Other ancient texts · Read in Jesus' day
Testament of Naphtali
The Testament of Naphtali is one part of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. In it Naphtali, Jacob's son by Bilhah, gives a deathbed speech on keeping the order God built into creation, and he tells of two visions that predict Israel's scattering and its rescue through Levi and Judah. People read it for its picture of Jewish moral teaching in the centuries before Jesus and for its close parallels with ideas in Paul, James and Jude.
- 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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The book draws on real Jewish traditions from before Jesus, so it is not simply a later Christian invention.
The evidence
A Dead Sea Scrolls fragment in Hebrew, 4Q215 (once called '4QTestament of Naphtali'), contains a genealogy of Bilhah that matches Testament of Naphtali 1:9–12. A different, medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali shows that Jewish writers kept stories about Naphtali alive on their own.
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Its teaching fits the wider Bible closely and builds on what scripture already says about Naphtali.
The evidence
It expands Genesis 49:21 (Naphtali as a swift deer) and teaches that sun, stars, the human body and the moral law all keep an order God set, like a potter shaping clay (chapters 2–3). Its warning against 'changing the order of nature', with Sodom and the Watchers as examples, uses the same reasoning as Romans 1:26, Jude 6–7 and 2 Peter 2:4–6.
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Christians read and valued it for centuries, and some included it in their Bibles.
The evidence
Origen (3rd century) quotes the Testaments while noting they are outside the canon, and Greek churches kept copying them. Some Armenian Bible manuscripts include the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs among the Old Testament books.
The case against
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No Jewish or Christian community has ever treated it as scripture.
The evidence
It does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint's main lists, Athanasius's list of 367, the councils of Hippo and Carthage, or the Ethiopian canon. Origen (Homily on Joshua 15.6) says plainly that the work is not in the canon, and later lists such as the Stichometry of Nicephorus put a book called 'Patriarchs' among the apocrypha.
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It claims to be by Naphtali but was written more than a thousand years after his time.
The evidence
Scholars agree it is pseudonymous: they date it to the 2nd century BC at the earliest. Its extra details, such as Bilhah's family tree and the visions on the Mount of Olives and of the ship in a storm, have no basis in Genesis and look like later legend.
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The text has been edited by Christians, so it is hard to know what the original said.
The evidence
Passages such as 8:2–3, where God 'appears dwelling among men' to save Israel and the nations, are widely seen as Christian additions. The Greek and the medieval Hebrew versions differ a lot (in the ship vision, for example), and scholars still argue over whether the core is Jewish or Christian.
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
Tradition: Naphtali's own last words, spoken in Egypt. Scholars disagree: most (R.H. Charles, H.C. Kee) see a Jewish work from the 2nd century BC, perhaps first in Hebrew, with later Christian additions, while M. de Jonge argues the book as we have it was put together by Christians around AD 200 from older Jewish material.
Jesus, the New Testament and this book
- 8:4, 'the devil will flee from you' if you do good; compare James 4:7, 'resist the devil and he will flee from you.' (likely link)
- 8:8, 'a time for intercourse with one's wife and a time to abstain for prayer'; compare Paul's advice in 1 Corinthians 7:5. (likely link)
- 3:4–5: Sodom and the Watchers 'changed the order of nature'; this is the same tradition as Jude 6–7, 2 Peter 2:4–6 and the 'against nature' language of Romans 1:26. (likely link)
- 2:2–4: God as a potter who shapes each vessel for its purpose; compare Romans 9:20–21, though both draw on Jeremiah 18 and Isaiah 29:16. (possible link)
- 8:2–3: salvation coming through Levi and Judah, with God appearing on earth among people; this matches Christian beliefs about the Messiah, but it is probably a Christian addition, not a source the NT drew on. (possible link)
How it came down to us
It survives in Greek in the manuscripts of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the oldest being Cambridge University Library Ff.1.24 (10th century), followed by later Vatican and Mount Athos copies, all kept by Byzantine Christian copyists. There are also Armenian and Slavonic translations, a 13th-century Latin translation by Robert Grosseteste that brought it to Western Europe, a separate medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali, and a related Hebrew fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q215).
- Greek manuscripts of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (critical edition by M. de Jonge, 1978)
- Dead Sea Scrolls fragment 4Q215 (Bilhah genealogy)
- Medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali
- Armenian and Slavonic versions; Grosseteste's Latin translation
- Origen, Homily on Joshua 15.6; Stichometry of Nicephorus
- H.W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, commentary on the Testaments (1985)
- H.C. Kee, translation in Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha vol. 1
- R.H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (1913)