TESTAMENT IN SACRED SCRIPTURE. — The term testamentum in the Vulgate often translates the Hebrew berith, which denotes both a pact between private individuals and an alliance between nations or ethnic groups (Gen. 21, 22 ff.; Ex. 23, 32; 34, 12. 15; Deut. 7, 2; Ios. 9, 9 ff.; Iudc. 2, 2 etc.). Generally, it denotes the pact established between God and his people: a relationship of privilege, willed and realized by God, bilateral insofar as the observance of the Law is always expressed as the condition of God’s fidelity to his promises.
In this sense, the Latin term testamentum is not very appropriate; it was used under the influence of the Septuagint, which translated berith with διαθήκη («disposition», mostly testamentary). Aquila and Symmachus preferred συνθήκη, and already St. Jerome (In Mal., 2,4; Pl. 25, 1555) warned that the word T. «in many places of Scripture does not mean the will of the deceased, but a pact between the living». Its ordinary meaning can, however, be found in Gal. 3,15 and in Hebr. 9,16. This meaning applies well to the writings of the New T., insofar as their content may be regarded as an «inheritance», a possession (Redemption) in close connection with the death of Jesus Christ. For the books containing the history and prophecies of the Jewish people, it is more logical to speak of writings concerning the «pact» between God and humanity.
The use of T. in the sense of a collection of inspired books is very ancient in Christian tradition. It is already found in the Bible: St. Paul (II Cor. 3, 14) speaks of the «reading of the Old T.»; I Mach. 1, 60 describes the persecution initiated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes against «the books of the T. of the Lord».
I. Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
An apocryphal book of the Old Testament, originating in Jewish circles in the 2nd–1st centuries B.C., interpolated by Christian hands from as early as the 2nd century A.D., and important for knowledge of the Jewish religious mentality of the 1st century, especially concerning messianism.It contains the words that each of Jacob’s twelve sons, before dying, is supposed to have addressed to his descendants and to all Israel, in imitation of Jacob himself (Gen. 49), Joseph (ibid. 50, 24 ff.), and Moses (Deut. 31-33). Each «t.» has a historical or biographical section (the Patriarch recalls his life, especially the virtue or vice by which he distinguished himself), a paraenetic section (he recommends or discourages its imitation), and a prophetic or eschatological section (he foretells that his descendants or the whole people will be punished for their sins, but will thereby return to God, preparing themselves to receive messianic salvation).
The problem of the time of origin is complicated by the presence of many interpolations. At first, the clear allusions to the doctrines of Christianity (even to the incarnation of God and his birth from a Virgin) led scholars to regard the entire work as Christian in origin (Sinker, Deane).
(From Herrad of Landsberg, Hortus Deliciarum, edited by A. Straub and G. Keller, Strasbourg 1981, plate 82)
TESTAMENTO nella SACRA SCRITTURA - Old Covenant or ritual law, miniature from the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, fol. 67 (ca. 1230).
Later, however, these were recognized as interpolations dating from approximately the 2nd century, also because they display affinities with the heresy of the Patripassians (v. MODALISMO). The original language was Semitic (Aramaic or Hebrew; today Hebrew is generally accepted). Various historical allusions, particularly the laudatory terms applied to the tribe of Levi and the priestly class, would date the original book to the most glorious years of the Maccabean period (153-104 B.C.); but other expressions, disparaging the priestly class, suggest a second Jewish hand from the period when the high priesthood began to decline, under the successors of John Hyrcanus (ca. 70-40 B.C.). Such, in general outline, is the view of Conybeare, Bousset, Charles, and Lagrange. Felten’s view will scarcely be tenable, since he considers the redaction of the entire Jewish work to be later than A.D. 70.
The text has come down to us in Greek, Armenian, and Slavonic translations. The Greek translation is represented by nine manuscripts, with two different forms of the text; the Armenian version (4th–6th century), preserved in about ten manuscripts, is thought to derive from the second of these. There are also separate portions of certain «t.» (Levi in Aramaic, Greek, and Syriac; Nephthali in Hebrew); they apparently did not belong to this apocryphal work, although they present some analogy with II. The T. of the Twelve Patriarchs are used in the Sadochite Document and cited by Origen, St. Jerome, and other ecclesiastical writers as apocryphal. In the Middle Ages, Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln (13th century), prepared a Latin translation which disseminated the work; it was also published by Migne (PG 2, 1037-1150), together with Grabe’s Greek edition (1698), both of which have been largely superseded by the highly accurate edition of R. H. Charles (Oxford 1908), containing the variants of all the manuscripts of the ancient versions. Charles is nevertheless at fault in making the teaching of the New Testament writers and of Jesus himself dependent upon this apocryphal work; he was followed in this by Friedländer, Hart, and Oesterley, and was brilliantly refuted by Lagrange, Plummer, and Schürer. There are also numerous modern versions (for which cf. Frey, cited in the bibliography).
(From Herrad of Landsberg, op. cit., plate 22)
2. The Testament of Our Lord
This is the title of an apocryphal writing attributed to the apostles John, Peter, and Matthew, but composed in Greek in the second half of the 5th century, probably in Syria, by a Monophysite author.It survives only in Syriac (of which I. Rahmani published the first edition in Mainz in 1899), Coptic, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions. The content of the book appears to be a kind of reworking of elements contained in the Paradoxis of Hippolytus of Rome, and consists of eschatological announcements and regulations for bishops and the faithful, with abundant details concerning the Sacraments and Christian customs.
For the other apocryphal T.: V. ABRAMO; ADAMO; GIOBBE; SALOMONE.
Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina