Once More: Christian Influence in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

Author(s): M. De Jonge
Source: Novum Testamentum, Vol. 5, Fasc. 4 (Nov., 1962), pp. 311-319
Published by: BRILL
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ONCE MORE: CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE IN THE

TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS
BY

M. DE JONGE
After my article "Christian influence in the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs" 1) had been sent to the printers, F. M. BRAUN
O.P. published an elaborate and important contribution to the
discussion on the Testaments under the title "Les Testaments des
XII Patriarches et le probleme de leur origine" 2). I am much
indebted to the editors of this Journal for the opportunity which
article briefly in the present issue.
they offer me to discuss BRAUN'S
BRAUN'S standpoint may be summarized as follows: It is wrong

to speak of Christianinterpolationsin an original Jewish documentlike CHARLES,BOUSSET and others did. It is equally wrong to

maintain that a Christian author composed the Testaments using

much Jewish material of all kinds-like the present author did in his
The Testamentsof the Twelve Patriarchs3). We have to assume a
Jewish "Grundschrift" which was not interpolated but redacted
thoroughly by a Christian. BRAUNwrites: "I1faut donc, revenant
a l'ancien systeme, nous resigner a distinguer dans nos Testaments
deux couches redactionnelles bien distinctes: la premiere composee
au moyen de sourceset de traditions diverses dans le but d'exhorter
le lecteur a observer la Loi, sous la conduite de Levi et de Juda; la
seconde attribuable a un chretien dont la principale intention
semble avoir ete de modifier les perspectives messianiques du
premier auteur selon les requetes de sa foi. Son travail ne fait
preuve que d'une habilete moyenne dans l'art de denaturer les
textes. Cependant DE JONGEa le merite de l'avoir demontre --et tel

est, pensons-nous, le resultat le plus positif de son etude - l'apport

chretien ne se limite pas a un nombre plus on moins grands d'interpolations. A cote de celles-ci,il y a des remaniementsplus astucieux"4)
A.

DUPONT-SOMMER,

M. PHILONENKOand A. S. VAN DER WOUDE5)

1) See Novum Testamentum. IV, I96o-'6I, pp. I82-235.

LXVII 1960, pp. 516-549.

2) Revue Biblique,
3) Assen
I953.

Op. cit. p. 543.

See my first article for the titles of there publications.
Novurn Testamentum V
4)

5)

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2I*

M. DE JONGE

312

tried to prove that the Jewish Testaments originated in the Qumran

sect. BRAUNadmits that a number of interesting parallels between
the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Testaments are found, but he tends
to put more emphasis on the discrepancies between the Essene
writings and the Testaments, e.g. with regard to the attitude
towards the Law (the Testaments do not give any commandments
concerning the sabbath and ritual cleanness, they are moralistic
rather than legalistic), and with regard to the relations between
the group in which they originated and the outside world (the
Essenes were typical sectarians, in the Testaments we find a more
universalistic attitude). Because of these important difficulties it is
impossible to suppose that the author of the Jewish Testaments
belonged to the QumranSect. "Du point de vue de son universalisme et de son proselytisme, nous serions plutot enclins a suivre
DF JONGE qui le place dans le monde des Hellenes." 1) A strong

argument in favour of this theory is the author's use of the LXX,

especially in Test. Iss.
There are several possibilities with regard to the identity of the
Jewish author, the most likely being, according to BRAUN, that the
author was "un Juif d'origine palestinienne ou meme sacerdotale,
mais etabli dans la diaspora, et en reaction contre le relachement
du clerge officiel" 2). He must have been a man with a lively interest
in many things, who knew several haggadic traditions and was well
acquainted with the apocryphal writings and at least some of the
Essene documents, but he cannot possibly have been an Essene.
The Qumran Sect must have regarded the Testaments as heretical
and dangerous. "Si malgre leurs affinites qumraniennes, les Testaments ne se trouvaient pas dans la bibliotheque de la secte, alors
que les Jubiles y figuraient en plusieurs exemplaires, ne serait-ce
point des lors qu'ils auraient ete proscrits comme trop contraires a
l'orthodoxie du desert?" 2). Further excavations and the examina-

tion of yet unpublished material may shed new light upon the
history of the Testaments and it remains possible that we shall
have to ask whether "le sectarisme theorique de la Regle n'etait
pas capable de certains assouplissements"

3). PHILONENKO'Stheory,

however, cannot possibly be maintained, because no trace of the

present Testaments has been found in Qumran so far. ,,S'il etait
1) op. cit., p. 548.
Ibid.

2)
3)

Op. cit. p. 549.

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ONCE MORE: THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS

313

vrai que le Maitre de Justice y occupe la place envahissante que

s'est efforce de lui faire, cette disparition serait bien
PHILONENKO
etonnante". 1)
The reader who compares this article with mine in the previous
issue of this Journal, will notice that BRAUN'Stheory does not differ
very much from my present views. At several points I must admit
that BRAUN'S criticism on the views expressed in my book is
correct. Also I agree wholeheartedly with his efforts to define and
to underline the discrepancies between the Dead Sea Scrolls and
the Testaments, and with his conclusion that the present Testaments
cannot have been written by an Essene.
At other points, however, I cannot share BRAUN'S opinion. First
of all I should like to stress a methodological remark which I made
in my first article in connection with the eschatological sections
of the Testaments discussed by VAN DERWOUDE:"If we assume . ..
that the Testaments in their present form have been used and
edited by Christians in one way or another, we must always reckon
with the possibility that those passages too which are not evidently
Christian do not come from a Jewish hand ... The burden of proof
does not fall on him who assumes that a certain passage is Christian,
but on the scholar who considers a certain passage Jewish, or more
especially Essene" 2). This does not only apply to the eschatological
passages but also to the paraenetic sections of the Testaments,
discussed

number
sections
seem to
sions. 3)
1)

by BRAUTN.BRAUN recognizes

the danger of removing

of clearly Christian passages and ascribing the remaining

to a Jewish preformation of Christianity, but he does not
have drawn from it the necessary methodological concluMoreover, the author to whom he ascribes the Jewish

Op. cit. p. 544.

2) ,,Christian influence . . .", p. I87.

3) Another problem of method regards

the textual criticism of the Testa-

ments. BRAUN quotes J. P. AUDET O.P. who in his La Didache, Instructions

des Apotres, Paris I958, pp. I60-I6I tries to show that the textual criticism
of the Testaments is of limited value for the study of their history: ,,Des
6crits comme les Testaments, par leur genre litt6raire meme comme par les
habitudes et les gouts correlatifs de leur milieu naturel, tendent a cr6er, a
leur naissance, non seulement des families, en pure descendence legitime de
manuscrits, mais des recensions plus ou moins melees et plus ou moins ambitieuses, ce qui est tout autre chose." This remark is correct. The various
Greek manuscripts and the Armenian version show many discrepancies and
we must assume that the textual history of the Testaments has been a complicated one. I have tried to prove that MS b (Cambridge University Library,
Ms. Ff. 1,24 of the Xth century) is relatively the best MS, but we cannot

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M. DE JONGE

3I4

Testaments is an extremely versatile and, therefore, hardly real

person: a Palestinian Jew, perhaps even of priestly origin,living
in the diaspora, writing Greek and using the LXX, well acquainted
with haggadic, apocryphal, and even Essene literature. The question
must be asked whether such an author is not equally inconceivable
as the Christian author, whom I "constructed" in my book. We
are obliged to assume that the Testaments have known more than
two "couches redactionnelles bien distinctes", and we shall have
to ask whether BRAUN'S theory of a universalistic HellenisticJewish stage in the composition of the Testaments which must
have been of decisive importance, is right.
The most important part of BRAUN'Sarticle is the section devoted
to the relations between the Testaments, Barnabas, Didache and
Hermas. 1) In 1953 I wrote in The Testaments: 2)" The exhortatory

passages are Christianin their present form, since there are numerous agreements with the New Testament and later Christianparaenetic writings. It is quite possible that the author used pre-Christian
exhortatory writings for the composition of these passages. It is,
however, seldom possible to make a clear distinction between
Christian and non-Christian elements. By their very nature, the
exhortatory passages show little coherence and without references
to specifically Christian tenets, identification of Christianelements
is difficult. Moreover, much the same problem occurs in early
Christian documents like the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas
and the Stepherd of Hermas, and, in the New Testament, in the
Epistle of James. These writings also contain ethical teaching
which is not specifically Christian as well as that which is. Any
exclude the possibility that other MSS contain equally valuable and original
material. So we cannot be sure whether the short or the long text (the latter
being represented by b, d, g) in Test. Zeb. is the original one (The Testaments,
p. 22), and it is remarkable that e (a Xth century MS from Mount Athos) has
preserved the Greek translation of parts of an Aramaic Testament of Levi
(see CHARLES'S edition,

Appendix

III, and J. T. MILIK, ,,Le Testament

de

L6vi en Aram6en", Revue Biblique LXII, I955, pp. 398-406).

Textual criticism does not help us to discover Christian interpolations in
the Testaments or Jewish additions at an earlier stage of their history. Decisive
is here the analysis of the contents of the Testaments. Therefore in my book
the chapter on textual criticism (which ends with the negative conclusion
just mentioned) leads up to the second chapter concerned with literary criticism.

I do not think AUDET'S and BRAUN'S critical remarks on this part of

my book do justice to my argumentation.

1) Op. cit., pp. 522-533.

2) P. II9.

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ONCE MORE: THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS

3I5

analysis of the Christian and pre-Christianelements of the ethical

teaching of the Testaments may, therefore, best be made alongside
of a similar analysis of these writings."
BRAUN gives necessary additions to my rather summary statements and corrects them at several points. I cannot discuss his
views in detail because of the many problems presented by the
Didache, Barnabas and Hermas themselves, but I cannot pass his
conclusions over in silence. They are: 1)
a. "que les Testaments ne se rapprochent de B.-D.-H. que la
ou B.-D.-H. dependent de sources ou de traditions juives;"
b. "que, faisant corps avec des livres essentiellement chretiens,
la parenese de B.D.H. est elle-meme fortement christianisee";
c. "que le christianisme des Testaments semble au contraire
superficiel, et que en tout etat de cause son influence sur les monitions patriarcales est des plus minimes."
In support of his first conclusion BRAUNpoints to the doctrine of
the Two Ways and the Two Angels, and (especially with regard to
Hermas) to the views on the Holy Spirit. There are, indeed, no
parallels which necessitate us to assume direct influence of the
Testaments on B.D.H. or of B.D.H. on the Testaments. 2) It is also
clear that the pre-Christian paraenetic elements in B.D.H. have
been put within a Christian framework, whereas the connection
between the Christianpassages and the exhortatory sections of the
Testaments is a loose one (see conclusions b and c). From this
Braun concludes: "Quoiqu'il en soit, si ouverte qu'on la suppose,
la morale des patriarches reste en dependance de la Loi. Elle
depasse de si peu le niveau de l'Ancien Testament que sa comparaison avec l'ethique de Barnabe, du Didachiste et d'Hermas se solde
par la constatation de deux climats de pensee". 3) This statement
requires, I think, correction.
BRAUN writes: "D'un moraliste chretien, on se fut neanmoins
attendu a une moindreinsistance sur l'inamovibilite de la Loi comme
1) Op. cit., p. 523.
2) In this connection I should like to draw attention to a fact which is
often overlooked, viz. that Test. Asher which mentions the Two Ways in
its first chapter, tries to overcome the rigid division into good and bad actions
by an analysis of those cases where good and bad are intermingled. Its
caracteristics phrase to denote these cases is 8trpoow6aov.The discussion of
the ethics of the Testaments in S. WIBBING, Die Tugend- und Lasterkataloge
im Neuen Testament, Berlin 1959 (B.Z.N.W., XXV) pp. 30-42 requires
correction at several points.
3) Op. cit. p. 533.

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M. DE JONGE

3i6

si, parfaite en soi, elle n'etait appelee a aucun depassement." 1)

But BRAUN assumes interpolation by a Christian redactor, and
how can we ascribe to a Christianredactor an attitude which cannot
be ascribed to a Christian author ? Literary critics tend to assume
that redactors see and express things less clearly than authors;
I am not convinced this assumption is right. The Testaments must
have been very popular in the early Church -to judge from the
number of Greek manuscripts and the even larger number of
Armenian manuscripts which have come down to us. Will Christian
redactors not have experienced the difficulties which we feel, when
we read several statenents which can hardly be reconciled with
one another? To some extent, yes: but because they were of the
opinion that the Testaments contained the last words of people
belonging to the period of the Old Covenant (or because they
wanted to keep up the pious illusion that they contained authentic
statements by Jacob's sons) they could copy a number of contradictions without change. 2) At several points, however, they will
not have felt any difficulty at all, because many matters of Christian
doctrine and behaviour had not yet been finally decided in the
time the Testaments (in their Christian) form gained influence
and authority in the Church. The Christology of the Testaments
seems to us to be confused; much is contradictory and falls short
of orthodox standards. 3) It is right to say that this Christology
is the result of a process of gradual Christianization,during which
various Jewish statements were made ready for Christian use in
various ways, but we should add immediately that this process
was forwarded by the vagueness and the variety in Christological
thinking in the early Church before the great Councils. The same
applies to the attitude of the Testaments towards Israel and the
Law. At one side we find the idea that a new priesthood will inaugurate a new period in God's dealings with mankind (T. L. XVIII
T. Jud XXIV etc.) and there are clear anti-Jewish statements (see
e.g. T. L. XVIII, 9; T. D. VI, 6; T. B. IX, 4); at the other side
the Testaments in their present form maintain that the essential
commandments of the Law have authority for the life of the Christian community 4). BRAUNrightly remarksthat the Testaments are
1) Op. cit. p. 529.

also BRAUN, op. cit., p. 529.

See The Testaments, pp. I25-I26.

2) So
3)
4)

We may mention here, in comparison, ps. Barnabas, of whom BRAUN

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ONCE MORE: THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS

317

moralistic rather than legalistic, and that at this point they differ
completely from the documents found at Qumran. A comparison
of T. L. IX which gives rules for sacrifices with the parallel section
of the fragments of an Aramaic Testament of Levi shows clearly
that the redactors of the present Testaments wanted to give an
extract of ritual prescriptions but were not interested in these
themselves. 1)

Many of the ethical prescriptions need not be Christian. As

Braun has pointed out even the combination of love towards God
and love towards one's neighbour (in a universalistic sense) which
is found in the Testaments may be pre-Christian2).
For the methodological reasons mentioned above, however, it
seems a hazardous undertaking to regard the not clearly or exclusively Christian exhortatory passages of the Testaments as of
pre-Christian, Hellenistic-Jewish origin. They may indeed have
been taken over by the Christian redactors, but they may also be
their own compositions, or the results of a process of redaction
which was so thorough that the original cannot be reconstructed
any more.
An interesting case is that of the picture which is given of Joseph.
The Joseph of the Testaments is a Jewish sage; many passages
are in agreement with those found in Jewish Wisdom literature 3).
Still, the same Joseph is clearly a type of Jesus Christ, and it is
arbitrary to attribute only the Joseph-Christ-typology to a later
Christianredactor and to assign the remaining statements concerning Joseph to the Hellenistic-Jewish stage in the development of
the Testaments. I do not think the facts compel us to assume a
predominant Hellenistic-Jewish strand in the Testaments, and
therefore I still prefer the theory of a thorough Christianredaction
of the Testament-material which also left its stamp upon the
paraenetic sections.
BRAUNpoints out that the haggadic passages serve only partly
as illustration for the ethical precepts which are given. He thinks
it is more simple to assume "que nous avons affaire a un Juif
writes: L'antijudaisme de l'Epitre est pouss6 a un point qui ne sera plus
jamais d6pass6" (p. 525), but who, nevertheless, goes back to the commandments of Moses in chapter XVIII, when he comes to speak of the Two Ways.
1) See The Testaments, pp. 39 f.
2)
3)

Op. cit., pp. 530-533.

See T. Jos. passim; comp. also T. L. XIII.

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M. DE JONGE

3i8

dont la curiosite ne trouvait plus de quoi se satisfaire dans les

recits authentiques de la Bible," 1) than to affirm the present
author's words: "It is very interesting to find that a Christianwho
intended to compose a writing about the Twelve Patriarchs, wished
to use Jewish materialand knew where to find it." 2) This statement
requires modification but I do not see why the presence of a number of Jewish haggadic passages in itself should necessitate us to
theory, and I think we may still describe the Testaadopt BRAUN'S
ments "as a Christianattempt to annex the results and the methods
of Jewish learning." 3)
The section which BRAUN devotes to the messianic passages of
the Testaments 4) does not call for much comment; it seems sufficient to refer here to the relevant passages of my article in the
previous issue which answer explicitly or implicitly many of
BRAUN'S objections to my theory. I should, however, make good
an omission on pp. 209off. of my first article, where I tried to prove
that Or. Test. Levi put all emphasis on Levi and did not mention
Judah as bearer of the royal office. I should have referred to P.
GRELOT'S interesting discussion of Bodleian fragment a of the
Aramaic Testament of Levi in his "Notes sur le Testament Arameen
de Levi" 5). Grelot drawsattention to the expression tinn nni*
in Bodl. fragm. a 1. 2 "the kingdom of the sword"). which he connects with the expression

mnirn ni:rn

in i Q. Levi 2I, I. He also

points to T.L. V, 2,3 where Levi receives the blessing of the priesthood and, afterwards, gets a sword to execute vengeance upon
Shechem. It is remarkable that Jub. XXXI and the Levi-Judahpassages in the Testaments assign all military activity and royal
prerogatives to Judah.
Grelot is very cautious in his conclusions, and rightly so. He
remarks: "Le Testament arameenpresente en de nombreux endroits
un caractere secondaire par rapport a une source dont les Jubiles
ont parfois mieux conserve le teneur, tout en l'amplifiant sur certains points." 6) and he goes on: "Sans doute s'agissait-il d'un
midrash de la Genese, elabore dans des cercles levitiques et centre
1) Op. cit. p. 529.
The Testaments, p. 118.

2)

3) Ibid.
Op. cit. pp. 533-543.
6) Revue Biblique LXIII,

4)

I956, pp. 392-406,

quoted

by BRAUN,

PP. 534 ff.)6) P. 405.

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op. Cit.

ONCE MORE: THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS

319

sur la personne de Levi, l'ancetre eponyme. Les Jubiles et le

Testament en auraient repris le materiel de fa9on independante en
fonction des circonstances historiques nouvelles. La mention dans
le Testament arameen des guerres de Levi (dont la "regle" nous est
maintenant connue) et de la royaute de Levi (au double titre du
sacerdoce souverain et du commandement militaire) invite a placer la redaction de cette oeuvredans le context des guerres maccabeennes 1)." The hypothesis of the existence of a midrash on
Genesis is attractive (comparethe "Genesisapocryphon" published
by N. AVIGAD and Y. YADIN) the connection of the Aramaic

Testament c.q. the OriginalTestament of Levi with the Maccabean

Wars rather hazardous. 2)
1) p. 406.
2) See also P. GRELOT, ,,Le Testament arameen de Levi est-il traduit
l'hebreu ?" Revue des etudes juives XIV (CXIV), 1955, pp. 91-99.

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de