The First Christians / pt. 11
A remarkable poem from the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (T12P) invites commentary. I give the passage in full below, which comes from the Testament of Levi. We have seen that the author of T12P singled out Levi and Judah for special recognition. Among the Jews, these two tribes held religious power and royal power respectively. Yeshu haNotsri was a Levite (as were all males in the Hasmonean line) and thus was a priest by birth.
Historically, the poem below has been routinely interpreted through Catholic lenses. Today, conservative scholarship assumes it (and much of T12P) refers to Jesus of Nazareth and accordingly dates the entire work to late I CE+. However, the consensus of scholarship dates the work one century earlier, that is, to the closing decades of I BCE, while proposing that one or more Catholic editors interpolated the T12P in an effort to render it palatable to the Church.
The number and extent of Catholic edits and interpolations are subject to debate. However, the recognition that the poem originally referred not to Jesus at all but to the earlier Yeshu haNotsri allows us to reduce the number of Catholic edits, many of which can now be seen to authentically refer to Yeshu haNotsri rather than falsely to Jesus of Nazareth.
In the following I have taken the liberty of highlighting gnostic phrases in red font and adding comments. To enter the world of the first Christians, I can think of no quicker way than consideration of this poem and similar passages that we will be considering in subsequent posts.
1 When vengeance will have come upon them from the Lord, the priesthood will lapse.
2 And then the Lord will raise up a new priest
to whom all the words of the Lord will be revealed.
He will execute the judgment of truth upon the earth for a multitude of days.
3 And his star will rise in heaven as of a king,
kindling the light of knowledge as the sun illumines the day.
And he will be magnified in the world.
4 This one will shine forth as the sun on the earth,
And he will remove all darkness from under heaven,
And there will be peace in all the earth.
5 The heavens will greatly rejoice in his days,
And the earth will be glad,
The clouds will be filled with joy,
And the knowledge of the Lord will be poured out on the earth,
as the water of the seas;
And the angels of glory of the Lord’s presence will be glad in him.
6 The heavens will be opened,
And from the temple of glory sanctification will come upon him,
With the Father’s voice as from Abraham to Isaac.
7 And the glory of the Most High will burst forth upon him,
And the spirit of understanding and sanctification
will rest upon him in the water.
8 For he will give the majesty of the Lord to those who are his sons forever,
[And he will have no successor for all generations forever.]
9 And in his priesthood the Gentiles will be multiplied in knowledge on the earth,
And they will be enlightened through the grace of the Lord,
but Israel will be diminished by her ignorance
and darkened by her grief.
In his priesthood will sin come to an end,
And the lawless will cease to do evil,
And the just will find rest in him.
10 [And he will open the gates of paradise,
He will remove the sword that has threatened since Adam.
11 And he will grant to the saints to eat from the tree of life,
And the spirit of holiness will be on them.
12 And Beliar will be bound by him.]
And he will give power to his children to trample on wicked spirits.
13 And the Lord will rejoice in His children,
And will be well pleased in his beloved ones for ever.
14 Then will Abraham and Isaac and Jacob exult,
And I will rejoice,
And all the saints will be clothed in righteousness.
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