Introductory Notice
to
The Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs.
————————————
This very curious fragment
of antiquity deserves a few words in anticipation of the
translator’s valuable preface. Grabe’s
Spicilegium is there referred to; but it may be well also to
consult his citations, in elucidation, of Bull’s
Defensio Fidei Nicænæ, where he
treats the work with respect. My most valued authority, however, on this subject, is Lardner, who gives a very full account of the work with his usual candor and learning. He seems to treat the matter with a needless profusion of space and consideration; yet in a much later volume of his great treatise he recurs to the subject with expressions of satisfaction that he had dealt with it so largely before.
Cave placed the composition of the
Testaments about a.d. 192, but concedes
a much earlier origin to the first portion of the work. Origen
quotes from it, and Tertullian is supposed to have borrowed from it one
of his expositions, as will be noted in its place. Lardner clears
it from charges of Ebionitism, but thinks the author
was so far in accord with that heresy as to use expressions savouring
of “Unitarianism.” Of this charge he is not justly
susceptible, it appears to me: quite otherwise. If we can
imagine Trypho coming to the light after his kindly parting with
Justin, I can conceive of such a man as the author
of this work. He is a Christian awakening to the real purport of
the Old-Testament Scriptures, and anxious to lead rather than drive his
brethren after the flesh to the discovery of Him “concerning whom
Moses in the law and the prophets did write:” not a
“Judaizing Christian,” as Cave imagined, but the
reverse,—a Christianizing Jew. Now, I must think that such
a writer would weave into his plan many accepted traditions of the Jews
and many Rabbinical expositions of the sacred writers. He was
doubtless acquainted with that remarkable passage in the Revelation in
which the patriarchs are so honourably named, and with
that corresponding passage which seems to unite the twelve patriarchs
with the twelve apostles. St. Paul’s
claim for the twelve tribes before Agrippa would
naturally impress itself on such a mind. Whether the product of
such a character with such a disposition would naturally be such an
affectionate and filial attempt as this to identify the religion of the
Crucified with the faith of the Jewish fathers, may be
judged of by my reader.
It appears to
me an ill-advised romance; not more a “pious fraud” than
several fictions which have attracted attention in our own times, based
on the traditions of the Hebrews. The legends of the
“Wandering Jew” have grown out of corresponding instincts
among Christians. To me they appear like the profane
“Passion-plays” lately revived among Christians,—a
most unwarrantable form of teaching even truth. But as to the
work itself, seeing it exists, I must acknowledge that it seems to me a
valuable relic of antiquity, and an interesting specimen of the
feelings and convictions of those believers over whom St. James
presided in Jerusalem: “Israelites indeed,” but “zealous of the law.” They were now convinced that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, with Moses and all the prophets, looked for the Messiah who had appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. The author of this book was anxious to show that the twelve patriarchs were twelve believers in the Paschal Lamb, and that they died in Christian penitence and faith.