewish or Christian community has ever accepted it as scripture.
The evidence
It is missing from the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint codices, and every canon list, including the Muratorian fragment, Athanasius in 367, Hippo and Carthage, Trent, and the Ethiopian canon. A book called "Patriarchs" shows up only on Byzantine lists of apocrypha, such as the Stichometry of Nicephorus.
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It is pseudepigraphal, and its original form is uncertain.
The evidence
Issachar did not write it. No copy of this testament has been found at Qumran, and the surviving manuscripts are all medieval and Christian, the oldest being Cambridge University Library Ff.1.24 from the 10th century. De Jonge argued that the whole collection is a Christian work, so we cannot be sure any wording goes back to a Jewish original.
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It adds details to Genesis that have no basis there.
The evidence
It invents an angel who tells Jacob that Rachel will have two sons because she chose self-control over pleasure (2:1–3). It also gives Issachar a lifelong chastity that Genesis never mentions. Its talk of "spirits of Beliar" and its call for the tribes to submit to Levi and Judah (5:7–8) reflect the beliefs and politics of a later time.
Both sides are written as strongly as the honest evidence allows, so you can decide for yourself. Researched by claude-opus-5-5.
When, where and by whom
The book presents itself as Issachar's own last words to his sons, but no tradition today treats it as actually his. R. H. Charles argued for a Jewish original in Hebrew from about 109–106 BC with later Christian additions, while Marinus de Jonge and his school argued the Testaments as we have them are a Christian work of about AD 150–200 that drew on older Jewish material; scholars still disagree over how much of the text comes from before Christianity.
Jesus, the New Testament and this book
- Love God and love your neighbour (T. Iss. 5:2; 7:6) matches Jesus' double great commandment (Mark 12:29–31; Matthew 22:37–40). This is a shared idea; there is no evidence of borrowing in either direction. (likely link)
- "Every spirit of Beliar will flee from you" (7:7) is close to James 4:7, "resist the devil and he will flee from you." The name Beliar/Belial also appears in 2 Corinthians 6:15. (likely link)
- Its key virtue of haplotēs, "simplicity" or "singleness," including walking in singleness of eyes (ch. 3–4), echoes the "single" (haplous) eye of Matthew 6:22, the rebuke of double-mindedness in James 1:8, and the "simplicity toward Christ" of 2 Corinthians 11:3. (possible link)
- The pattern of sin, scattering among the nations, and return when Israel turns back to God (ch. 6) parallels the hope in Romans 11 and Acts 3:19–21, though both draw on Deuteronomy 30. (possible link)
How it came down to us
It survives as part of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs in about fifteen Greek manuscripts, the oldest being Cambridge University Library Ff.1.24 (10th century), with others from Mount Athos, Rome and elsewhere. Armenian and Slavonic translations also exist, and Robert Grosseteste made a Latin translation around 1242. All of these were copied by Christians. No Hebrew or Aramaic text of Issachar is known, and the standard critical edition is M. de Jonge's (1978).
- Greek manuscripts of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, especially Cambridge University Library Ff.1.24
- M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (1978)
- H. W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (1985)
- R. H. Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908) and his Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913)
- H. C. Kee's translation in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha vol. 1 (1983)
- Related Dead Sea Scrolls: Aramaic Levi Document (1Q21, 4Q213–214) and 4Q215 (Testament of Naphtali)
- Origen, Homilies on Joshua 15.6; Stichometry of Nicephorus
- Genesis 30 and 49, Deuteronomy 6, Leviticus 19, and New Testament parallels (Mark 12, Matthew 6, James 1 and 4, 2 Corinthians)