Three of Jacob’s sons die in these chapters, and each leaves one subject behind him. Issachar the farmer leaves singleness — the undivided heart. Zebulun the fisherman leaves compassion. Dan, who once meant to kill Joseph, leaves anger and lying. No clean digital Greek of the Testaments turned up in the free sources checked for this shelf, so this page read 30 verses off the page images of R. H. Charles’s 1908 Greek and measured those. The surprise is in Dan’s last exhortation, as Charles prints it. καὶ φεύξεται ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν (5:1) and Ἐγγίσατε τῷ θεῷ καὶ (6:2) each stand in exactly one New Testament verse — James 4:7 and James 4:8, side by side — and in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened; and Dan 6:2 also carries μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων, which, of the New and Greek Old Testament units screened, stands only in 1 Timothy 2:5. Charles’s own apparatus is the check: it carries the 5:1 run in one manuscript of nine and the 6:2 run in seven. The pairing of love for the Lord with love for the neighbour (Issachar 5:2; Dan 5:3), meanwhile, shares at most three consecutive words with any form of the great commandment. These books are not Scripture for us, and the page says plainly what it could not read. See the method →
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are twelve farewell speeches, one for each son of Jacob, in the form that Jacob’s own last words in Genesis 49 also take: each son tells his life, names a sin or a virtue, exhorts his children, foretells what their descendants will do, and dies. They survive in Greek, in manuscripts copied by Christians, and in Armenian and Slavonic. Whether the book is a Jewish work later touched by Christian hands or a Christian work built from Jewish material is argued in the scholarship, and nothing on this page settles it. It is not Scripture for us. We read it as we read the other Second-Temple books — critically, as a window on how the sons of Jacob were remembered and preached in the centuries around the New Testament — and we test everything by the canon. Where it says what Scripture does not — a book of Enoch that names Satan as Dan’s prince, an angel who intercedes and is called a mediator — this page reports it and does not adopt it. For the opening testaments see Reuben and Simeon.
⚠️ What this page can and cannot measure — read this first.
HELD AND USED: Charles’s English of all twelve testaments (1917 printing, 1,000 verses); Charles’s 1908 Greek as page images, of which 22 were read for this page (33 rows: 32 rows of text from 30 verses, and one margin note); the Greek New Testament (7,927 SBLGNT verses); the Greek Old Testament (30,348 CATSS units screened, of 30,637 held — the Odes left out by house convention); the Greek fragments of 1 Enoch (400 rows, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha).
HELD, USED ONLY TO SCREEN: the machine-read text layer of the 1908 Greek. Its results are a list of candidates; every number on this page that matters was re-measured on Greek read off the page image. Stage 5 shows what the machine reading gets wrong.
NOT HELD: any clean digital Greek of the Testaments; M. de Jonge’s critical edition (1978, in copyright, not consulted); the Armenian and Slavonic versions, except as Charles’s apparatus reports them; any Hebrew or Aramaic of these three testaments.
CONSEQUENCE: the Greek of roughly five verses in six of these three testaments has not been read by anyone for this page, and nothing here measures it. Every negative is scoped to the units actually searched. The normaliser is the shelf’s comparison normaliser (dr_tools.normalize.grk_seq_cmp, on both sides): accents, breathings, case and punctuation dropped, final sigma folded, elision resolved, and MorphGNT’s own spelling equivalences applied (so ἐξ and ἐκ count as one word). Charles’s brackets and daggers are not letters and fall away under it.
Issachar, Zebulun and Dan — eight readings, the Greek read off Charles’s page
Greek: R. H. Charles 1908, read off the page images (the column named where he prints two) · English: Charles 1917, public domainLove for the Lord and for the neighbour, in one line. Against Mark 12:30–31, Matthew 22:37–39, Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 it shares at most two consecutive words (the article and neighbour). Within this comparison its deepest runs are three, with Luke 10:27, and three, with Greek Psalm 30:24 — the one unit in the Greek Old Testament screened that carries ἀγαπήσατε τὸν κύριον. Against all the Greek Old Testament units screened its deepest run is four, the Lord and the (band 2: Exodus 5:2, 2 Chronicles 31:8); against the New Testament it is three, band 6 (Luke 10:27, and five verses sharing the Lord and). See Stage 4.
CHARLES 1908 · column β, S¹ Τὸν Κύριον ἠγάπησα ἐν πάσῃ ἰσχύι μου· ὁμοίως καὶ πάντα ἄνθρωπον ἠγάπησα ὑπὲρ τὰ τέκνα μου. (printed p. 115; PDF page 185)Iss 7:6CHARLES 1917 · Issachar 7:6 “I loved the Lord; Likewise also every man with all my heart.”
Charles prints two Greek texts here, side by side. The English reads Likewise also — a word (ὁμοίως) that only the right-hand column prints (though Charles’s apparatus records manuscripts h and i of the left-hand family reading it, while they read strength for heart) — and with all my heart, which only the left-hand column has. It translates neither column as printed. The left column’s ἐξ ὅλης τῆς καρδίας is the Shema’s phrase: 16 Greek Old Testament units carry it, Deuteronomy 6:5 among them, and three New Testament verses (Mark 12:30, 12:33; Luke 10:27).
The only it is written in these three testaments. Charles’s text names Moses; his own apparatus (note 20 on printed p. 120) reports that the β manuscripts (d without law) and the first Slavonic read the law of Enoch, and the Armenian their law. The law described is the sandal ceremony of Deuteronomy 25:9 — yet the wording shares three words with Deuteronomy 25:9 and four with Genesis 38:9 (Onan) — a four that Ruth 4:7 and 4:8, the other sandal ceremony, tie with his sandal and (band 3 among the Greek Old Testament units screened) — and with the Sadducees’ question in Matthew 22:24, Mark 12:19 and Luke 20:28.
Inside the square brackets that Charles opens at 7:1 and closes after 8:3, with the margin note VII–VIII. 2 only in bdg. σπλάγχνα ἐλέους — bowels of mercy — stands in one New Testament verse (Luke 1:78) and in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened.
CHARLES 1908 · column bdg Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἀνατελεῖ ὑμῖν αὐτὸς Κύριος, φῶς δικαιοσύνης καὶ ἴασις καὶ εὐσπλαγχνία ἐν ταῖς πτέρυξιν αὐτοῦ. Αὐτὸς λυτρώσεται πᾶσαν αἰχμαλωσίαν υἱῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐκ τοῦ Βελίαρ καὶ πᾶν πνεῦμα πλάνης πατηθήσεται. καὶ ἐπιστρέψει πάντα τὰ ἔθνη εἰς παραζήλωσιν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ὄψεσθε θεὸν ἐν σχήματι ἀνθρώπου ὃν ἂν ἐκλέξηται Κύριος Ἱερουσαλὴμ ὄνομα αὐτῷ. (printed p. 128-129; PDF page 198-199)Zeb 9:8CHARLES 1917 · Zebulun 9:8 “And after these things shall there arise unto you the Lord Himself, the light of righteousness, And ye shall return unto your own land. And ye shall see Him in Jerusalem, for His name's sake.”
The English is the left column. Only the right-hand column, b d g, carries Malachi’s healing in his wings (ἐν ταῖς πτέρυξιν αὐτοῦ: four words with Greek Malachi 3:20, English 4:2), the redemption of captivity from Beliar, and God in the form of a man. The left column shares two words with Malachi 3:20 and names no Beliar.
καὶ φεύξεται ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν — four words that stand in one New Testament verse, James 4:7, and in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened. That is Charles’s printed text: by his own apparatus only one manuscript of his nine (c) carries all four words. See Stage 4.
Love the Lord — and one another (ἀλλήλους), not the neighbour. Against Mark 12:30–31, Matthew 22:37–39, Luke 10:27, Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 the longest shared run is one word, the article.
Two four-word sequences in one verse, each in exactly one New Testament verse and in no Greek Old Testament unit screened: Ἐγγίσατε τῷ θεῷ καὶ (James 4:8) and μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων (1 Timothy 2:5) — the first in seven of Charles’s nine manuscripts by his apparatus, the second with no variant recorded. The mediator here is an angel. And the verse ends at a word Charles marks with a dagger as corrupt (†Θεοῦ); his English renders it the enemy.
Where Charles prints parallel columns, both are printed and named. His left-hand column is his preferred text, headed α; the right-hand column usually carries the β family of manuscripts and the Armenian (A) and Slavonic (S¹) versions as he cites them (at Zebulun 9:8 only b, d and g, with a, e, f, A and S¹ on the left). PDF page numbers on this page count from 0, as the PyMuPDF library does and as the sidecar records them; a PDF viewer numbers the same page one higher.
On the English. Charles’s translation, 1908, as reprinted by SPCK in 1917, quoted verbatim from the transcription held here and checked character for character by the self-check. The 1917 half-brackets (words absent from the Armenian) are not carried by that transcription and are not reproduced. It is quotation, not a parallel measured against the Greek — and at Issachar 7:6 and Zebulun 3:2 it does not translate the column Charles prints as his text (Stage 5). Italic English in the prose is Charles’s 1917 wording where it renders the Testaments, and otherwise this page’s own literal gloss.
Versification — stated, including where the usual frame does not exist.
There is no Masoretic text, no Septuagint (CATSS) file, no Vulgate and no KJV Apocrypha text of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and no modern English Bible on this shelf carries them — checked: no CATSS file, no Clementine book and no KJV Apocrypha book code on this disk carries them. So there is no Hebrew–Greek offset to report. The numbering on this page is Charles’s own.
• Shape, counted in the 1917 English held here: Issachar 15 · 5 · 8 · 6 · 8 · 4 · 9 (55 verses); Zebulun 7 · 9 · 8 · 12 · 5 · 8 · 4 · 6 · 9 · 7 (75); Dan 9 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 13 · 11 · 3 (54) — 184 verses of the 1,000 in all twelve testaments. On this shelf’s hub they are testaments 5, 6 and 7.
• Zebulun 4 has no verse 4 in the English — it runs 4:1–3, 4:5–13. Read on the page image (printed p. 121): Charles’s left-hand column runs 3 to 5 as well, and his right-hand column (β, A, S¹) has a verse 4, printed in Stage 4.
• Issachar 1 has fifteen verses. The earlychristianwritings.com transcription of Charles’s 1913 revision held here stops that chapter at verse 11; the Sefaria copy held here, which names that site as its source, carries the text of 1:12–15 (divided into paragraphs, not verses).
• The Greek follows the same numbering at every one of the 30 verses read for this page. The rest of the 1908 Greek was not read and its shape is not counted here.
• Greek Old Testament references are in the CATSS (Greek) numbering: Psalm 30:24 is Psalm 31:23 in English Bibles; Malachi 3:20 is English Malachi 4:2; Jeremiah 43:16 is Hebrew and English Jeremiah 36:16; Jonah 2:1 is English Jonah 1:17.
The Shape of the Passage
A sequence, three times over — parallel panels, not a chiasmAnd each testament keeps to its subject, measured in the same English. Words in single-: Issachar 10, Zebulun 0, Dan 0 — of 17 in all twelve testaments. The compassion family (compassion, mercy, merciful, bowels, pity): Issachar 2, Zebulun 30, Dan 1 — of 55. Wrath, anger, angry: Issachar 0, Zebulun 2, Dan 22 — of 32. Each of the three carries more than half of the whole collection’s words for its own subject. These are counts of Charles’s English, not of the Greek — and Stage 3 shows one place where the English renders the same Greek word two ways.
⚠️ Where this page sits. The Testaments are filed on this shelf under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple. They are not in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint or any church’s canon held on this disk. Nothing taught at Pleasant Springs rests on them.
Author
Anonymous, writing in borrowed voices. Each testament is the last speech of one of Jacob’s sons, framed in the third person and spoken in the first: Hearken, my children. The speakers are the patriarchs; the book is not theirs.
Its date and its hands are argued, and the page does not settle them. W. O. E. Oesterley’s introduction to the 1917 printing held here, following Charles, says that “our book in its original form may, therefore, well belong to this period” — the reign of John Hyrcanus, “B.C. 135-104” — and lists among the later additions Charles identifies “Test. Zebulun ix.” and “Test. Dan v. 6, 7, vii. 3” (the last with a query), and among the Christian additions “Test. Dan vi. 9”. How much of the book is Christian has been argued since; none of that literature was consulted here. Reported, not measured.
Genesis is inside these speeches. Reuben’s words in Zebulun’s account share five consecutive words with Genesis 37:20 (Stage 2), and the sandal law of Zebulun 3:4 is the only place in these three testaments that has it is written.
Audience
Children, and children’s children. My children stands in 20 verses of these three testaments in Charles’s English. The hearers are told what to be — single-hearted, merciful, slow to anger — and what their descendants will become.
Hearers told they would be scattered and brought back. All three predictions run the same course: sin, dispersion or captivity among the Gentiles, return. The speeches address that future to the hearers as their own; who the first readers were is the dating question above, not settled here.
And readers who would hear Levi and Judah honoured. Issachar tells his sons to obey Levi and Judah (5:7–8); Dan foresees salvation from the tribe of [Judah and of] Levi (5:10) — with Judah inside Charles’s brackets.
Orient on the Testaments, on the testament form, and on the manuscripts.
Search by topic: Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; testament (genre); Beliar; Issachar; Zebulun; Dan; Pseudepigrapha.
Which articles are relevant?
- Anchor Bible Dictionary — entries on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and on Beliar.
- Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — entries on the Testaments and on the testament genre.
- Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — on the Testaments and on the Pseudepigrapha. These are subjects to look up; the exact entry titles were not checked, and none of these works is held on this disk or was consulted.
- On the text — any article that distinguishes Charles’s edition (1908, an α-family text) from de Jonge’s (1978). An article that quotes ‘the Greek of the Testaments’ without naming the edition is not quoting a fixed text.
Bibliography surfaced:
- R. H. Charles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908) — held as page images; the Greek on this page.
- R. H. Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908; SPCK, 1917, with an introduction by W. O. E. Oesterley) — held; the English on this page.
- R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913) — held as a scan; his revised translation, not quoted here.
- M. de Jonge et al., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testamenti Graece I.2; Leiden: Brill, 1978) — not held, not consulted.
- H. W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1985) — not held, not consulted.
Genesis retold by the men who were there — and the law they say is written.
The testament form is older than these books: Jacob’s last words over his sons (Genesis 49) and Moses’ over the tribes (Deuteronomy 33) are canonical examples of it. Below, the places where these three testaments touch Genesis and the Law, measured in Greek where the Greek was read.
Which parallels shed light on the world of the text?
- Genesis 49:13–18 → the three testaments. Jacob’s blessing gives Zebulun the seashore, Issachar the bowed shoulder of the labourer, Dan the judging and the serpent on the way. The Testaments make Zebulun the first boat-builder (6:1), Issachar a farmer (3:1), and Dan a man of anger. Named, not measured: the Greek of those verses was not read.
- Genesis 37:20 → Zebulun 2:7. In Genesis the brothers say ἀποκτείνωμεν αὐτὸν καὶ ῥίψωμεν αὐτὸν εἰς ἕνα τῶν λάκκων — let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. In Zebulun’s account Reuben says μὴ ἀποκτείνωμεν αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ ῥίψωμεν αὐτὸν εἰς ἕνα τῶν ξηρῶν λάκκων — let us not kill him, but throw him into one of the dry pits. A run of five — the row’s deepest against all 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened, band 1 — and where Genesis has and, the Testament has not … but. Reuben’s own speech in Genesis (37:22) shares two words with it.
- Genesis 47:12 → Zebulun 6:7. καὶ παντὶ τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ πατρός — and to all the house of the father: a run of six with Genesis 47:12, where Joseph provides for his father’s household, and in no other Greek Old Testament unit screened. It stands inside Charles’s square brackets, with his margin note Bracketed words only in bdg.
- Deuteronomy 25:5–10 → Zebulun 3:4. The man who will not raise up seed for his dead brother has his sandal loosed and his face spat in. Zebulun cites it with it is written and applies it to the brothers who bought sandals with Joseph’s price. Measured: with Deuteronomy 25:9 the run is three (τὸ ὑπόδημα αὐτοῦ, three words four Greek Old Testament units carry); with Genesis 38:9 it is four (σπέρμα τῷ ἀδελφῷ αὐτοῦ, Onan) — and Ruth 4:7 and 4:8 tie that four with his sandal and (the row’s band among the Greek Old Testament units screened is 3). The four words from Genesis 38:9 stand in one Greek Old Testament unit and in three New Testament verses — Matthew 22:24, Mark 12:19, Luke 20:28, the Sadducees’ question about the woman married to seven brothers. From Mark 12:19’s side its deepest Greek Old Testament run is four, band 1, with Genesis 38:9. No dependence is asserted in any direction.
- Malachi 3:20 (English 4:2) → Zebulun 9:8. ἐν ταῖς πτέρυξιν αὐτοῦ stands in one Greek Old Testament unit screened, Malachi’s; in Zebulun it stands only in the b d g column.
- Enoch, named. Dan 5:6 cites the book of Enoch, the righteous — inside Charles’s brackets — and at Zebulun 3:4 his apparatus reports the law of Enoch where his text has Moses. Across Charles’s English of all twelve testaments Enoch is named in six verses (Simeon 5:4; Levi 10:5; Dan 5:6; Naphtali 4:1; Benjamin 9:1; Benjamin 10:6), five of them citing something he wrote or said. Stage 4 measures Dan 5:6 against the Greek 1 Enoch held here.
In Zebulun 6–8 Charles’s square brackets mark manuscript evidence: his margin says 4–6 in bdg only, Bracketed words only in bdg (6:7), and VII–VIII. 2 only in bdg — though the bracket he opens at 7:1 closes after 8:3, and the 1917 English brackets through 8:3 as well. Elsewhere they mark his judgement that a passage is later than the rest — in Dan, for example, at 5:6–7, 5:10, 5:13 and 6:9.
They are not a count of anything. Oesterley’s introduction lists Zebulun 9 among Charles’s later additions, and the 1917 English brackets no word of that chapter — nor does the Greek of 9:8 read for this page, in either column. A bracket on this page reports where Charles put one, and nothing more.
Singleness, compassion, Beliar — and a mediator.
Every Greek count is over the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened (CATSS, the Odes excluded) and the 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament — not over “the Septuagint”, and not over the Testaments, whose Greek is held only as images. Counts of the Testaments themselves are either counts of the rows read off the page (said so) or counts of Charles’s English (said so).
7 times in the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened, 7 in the Greek New Testament (Romans 12:8; 2 Corinthians 8:2, 9:11, 9:13, 11:3; Ephesians 6:5; Colossians 3:22). The phrase in singleness of heart, ἐν ἁπλότητι καρδίας, stands in two Greek Old Testament units (1 Chronicles 29:17; Wisdom 1:1) and one New Testament verse (Colossians 3:22; Ephesians 6:5 has the article). In the Issachar rows read for this page the word stands in four verses (3:2, 4:1, 5:1, 7:7). Charles’s English renders it singleness at 4:1, 5:1 and 7:7 and rectitude at 3:2 — so a count of the English word is not a count of the Greek one.
Not once in the Greek Old Testament units screened (the adjective stands once in the Odes, at Ode 12:7, the Prayer of Manasseh — outside the screened units by house convention), and two in the Greek New Testament, the adjective at Ephesians 4:32 and 1 Peter 3:8. In the Zebulun rows read for this page it stands at 5:1, 8:1, 9:8 (the b d g column) — two of the three in b d g material, one inside the brackets of 7:1–8:3 and one in a b d g column.
One New Testament verse, Luke 1:78 (because of the bowels of mercy of our God), and none of the Greek Old Testament units screened. In Zebulun it stands at 8:2, inside the b d g brackets. The Greek has a word for the inner organs; Charles’s English keeps them as bowels.
Not once in the Greek Old Testament units screened; once in the Greek New Testament, 2 Corinthians 6:15 (what agreement has Christ with Beliar?). In Charles’s English of these three testaments: Issachar 2, Zebulun 0, Dan 5 — of 27 in all twelve. Zebulun’s English never names him; Zebulun’s b d g column does (9:8).
Once in the Greek Old Testament units screened, Job 9:33 (would that there were our mediator, and one who reproves and hears between the two), and six in the Greek New Testament (Galatians 3:19, 3:20; 1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 8:6, 9:15, 12:24). In Dan 6:2 the mediator is the angel that intercedeth for you.
Counted here, not assumed:
- 184 verses: Issachar 55, Zebulun 75, Dan 54, in Charles’s English. 30 of them were read in Greek for this page.
- Zebulun’s compassion is mostly in the brackets. Of the 1,913 words of Zebulun in Charles’s English, 289 stand inside his square brackets (15%) — and 18 of the 30 words of the compassion family. The testament with the most compassion words carries most of them in passages Charles’s margin assigns to three manuscripts.
- Anger and lying in Dan: wrath, anger, angry 22 times, lying 9 — of 32 and 12 in all twelve testaments.
- Singleness in Issachar: words in single- 10 times, none in Zebulun or Dan, 17 in all twelve.
- Three passages in these testaments cite a writing: it is written in the writing of the law of Moses (Zebulun 3:4), I have learnt in the writing of my fathers (Zebulun 9:5), I have read in the book of Enoch (Dan 5:6). Counted in the English; the Greek of 9:5 was not read.
Two neighbouring verses of James, one of 1 Timothy — and the links that dissolve.
Every row read off the page screened against all 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament and all 30,348 screened Greek Old Testament units: contiguous runs of whole word forms, the tie band (how many verses reach the same depth) beside every run, and for the contacts that carry the page the band from the New Testament side as well. A zero means no shared word at all only where it says so; a phrase count of zero means the exact sequence occurs nowhere in the units named. English renderings of New Testament and Greek Old Testament phrases are the page’s own literal glosses.
The distribution, and what it is a distribution of:
Across the 32 rows read off the page (30 verses, two of them in two columns), against the 7,927 SBLGNT verses: all 32 reach two, 31 reach three, 16 reach four, 5 reach five, and nothing reaches six. Against the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units: all 32 reach three, 24 reach four, 12 reach five, 3 reach six, and nothing reaches seven.
These rows were chosen — because the machine-read screen or the subject pointed at them — so this is the distribution of a selected set, not of the three testaments. The screen of all 38 page images proposed 30 contacts of four words or more with the New Testament (25 of four, 5 of five, none longer); Stage 5 says how far it can be trusted.
Depth is not rarity. Dan 7:2 reaches five with a band of four: Ἀβραὰμ καὶ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ Ἰακώβ, which 18 Greek Old Testament units also carry. Dan 6:9 reaches five with a band of one. A run is read with its band, or not at all.
| row (Charles 1908) | the shared words, as Charles prints them | run · New Testament verses with these words | the same words in the 30,348 Greek OT units | from the NT verse’s side: its deepest Greek OT run | where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iss 4:3 row band 9 | τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Θεοῦ | 4 · 1 John 2:17, 1 Peter 2:15, 1 Peter 3:17 + 6 more | 1 (1 Esdras 8:16) | — | a phrase nine NT verses share |
| Iss 7:6 [α] row band 3 | ἐξ ὅλης τῆς καρδίας | 4 · Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30, Mark 12:33 | 16 (2 Chronicles 15:12, 4 Maccabees 13:13 + 14 more) | — | left column only; the Shema’s phrase |
| Iss 7:7 row band 2 | τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς | 5 · Luke 10:21, Matthew 11:25 | 4 (2 Esdras 5:11, Letter of Jeremiah 1:53 + 2 more) | 5 (band 4) | a formula |
| Zeb 3:4 row band 3 | σπέρμα τῷ ἀδελφῷ αὐτοῦ | 4 · Luke 20:28, Mark 12:19, Matthew 22:24 | 1 (Genesis 38:9) | — | the law cited with it is written |
| Zeb 4:4 [β, A, S¹] row band 1 | τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας | 5 · Matthew 12:40 | 2 (1 Samuel 30:12, Jonah 2:1) | 12 (band 1) | right column only — Charles’s text has no 4:4 |
| Zeb 6:6 row band 1 | τῇ ἄγρᾳ τῶν ἰχθύων | 4 · Luke 5:9 | 0 | 4 (band 3) | inside brackets: only in bdg |
| Zeb 6:7 row band 1 | τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ πατρός | 4 · Acts 7:20 | 15 (1 Chronicles 21:17, 1 Samuel 2:28 + 13 more) | 5 (band 12) | inside brackets: only in bdg |
| Zeb 8:2 row band 7 | ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτων τῶν ἡμερῶν | 4 · 2 Peter 3:3 | 12 (Daniel (OG) 2:28, Daniel (OG) 2:29 + 10 more) | 4 (band 12) | inside the brackets opened at 7:1 |
| Zeb 8:2 row band 7 | ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, καὶ | 4 · James 5:5, Luke 21:23, Mark 14:35 + 3 more | 45 (1 Esdras 5:49, 1 Samuel 23:23 + 43 more) | — | inside the brackets opened at 7:1 |
| Zeb 9:8 [α, aef, A, S¹] row band 1 | διὰ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ | 4 · 1 John 2:12 | 1 (1 Samuel 12:22) | 4 (band 1) | left column |
| Dan 2:1 row band 4 | λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅτι ἐὰν | 4 · Galatians 5:2, Luke 19:40, Matthew 18:19 | 0 | — | not bracketed |
| Dan 2:1 row band 4 | ὑμῖν, ὅτι ἐὰν μὴ | 4 · Matthew 5:20 | 0 | 5 (band 1) | not bracketed |
| Dan 5:1 row band 1 | καὶ φεύξεται ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν | 4 · James 4:7 | 0 | 3 (band 2) | not bracketed |
| Dan 5:10 row band 1 | ἐκ τῆς φυλῆς [Ἰούδα | 4 · Revelation 5:5 | 3 (1 Esdras 9:5, Joshua (B) 7:1 + 1 more) | 4 (band 4) | needs Charles’s bracketed [Judah and]; without it, three |
| Dan 5:13 row band 2 | καὶ ὁ πιστεύων ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ | 5 · 1 Peter 2:6, Romans 9:33 | 1 (Isaiah 28:16) | 8 (band 1) | inside Charles’s brackets |
| Dan 6:2 row band 13 | μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων | 4 · 1 Timothy 2:5 | 0 | 3 (band 1) | not bracketed |
| Dan 6:2 row band 13 | τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ †Θεοῦ | 4 · 2 Thessalonians 1:5, Acts 19:8, Acts 1:3 + 6 more | 0 | — | at the word Charles daggers as corrupt |
| Dan 6:2 row band 13 | τῷ θεῷ καὶ τῷ | 4 · Acts 20:32, Revelation 14:4 | 0 | 3 (band 27) | not bracketed |
| Dan 6:2 row band 13 | Ἐγγίσατε τῷ θεῷ καὶ | 4 · James 4:8 | 0 | 3 (band 22) | not bracketed |
| Dan 6:9 row band 1 | ἃ ἠκούσατε παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς | 5 · John 8:38 | 0 | 3 (band 9) | just before Charles’s bracket opens |
| Dan 7:2 row band 4 | Ἀβραὰμ καὶ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ Ἰακώβ | 5 · Acts 3:13, Acts 7:32, Luke 13:28 + 1 more | 18 (2 Maccabees 1:2, 2 Kings 13:23 + 16 more) | — | a formula |
James 4:7–8 — the finding this page rests on:
Dan 5:1 → James 4:7: a run of four, tie band 1. καὶ φεύξεται ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν ὁ Βελίαρ — and Beliar will flee from you; James: ἀντίστητε δὲ τῷ διαβόλῳ καὶ φεύξεται ἀφ’ ὑμῶν — resist the devil, and he will flee from you. The four words stand in one New Testament verse and in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units. From James’s side, his verse’s deepest run against the whole screened Greek Old Testament is three (band 2: Esther 8:1, Tobit (S) 6:8).
Dan 6:2 → James 4:8: a run of four. Ἐγγίσατε τῷ θεῷ καὶ τῷ ἀγγέλῳ — draw near to God and to the angel; James: ἐγγίσατε τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἐγγιεῖ ὑμῖν — draw near to God and he will draw near to you. The four words stand in one New Testament verse and in no Greek Old Testament unit screened. From James 4:8’s side, the deepest Greek Old Testament run is three, band 22.
The order is the same. In James the fleeing comes first and the drawing near in the next verse; in the Testament of Dan the fleeing comes first (5:1) and the drawing near fourteen verses later (6:2), after Dan has told his sons to beware of Satan and his spirits (6:1). Issachar 7:7 has the three-word core too — πνεῦμα τοῦ Βελίαρ φεύξεται ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν — and those three words stand in one New Testament verse, James 4:7, and in no Greek Old Testament unit screened.
And the same verse of Dan carries a third: μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων — a mediator of God and men — in one New Testament verse, 1 Timothy 2:5 (εἷς καὶ μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων), and in no Greek Old Testament unit screened. From 1 Timothy’s side the deepest Greek Old Testament run is three, band 1 (Sirach 45:1).
So three New Testament verses meet, in two verses of the Testament of Dan as Charles prints them, a four-word run deeper than anything they meet in the Greek Old Testament screened. Charles brackets neither verse.
But his apparatus, printed beneath the same page images (printed pp. 136 and 140), divides the manuscripts at both points. His sigla: the α family is manuscripts c, h and i; the β family a, b, d, e, f and g — nine Greek manuscripts. At 5:1 b, f and g read another form of the verb (a subjunctive), d and e the present tense, h and i lack from you, and a lacks the whole line. Rebuilt from his printed line with each recorded reading put in and measured on the same normaliser, b, d, e, f, g, h and i each meet James 4:7 in a run of two; the four words James 4:7 shares stand, on Charles’s own record, in one manuscript of his nine, c. At 6:2 seven of the nine read Draw near to God as printed; b and the first Slavonic read the present tense with but, and d reads but after the verb — either way the run with James 4:8 is three. No variant is recorded inside the four words Dan 6:2 shares with 1 Timothy 2:5. And in the same verse the angel’s title, that intercedeth for you, is by Charles’s note the reading of the β family less d; his α manuscripts read an angel who attends you. Every run on this page is a run of Charles’s printed text; his apparatus was read only where this page says so.
They do not say who read whom. The manuscripts of the Testaments are Christian copies, the date of the book is argued, and the run engine cannot tell a borrowing in one direction from a borrowing in the other, or from two writers drawing on the same stock of exhortation. This page asserts none of the three.
And they do not say the same thing. In Dan 6:2 the mediator is an angel, the angel that intercedeth for you. In 1 Timothy 2:5 the one mediator is the man Christ Jesus. The four words are shared; the claim is not. The confession of this church is 1 Timothy’s.
And Dan 6:2’s own band is 13, not one. Nine of those New Testament verses share τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ †Θεοῦ — at the very word Charles marks with a dagger as corrupt and renders the enemy — and two more share to God and to the. A row’s band and a phrase’s count are different numbers, and both are printed.
The deepest contacts — five words, band one, twice — and why neither is the thesis:
Dan 6:9 → John 8:38: a run of five, tie band 1. Καὶ ἃ ἠκούσατε παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν — and what you have heard from your father, Dan to his sons; John: καὶ ὑμεῖς οὖν ἃ ἠκούσατε παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ποιεῖτε — and you therefore do what you heard from the father. The five words stand in no Greek Old Testament unit screened, and from John’s side the deepest Greek Old Testament run is three (band 9).
It ties for the deepest one-verse contact on the page, and its five words are everyday ones — what you heard from your father. It stands just before the clause Charles brackets (that the Saviour of the Gentiles may receive you), and the machine-read screen never saw it. The other five-word, band-one contact is Zebulun 4:4’s three days and three nights with Matthew 12:40 — in Charles’s right-hand column only, and Jonah’s words (below). Both are printed so that the James runs are not read as more than they are — or less.
⚠️ The links that look like contact and measure little:
- Love the Lord and the neighbour (Iss 5:2; Dan 5:3). Run by run: Issachar 5:2 against Mark 12:30 1, Mark 12:31 2, Matthew 22:37 1, Matthew 22:39 2, Luke 10:27 3, Deuteronomy 6:5 1, Leviticus 19:18 2; Dan 5:3 against every one of the seven, one. The deepest run either verse makes with the command’s wording is three (Luke 10:27, and the neighbour). What both share most is ἀγαπήσατε τὸν κύριον — three words, with Greek Psalm 30:24 (English 31:23), the one Greek Old Testament unit that carries them; no New Testament verse does. The pairing of the two loves is there; the wording of Deuteronomy and Leviticus is not.
- The New Jerusalem (Dan 5:12). τῆς νέας Ἱερουσαλὴμ against Ἰερουσαλὴμ καινὴν (Revelation 21:2): a run of one, and against Revelation 3:12 one — the words they share stand singly, never two in a row (with Revelation 21:2 three words — Jerusalem, of God, and; with Revelation 3:12 six). The adjective differs (νέα against καινή), and in Revelation 21:2 it follows the noun.
- Meek and lowly (Dan 6:9). πρᾶος καὶ ταπεινός against πραΰς εἰμι καὶ ταπεινὸς (Matthew 11:29): a run of two. The resemblance is in the English — Charles and the King James both read meek and lowly — and the phrase stands inside Charles’s brackets.
- Speak truth, each to his neighbour (Dan 5:2). Against Zechariah 8:16 the run is six — but those six words stand in four Greek Old Testament units (Jeremiah 23:35, Jeremiah 43:16, Malachi 3:16, Zechariah 8:16), a formula. Against Ephesians 4:25 the run is two. Ephesians shares with Zechariah the verb and the order (λαλεῖτε ἀλήθειαν ἕκαστος, three words); the Testament’s verb form is φθέγγεσθε, in that exact form found once in the Greek Old Testament units screened (Job 13:7) and not at all in the New. The simple verb, in any form, stands in fifteen of those units and in three New Testament verses (2 Peter 2:16; 2 Peter 2:18; Acts 4:18). And Charles’s apparatus records manuscript a reading speak here with the verb Zechariah and Ephesians carry (note 14, printed p. 136).
- Three days and three nights (Zebulun 4:4). Five words with Matthew 12:40, band 1 — but only in Charles’s right-hand column (his text has no 4:4), and the same five stand in two Greek Old Testament units (Jonah 2:1; 1 Samuel 30:12). From Matthew’s side the deepest Greek Old Testament run is twelve, with Jonah.
- He who believes in him (Dan 5:13). Five words with Romans 9:33 and 1 Peter 2:6 — Isaiah 28:16’s words, inside Charles’s brackets.
- From the tribe of Judah (Dan 5:10). Four words with Revelation 5:5, band 1 — but Judah is inside Charles’s brackets; without the bracketed words the run is three, and the four stand in three Greek Old Testament units anyway.
- The catch of fish (Zebulun 6:6) and the father’s house (6:7). Four words each with Luke 5:9 and Acts 7:20, band 1 — and both inside the passage Charles’s margin marks only in bdg. The noun ἄγρα, catch, occurs nowhere in the Greek Old Testament units screened.
Enoch, measured:
Dan 5:6 names the book of Enoch, the righteous. Against the 400 rows of Greek 1 Enoch held here (Codex Panopolitanus 1:1–32:6, the Syncellus excerpts, Vat. gr. 1809, P.Oxy. 2069, and — measured only, in copyright and outside the CC BY licence — two Cave 7 Greek scraps and the Chester Beatty–Michigan papyrus 97:6–107:3), its deepest run is two, band 30. The Greek held covers only parts of 1 Enoch — the shelf’s Ge’ez text runs to 1,062 verses — so this is a statement about the Greek held, not about the book Dan cites.
The deepest run any row read here makes with that Greek is seven — Zebulun 3:2 with Syncellus 8:3: ταῖς γυναιξὶν αὐτῶν καὶ τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν — to their wives and to their children. The brothers buy sandals for theirs; the Watchers reveal mysteries to theirs. The seven words stand in no Greek Old Testament unit screened and no New Testament verse. The deepest Enoch contact is a family formula, not a citation; the verse that cites Enoch shares two words.
What this page could not check, what the machine reading got wrong, and where it is weakest.
This is the section that makes the shelf trustworthy. It is long here because the Greek of these books exists only as photographs.
⚠️ The machine-read screen — how far it can be trusted:
The screen read the text block of 38 page images (PDF pages 175–212, counted from 0), cleaned it to 4,155 Greek word tokens, and proposed 30 contacts of four words or more with the Greek New Testament. Checked on the page images:
- Three of the 30 are not what Charles prints as text. At Zebulun 7:1 the machine read οἶκον where the page has ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου τοῦ πατρός μου; at Dan 2:1 it dropped a word and produced a sequence the page does not have (the page reads λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅτι ἐὰν μὴ); at Zebulun 9:5 it took a margin note — the b d g reading ὅτι ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις — for text.
- And it misses. Of the 16 rows read off the page that reach four or more with the New Testament, the screen proposed 11 and missed 5 — Issachar 7:6 (left column), Zebulun 3:4, Zebulun 9:8 (left column), Dan 2:1, and Dan 6:9 — one of the page’s two deepest one-verse contacts.
- So a machine-read run is neither a floor nor a ceiling for any single verse. The note filed with the Greek when it was acquired calls such runs lower bounds; on these pages they can also be manufactured. Nothing on this page rests on a machine-read word.
⚠️ The English is not always the Greek printed beside it:
- Issachar 7:6. The 1917 English reads Likewise also with Charles’s right-hand column and with all my heart with his left. It translates neither column as printed.
- Zebulun 3:2. “But Simeon and Gad and six other of our brethren” matches the reading Charles’s margin gives for the β family and two Armenian witnesses. His text, Ἀλλὰ Συμεὼν καὶ ὁ Δὰν καὶ ὁ Γὰδ καὶ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν, names Dan as well and has no six other.
- The 1917 editors say they print, where Charles gives parallel columns, the column he calls α (failing that, c). The two verses above show that ‘the English’ and ‘the Greek’ of the Testaments can be two different texts even inside one scholar’s work.
⚠️ What this page could NOT check:
- The Greek of the verses not read. 154 of the 184 verses were not read off the page; nothing here measures them.
- De Jonge’s critical edition (1978) — in copyright, not held, not consulted. It is reported, in the notes filed with the Greek on this disk, to take the β family as primary and to be re-edited on manuscript b. Whether it reads Dan 5:1 and 6:2 as Charles does is not known to this page — but Charles’s own apparatus records manuscript b reading differently at both (Stage 4).
- The Armenian and Slavonic versions — only as Charles’s apparatus reports them, and only at the verses read.
- The date, the authorship and the Christian-interpolation question. Reported from Oesterley’s 1917 introduction and from the general literature, not tested.
- Whether Zebulun’s b d g passages are additions in b d g or omissions elsewhere. Charles prints them in brackets; this page does not decide.
- The dictionaries and commentaries named in Stage 1 — none held, none consulted.
⚠️ Where this page is weakest:
- The thesis rests on two verses read by eye. Dan 5:1 and 6:2 were read twice on the image, at two magnifications, and the self-check binds the printed Greek to that reading — but a reading is only as good as the reader, and Charles’s is one edition. And it rests on his choice of reading: by his own apparatus the four words Dan 5:1 shares with James 4:7 stand in one manuscript of nine, and the four Dan 6:2 shares with James 4:8 in seven.
- The distribution is of a chosen set (32 rows), not of the three testaments.
- The structure and the subject counts are counts of an English translation, which Stage 3 shows rendering one Greek word two ways.
- Allusion is invisible to the screen. A run of one is not proof of independence, and a run of four is not proof of copying.
Three dying fathers, three virtues, and four-word runs shared with two verses of James.
Name what you learned, why it matters, and one concrete response.
What should we carry away — and do?
- Each father leaves one thing. Measured in Charles’s English, each testament carries more than half the collection’s words for its own subject — singleness, compassion, anger. A last word is a chosen word.
- Draw near to God — and he will draw near to you. Four words of it stand in the Testament of Dan as Charles prints it, and nowhere in the Greek Old Testament screened. James is Scripture; the Testament of Dan is a witness — and in it the go-between is an angel, where 1 Timothy 2:5 names the man Christ Jesus. Shared words are not a shared creed.
- Read the manuscript before you quote it. Zebulun’s compassion — the shared catch, the stolen garment for the naked man, God sending his mercy on the earth — stands largely in passages Charles prints as b d g only; the Beliar of Zebulun 9:8 is in one column; Issachar 7:6 is two texts. ‘The Testaments say’ needs a column.
- One concrete response. James 4:7–8 is the canonical charge: submit to God, resist the devil, draw near. Zebulun 5:1 puts compassion “not towards men only, but also towards beasts”. Pray James 4:7–8 this week, and do one unhurried kindness for someone who cannot repay it.
Testament of Dan 6:2 · to share
Charles 1908 (read off the page) · Charles 1917Every Deep Research page traces its passage across the whole sweep — the Old Testament, the Second-Temple world between the testaments (historical witnesses, not Scripture), and the New Testament. Follow the thread:
Pleasant Springs Church — Deep Research
Research method after Michael S. Heiser’s Bible Research Method (examine dictionaries → ancient literature → important words → textual connections → academic publications → share), with the Pleasant Springs “Author & Audience” foundation. Scripture set in the Hebrew, the Greek editions named on each page and the ESV (Old Testament), and the Greek New Testament and the ESV (New Testament), per the practice of Pleasant Springs Church. ⚠️ Status: the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are not Scripture for Pleasant Springs; they are filed under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple and read as a witness. Greek: R. H. Charles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Oxford, 1908), public domain, read off the page images (archive.org, University of California copy scanned by Google); every word of the Testaments’ Greek printed is recorded with its page in the sidecar file beside this page’s builder; the machine-read text was used only to screen. English: R. H. Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908; SPCK, 1917, introduction by W. O. E. Oesterley), public domain, quoted verbatim. Greek New Testament: SBLGNT via MorphGNT. Greek Old Testament: the CATSS morphological Septuagint. Greek 1 Enoch: the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha (CC BY 4.0), measured, not printed; with it, measured only and outside that licence (in copyright), the Chester Beatty–Michigan papyrus after Bonner (1937) and two Cave 7 Greek scraps. English renderings of New Testament and Greek Old Testament phrases are the page’s own literal glosses. De Jonge’s edition and the commentaries named were not consulted. Direction of influence is nowhere asserted.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license, and the ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. www.esv.org
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