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When H^β was translated we have no definite means of determining. It was in all likelihood done subsequently to H^α. The translator of H^β appears to have had the translation of H^α before him, and to have followed it generall unless where there were manifest divergences between H^α and H^β.^[1]

Jewish Additions to the Text.—(a) A large body of these additions can be classed under one head as written with a well-defined object and at a definite period. This period was about 70–40 B.C., and the object of the additions was the overthrow of the Maccabean high-priesthood, which in the 1st century B.C. had become guilty of every lewdness. T. Lev. x., xiv.–xvi.; T. Jud. xvii. 2–xviii. 1 (?), xxi. 6–xxiii., xxiv. 4–6; T. Zeb. ix.; T. Dan. v. 6–7, vii.3 (?); T. Naph. iv.; T. Gad. viii. 2; T. Ash. vii. 4–7. These additions are identical in object and closely related in character and diction with the Psalms of Solomon.

(b) Other additions are of various dates and cannot be more than mentioned here, i.e., T. Reub. ii. 3–iii. 2; T. Lev. xvii. 1–9; T. Zeb. vi. 4–6, vii.–viii. 3; T. Jos. x. 5–xviii.

Christian Additions to the Text.—These additions are to be found in most of the Testaments and were made at different periods. The existence of these Christian elements in the text misled nearly every scholar for the past four hundred years into believing that the book itself was a Christian apocryph. To Grabe, Schnapp and Conybeare belongs the credit of showing that the Christian elements were interpolations—to Conybeare especially of the three, since, whereas the two others showed the high probability of their contention on internal evidence, Conybeare proved by means of the Armenian Version that when it was made many of the interpolations had not yet found their way into the text. For a full treatment of these passages see R. H. Charles’s Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908), Introd. § 20.

Influence on the New Testament.—We have already shown that St Paul twice quoted from the Greek text of the Testaments. These two passages in Rom. and 1 Thess. give but the very faintest idea of the degree of his indebtedness in thought and phraseology in several of his Epistles, especially that to the Romans. But of still greater interest are the passages in the Gospels which show the influence of the Testaments, and these belong mainly to the sayings and discourses of our Lord. We may mention two of the most notable of these. Thus Matt. xviii. 15, 35, which deal with the great question of forgiveness, are clearly dependent on our text.

Matt. xviii. 15. Ἐὰν δὲ ἁμαρτήσῃ	T. Gad. vi. 3. Ἐάν τις ἁμαρτήσει
ὁ ἀδελφός σου κατά σου, ὔπαγε ἔλεγξον αὐτὸν μεταξὺ σοῦ καὶ αὐτοῦ μόνου.	εὶς σί εἰπὲ αὐτῷ ἐν εἰρήνῃ . . . καὶ ἐὰν . . . μετανοήσῃ ἄφες αύτῷ.
35. Ἐὰν μὴ ἀφῆτε ἕκαστος τῷ ἀδελφῷ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν καρδιῶν ὐμῶν.	vi. 6. Ἠσύχασον μὴ ἐλέγξῃς. . . . v. 7. Ἄφες αὐτῷ ἀπὸ καρδίας.

Next, the duty of loving God and our neighbour is already found in T. Dan. v. 3, which is the oldest literary authority which enjoins these two great commands. The form is infinitely finer in Matt. xxii. 37–39, but the matter is already in the Test. Dan. See Introd. § 26 to R. H. Charles’s Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.

Literature.—(a) Texts.—Sinker, Testamenta XII Patriarcharum (1869); [this work gives b in the text and a in the footnotes; subsequently (1879) Sinker issued an Appendix with variations from cg]; Charles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs from nine MSS., with the Variants from the Armenian and Slavonic Versions and the Hebrew Fragments (1908). Commentary.—Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs translated from the Editor’s Greek Text (1908). Critical Inquiries.—See Schürer, G. J. V. iii. 261–262: Charles, The Test. XII. Patriarchs, pp. xxxvi.–xli.  (R. H. C.) 

TESTAMENTUM DOMINI (“Testament of our Lord”). Extracts from the book which bears this title, contained in an 8th-century MS. at Paris, were published by Lagarde in 1856 (Reliquiae iuris ecclesiastici antiquissimae 80–89); and a Latin fragment, edited by Dr Montague James, appeared in 1893 (Texts and Studies, i. 154). The whole book was first published in Syriac in 1899, with a Latin translation by Mgr Rahrnani, the Uniat Syrian Patriarch of Antioch. His text is that of a 17th-century MS. at Mosul, the colophon of which says that the Syriac text was translated from the original Greek “a Jacobo paupere,” evidently James of Edessa, in A.D. 687; but he makes use of other material, including an Arabic version made from a Coptic copy written in A.D. 927. The Mosul MS. contains the whole Bible in the Peshitto version, followed by the Syrian “Clementine Octateuch,” i.e., the collection of ecclesiastical law, in eight books, which was used by the Nestorians and Jacobites. Of this the Testament forms the first two books; and according to the title (which, apparently by an error, is made to apply to the whole eight books) it contains the “testament, or words which Our Lord spake to His holy Apostles when He rose from the dead.” Plainly, it is one of that series of writings, claiming to embody the fundamental rules of the Church, which culminates in the Apostolical Constitutions (q.v.).

It falls into three distinct parts: an apocalyptic introduction (book i. chapters 1–18; the division into books, however, is clearly not original); a “church order” proper (i. 19–ii. 24); and a conclusion (ii. 25–27) of the same apocalyptic character as the introduction. (a) The Introduction professes to contain the record of the revelation of Himself by the Lord to His Apostles, with whom are Martha, Mary and Salome, on the evening after His resurrection. He is represented as unfolding to them, at their request, the signs of the end, and giving them instruction on various other topics. Incidentally, the fact becomes plain that this section is composed from the standpoint of Asia Minor and Syria, that it dates from soon after the time of Maximin (235–38) and Decius (249–51), and that it s rings from a Christian community of a strictly puritan type. (b) The Church Order follows the general lines of the Canons of Hippolytus and similar documents. It describes the Church and its buildings (i. 19); the office of the bishop and his functions (i. 19–27): the mystagogic instruction (i. 28) common to this and the Arabic Didascalia, where it occurs in an earlier form, and based in part upon the Gnostic “Acts of Peter”; the presbyter (i. 29–32); the deacon (i. 33–38); confessors (i. 39); the “widows who have precedence in sitting” (i. 40–43), apparently the same persons who are spoken of elsewhere as “presbyteresses” (i. 35, ii. 19); the sub deacon (i. 44) and the reader (i. 45), the order of whose offices seems to have been inverted; virgins of both sexes (i. 46); and those who possess charismata or spiritual gifts (i. 47). Next come the regulations for the laity, including the whole course of preparation for and admission to baptism (ii. 1–8), confirmation (ii. 9), and the Eucharist (ii. 10); after which there follows a series of miscellaneous regulations for Easter and Pentecost (ii. 11–12), the agape (ii. 13), the funds of the Church (ii. 17–20), the visitation of the sick (ii. 21), the use of psalmody (ii. 22), the burial of the dead (ii. 23), and the hours of prayer (ii. 24). (c) The Conclusion (ii. 25–27) brings us back to the injunctions of the Lord as to the keeping of these precepts, a special charge to John, Andrew and Peter, and a statement that copies of the Testament were made by John, Peter and Matthew, and sent to Jerusalem by the hands of Dosithaeus, Sillas, Magnus and Aquila.

In all this there is much that is peculiar to or characteristic of the Testament. First and foremost is its ascription to the Lord Himself, which we can hardly be mistaken in regarding as an attempt to claim yet higher sanction than was claimed by the various compilations which were styled “apostolic.” This fact alone would lead us to infer the pre-existence of certain of the latter. Again, the whole tone of the Testamentum is one of highly strung asceticism, and the regulations are such as point by their severity to a small and strictly organized body. They are “the wise,” “the perfect,” “sons of light ”; but this somewhat Gnostic phraseology is not accompanied with any signs of Gnostic doctrine, and the work as a whole is orthodox in tone. They are set in the midst of “wolves,” despised and slighted by the careless and worldly: there is frequent mention of “the persecuted,” and of the duty of “bearing the cross.” There appears to be no locus poenitentiae for serious sins excepting in the case of catechumens, and there is a notable “perfectionist” tone in many of the prayers. Charismata, and above all exorcisms, occupy a very important place: there is a vivid realization of the ministry of angels, and the angelic hierarchy is very complete. Great stress is laid upon virginity (although there is not a sign of monasticism), upon fasting (especially for the bishop), upon the regular attendance of the whole clerical body and the “more perfect” of the laity at the hours of prayer. The church buildings are very elaborate, and the baptistery is oblong, a form found apparently only here and in the Arabic Didascalia. Amongst the festivals mentioned are the Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost. With regard to the prayers, they are based upon forms common to this and other Church orders, but have many lengthy interpolations of an inflated and, rhapsodic kind. The bishop appears to rank far above the presbyters (more conspicuously so, for example, than in the Canons of Hippolytus), and the presbyters are still divided into two classes, those who are more learned and those

1. § 14 of the Introduction to R. H. Charles’s The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs.