That the Gospel ethic is non-original becomes more and more clear with every extension of relevant research. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, written between 109 and 106 B.C. by a Quietist Pharisee, is found to yield not only origins or anticipations for pseudo-historic data in the Gospels but patterns for its moral doctrine. Thus the notion that the Twelve Apostles are to rule over the tribes in the Messianic kingdom is merely an adaptation of the teaching in the Testaments that the twelve sons of Jacob are so to rule. [4] There too appears for the first time in Jewish literature the formula "on His right hand"; [5] and a multitude of close textual parallels clearly testify to perusal of the book by the Gospel-framers and the epistle-makers. But above all is the Jewish book the original for the doctrines of forgiveness and brotherly love. Whereas the Old Testament leaves standing the ethic of revenge alongside of the prescription to forgive one's enemy, the Testaments give out what a highly competent Christian editor pronounces to be "the most remarkable statement on the subject of forgiveness in all ancient literature. They show a wonderful insight into the true psychology of the question. So perfect are the parallels in thought and diction between these verses [Test. Gad, vi, 3-7] and Luke xvii, 3; Matt. xviii, 15, 35, that we must assume our Lord's acquaintance with them. The meaning of forgiveness in both cases is the highest and noblest known to us--namely, the restoring the offender to communion with us, which he had forfeited through his offence.... We now see the importance of our text. It shows that pre-Christian Judaism possessed a noble system of ethics on the subject of forgiveness." [6]
Here the tribute goes to a Pharisee; in another connection it redounds to the other butt of Christian disparagement, the Scribes. As our editor points out, the collocation of the commands to love God and one's neighbour is even in Luke (x, 25-27) assigned not to Jesus but to a Scribe. But this too is found in the Testaments. "That the two great commandments were already conjoined in the teaching of the Scribes at the time of our Lord we may reasonably infer from our text, [7] which was written 140 years earlier, and from the account in Luke." [8] And here too, a century before the Christian era, we have a Jewish predication of the salvation of the Gentiles, [9] in the patronizing Jewish sense.