The Testament of Adam — True Church Edition
The Testament of Adam 21
1When Jacob had reached sixty-nine years, Reuben was born to him, then followed him his brethren whom God brought out of the loins of Jacob; these were Simeon and Levi, Judah the ancestor of Mary, Issachar and Zebulun; Joseph and Benjamin the sons of the beautiful Rachel; Gad and Asher, sons of Zilpah; Dan and Naphtali, sons of Bilhah the maid of Rachel.
2Two years after the emigration of Jacob, he returned to Isaac his father. He lived after that fully thirty-one years of Levi’s life. When he reached one hundred and twenty years his father Isaac died. Twenty-three years afterwards he journeyed from Haran to the elevated land; Joseph was sold during the lifetime of Isaac, and he was a companion to Jacob in his sorrow.
3After the sale of Joseph, Isaac died; his sons Jacob and Esau buried him beside the grave of his father Abraham. After nine years Rebecca died, and was buried near the grave of Abraham.
4Judah married Hoshâ‘ the Canaanitess; Jacob was grieved at that because she was not of the children of Israel, and said to him, “By the God of Abraham and Isaac, do not mingle the seed of Canaan with us,” and he did not accept it from him. He begat from her Er and Onan [Cod. Othen] and Shelah. Judah wedded his son Er with Tamar the daughter of Kedar, son of Levi. Er wrought the deed of the people of Sodom, and God punished him for his deed.
5God killed him in answer to the prayer of Jacob, and the seed of Canaan was not mingled with his seed. Then this Tamar disguised herself, and sat in the middle of the way; Judah came together with her, not knowing that she was his daughter-in-law; she conceived by him, and bare Pharez and Zarah.
6At this time Jacob and his children journeyed to Egypt, and stayed with Joseph for seventeen years. When he had completed [a hundred] and forty-seven years of life he died, Joseph that day being fifty-six years old. The wise physicians of Pharaoh embalmed him. After this Joseph removed his body and placed it beside the bodies of his father and of his grandfather Abraham.
7Pharez the son of Judah begat Hezron, and Hezron begat Aram, and Aram begat Aminadab, and Aminadab begat Nahson, who was the most cunning of the sons of Judah. And Aminadab wedded Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest to a girl, and from her he begat Phinehas the priest, who by his prayer took away death from the people, and whose was the deed with the javelin.
8Know that the priesthood was from Aminadab among the people of Israel, and from Nahson the kinghood came among them. Look, O my son Clement, how from Judah came the priesthood and the kinghood among the children of Israel.
9Nahson begat a son, who is Salmon; Salmon begat Boaz. When Boaz was old, he married Ruth the Moabitess; in her was kinghood, for she was of the race of kings. She was of the children of Lot.
10God did not cast Lot out for his cohabiting with his daughters, and did not attach blame to him, and did not depreciate his good deed - for Lot was drunken, lost and in pain, having lost his home and his wife, in the reckoning of Sodom.
11For you see, the great plan of the Lord shall roll forth, even amidst the most peculiar circumstances; and He must delicately perform His great and noble work amongst the myriad of sins which abound in the sons of men.
12Lot further honored the Lord in his support of his uncle Abraham in his exile, and his reception of the Angels in faith, and He put the kinghood into Ruth who was of his race, so that the Incarnation of our Lord the Christ was of the race of Abraham. Also [into] her, the wife of Solomon, son of David, by whom he begat.
13Solomon verily had six hundred free women and four hundred concubines, and he obtained no child from any of them, because God, may His name be praised! wished that the seed of Canaan should not mingle with the seed of the chosen people from whom Jesus the Christ took flesh. The rest of the wives of Solomon were of the children of Canaan. Nevertheless Moses the Prophet of God related, for the responsible books, the chronicles of the children of Israel relate that Levi, when he entered Egypt with his father Jacob, begat there his son Amram the father of Moses. When Moses was born he was thrown out by his mother into the Egyptian Nile, and Sapphira the daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, saved him from drowning and brought him up in her father’s palace.
14When he grew up and had finished forty years, he killed Casoum the Egyptian, chief of the swordsmen of Pharaoh. He fled to Reuel to the priest of Midian for fear of Pharaoh, and that because Sapphira had died before this, and if she had been still there, why should Moses have been afraid of Pharaoh? Moses married Zipporah daughter of Jethro, priest of Midian. She bare him two sons, these were Gershon and Eleazar, at the time of the birth of Joshua the son of Nun, and Moses’ age was fifty-two years. When he had completed eighty years, God spake to him from the thorn bush, and his tongue stammered out of fear for God, and he said, “O Lord, at the time when thou spakest to thy servant, his tongue stammered.” All his years were 120.
15He spent forty in Egypt, and forty in Midian, and he governed the children of Israel forty years in the wilderness. When he died, Joshua the son of Nun governed them thirty-one years. Then Chushan the Atheist governed them after him eight years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz the brother of Caleb, for forty years. Then the Moabites enslaved the children of Israel for eighteen years. Then [God] prepared their deliverance from their hand. Their government was presided over by Ehud the son of Gera for eighty years. In the twenty-sixth year of the reign of this Ehud, the fourth thousand [year] from the beginning was finished.
16Then after him the famous Jabin presided over their government for an interval of twenty years, then Deborah and Barak looked after it for forty years. Then the Midianites conquered them, and enslaved them for seven years, then God saved them by the hand of Gideon. He presided over their government for forty years; then his son Abimelech for three years. Then Jufa (Tola) the son of Puah for twenty years, then a daughter of the Gileadite twenty-two years.