The Testament of Levi is a dying man’s charge to his sons: two visions of the heavens, the killing at Shechem, a family chronicle, a forecast of priests gone wrong, and a hymn to a new priest the Lord will raise up. In 1908 R. H. Charles edited its Greek and, in section 26 of the introduction to his English edition, set fourteen of its passages beside the New Testament; of four he wrote that the New Testament depends on Levi. This page read 28 verses off the photographs of his own edition and measured them. On his Greek, those four share three, three, two and one consecutive words with the Greek New Testament. The deepest runs among the 28 are two of six words, band 1, neither on his list: a death formula that 1 Maccabees carries too (19:4), and six words with Revelation 2:7 — to eat from the tree of life (18:11) — which no unit of the Greek Old Testament held here carries. On the spelling his own note gives the other manuscripts, 2:6 makes a third: six words with Matthew 3:16. It is not Scripture for us: the Testaments are read here as a Second-Temple witness, and tested by the canon. See the method →
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are twelve deathbed speeches, one for each son of Jacob, preserved in Greek and in Armenian and Slavonic versions. Their date and origin are argued: a Jewish work with later Christian additions, in Charles’s account; a Christian composition built from Jewish material, in de Jonge’s. They are not Scripture for us, and they are not among the deuterocanonical books either. We read them as we read the other Second-Temple books — as a window on how Jews and Christians of those centuries spoke of priesthood, judgment and hope — critically, gratefully for the light they throw, and testing everything by the canon. Where the Testament says what Scripture does not — an angel sending Levi to Shechem with a sword, seven heavens — this page reports it and does not adopt it.
⚠️ What this page can and cannot measure — read this first.
HELD: Charles’s English of all twelve Testaments (1,000 verses; Levi has 161), from the 1917 printing; Charles’s 1908 Greek edition as page images (405 PDF pages; Levi on pages 91–133), with a machine OCR layer; the Greek New Testament (SBLGNT, 7,927 verses); the CATSS Greek Old Testament (30,348 units screened, the Odes excluded — the file set includes the Psalms of Solomon); the Clementine Vulgate; and two OCR copies of Charles’s 1908 English edition, introduction and notes included, with no page images.
HELD, BUT NOT READ FOR THIS PAGE: the Aramaic Levi material. The Abegg/ETCBC Dead Sea Scrolls corpus on this disk (CC BY-NC 4.0) carries 1Q21, 4Q213, 4Q213a, 4Q213b, 4Q214, 4Q214a and 4Q214b, the sigla conventionally given to the Qumran copies of an Aramaic Levi document; and the Cairo Genizah fragments from Cambridge and Oxford are printed in Appendix III of Charles’s 1908 Greek edition, held as page images. Nothing on this page compares either with the Testament. The 1913 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, volume 2, is held as OCR in another witness folder and was not used.
NOT HELD: any clean Greek text of the Testaments (the acquisition found none in a free source); M. de Jonge’s critical edition (1978, in copyright); the Armenian and Slavonic versions, except as Charles reports them; the page images of Charles’s 1908 English.
CONSEQUENCE: every Greek number on this page is measured on verses read off the images — 28 whole verses of Charles’s text, with spans and variant readings beside them, out of 161. The OCR was used only to choose which verses to read, and Stage 5 shows two places where it would have misled. A negative here is a negative about the 28, not about the testament.
Testament of Levi — twelve lines: eleven measured verses, and the heavens of 3:1
Greek: Charles 1908, read off the page images · English: Charles’s translation (1908; SPCK 1917)The heavens open — the first of four openings in the testament (see the structure). Against the SBLGNT the verse’s deepest run is three words, band 5 — one of the five is Matthew 3:16, at the heavens, and. The verb breaks the run: Levi has ἀνεῴχθησαν, Matthew ἠνεῴχθησαν — two spellings of one verb form, which the shelf’s normaliser does not join. Charles’s own note on the word reads α, f. Other MSS. ἠνεῴχ. — the α group and f have the spelling he prints; the other manuscripts have Matthew’s. On that spelling the run is six, band 1 — Καὶ ἰδοὺ ἠνεῴχθησαν οἱ οὐρανοί, καὶ, and behold, the heavens were opened, and — with Matthew 3:16 alone, in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened, and on neither Charles’s list nor his index (Stage 4). Charles’s English says an angel of God; his Greek text has ἄγγελος Κυρίου, an angel of the Lord.
CHARLES 1908 · β COLUMN · 2:7 Καὶ εἰσῆλθον ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου οὐρανοῦ εἰς τὸν δεύτερον καὶ εἶδον ἐκεῖ ὕδωρ κρεμάμενον ἀνάμεσον τούτου κἀκείνου.2:7CHARLES’S ENGLISH 2:7 “And I entered from the first heaven, and I saw there a great sea hanging.”
The first heaven. In the α column Levi enters the first heaven and sees much water there; in the β column he goes from the first into the second, and the water hangs between the one and the other. Charles’s English reads from the first heaven — the β column’s preposition, ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου, which the α Greek he printed above it does not have. The shelf’s English file read this line
from- -the; the printed page reads
from the, and the line above is repaired against it.
CHARLES 1908 · β COLUMN · 3:1 Ἄκουσον οὖν περὶ ἑπτὰ οὐρανῶν.3:1CHARLES’S ENGLISH 3:1 “Hear, therefore, regarding the heavens which have been shown to thee.”
Three heavens or seven. α: hear, then, about the heavens shown to you. β: hear, then, about seven heavens. Counted on Charles’s pages 30–34: the α column never numbers a heaven above the second; the β column numbers them to the fourth and announces seven. At this verse the English printed here follows α.
Charles: “Here the dependence of Luke on our text seems clear.” (Luke 2:19, Mary keeping these things in her heart). Measured: three consecutive words, ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ — and 32 New Testament verses reach a run of three with this verse, 19 of them with these same three words. From Luke’s side the Greek Old Testament goes deeper: four words, in her heart, band 5.
The verse Charles called a direct quotation by Paul (1 Thessalonians 2:16). On the SBLGNT: three words, them the wrath — while ἡ ὀργὴ τοῦ θεοῦ runs four with Colossians 3:6, Ephesians 5:6 and John 3:36. Add the two words of God that Charles reports from Codices D, E, F, G, Latin witnesses and the Gothic, and the same comparison runs seven. Stage 4 sets out every reading. Charles’s English says the Lord; his Greek text says τοῦ θεοῦ.
CHARLES 1908 · MARGIN (β−d, S) · 10:3 σχίσαι τὸ ἔνδυμα.10:3CHARLES’S ENGLISH 10:3 “And ye shall deal lawlessly together with Israel, so He shall not bear with Jerusalem because of your wickedness; but the veil of the temple shall be rent, so as not to cover your shame.”
The veil of the temple. τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ — four words, band 3: the three Gospel verses of the veil torn at the crucifixion (Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45), and none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened carries the four. But the β manuscripts other than d, with the Slavonic, read to rend the garment, which shares one word with Matthew 27:51. Charles listed the pair and wrote: “This parallel is doubtful, as the text in the Testaments is uncertain.”
Charles: “The dependence of the N.T. here can hardly be questioned.” (John 1:9, the light that enlightens every man). Measured: two consecutive words, the light. The verse runs three with five other New Testament verses (John 8:12 and 11:9 among them), and John 1:9’s own deepest Greek Old Testament run is three, with Wisdom.
The heavens open again — future tense now (ἀνοιγήσονται), with a father’s voice — the elements of the Gospels’ scene at the baptism of Jesus. Measured against Matthew 3:16–17, Mark 1:10–11, Luke 3:21–22 and John 1:32, it reaches two words at most. The English file ended the first line with a stop; the printed page has a comma, and the line is repaired against it.
One of the two deepest New Testament runs in the 28 verses read: six words with Revelation 2:7, tie band 1 — φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς, to eat from the tree of life. The six-word sequence stands in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened (nor in the Odes), and Revelation 2:7’s own deepest Greek Old Testament run is five, with Ezekiel 31:8 — a different clause. It is not on Charles’s list. Stage 4.
Charles, on Luke 10:19: “The Testaments seem clearly here to have suggested, or to have been the source of, the N.T. passage.” Measured: one word. The two verses share authority, to tread, upon and and — and never two in a row.
Light or darkness. In Charles’s text the light comes first, and against John 3:19 the run is three. In manuscripts a, b, f, g and the Slavonic the darkness comes first — ἢ τὸ σκότος ἢ τὸ φῶς — and the run is five, John’s own order: τὸ σκότος ἢ τὸ φῶς.
The page’s counter-example. Six words with Acts 13:36, tie band 1 — καὶ προσετέθη πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας αὐτοῦ, and was added to his fathers. It looks like the find of the page. It is not: 1 Maccabees 2:69 carries the same six words, and from Acts’ side the Greek Old Testament reaches six twice. A death formula. The 1917 page sets
on the bedin half-brackets, as the Greek sets ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης; the English file does not carry them.
The English is Charles’s own translation, quoted from the shelf’s file of the 1917 printing. It is not a line-by-line rendering of the α Greek he printed. In the 28 verses read for this page it departs from that Greek at least eight times — at 2:6, 2:7, 4:1, 5:1, 6:11, 14:3, 18:9 and 18:14 — usually by taking a β reading, once (18:9) by leaving out a line his Greek prints in brackets. The English is quotation; every Greek number on this page is measured on the Greek.
Versification — a third state, stated because it is not the usual one. There is no Masoretic, no CATSS Greek, no King James, no Vulgate and no ESV Testament of Levi: the shelf’s King James loader raises rather than return nothing, the Clementine Vulgate on this disk has no such book, and no Septuagint file carries it. So there is no Masoretic/Septuagint offset to report, and none is invented.
The English (Charles, 1917 printing): 19 chapters, 161 verses — 2·12·10·6·7·11·4·19·14·5·8·7·9·8·4·5·11·14·5.
The Greek (Charles, 1908) numbers the verses the same way: at every one of the α verses read for this page the printed numeral stands where the English file starts the verse, including 17:8–9, where the acquisition log records that the 1913 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha sets its margin numerals one line off — here the 1908 Greek has Ἐν δὲ τῷ ἑβδόμῳ ἔσται μιασμός at 8 and Διὰ τοῦτο ἐν αἰχμαλωσίᾳ καὶ ἐν προνομῇ ἔσονται at 9, as the English has them.
Where the Greek is three texts, the English is one. Between 2:7 and 3:9 Charles mostly prints three columns (α, the Armenian, and β with the Armenian and Slavonic), and at 14:1–4 two or three; the English file carries a single line for each verse.
The scan. Levi runs from PDF page 91 to 133 (printed pp. 27–65), and the scan carries pp. 28–29 and 62–65 twice. PDF page numbers on this page count from 0, as the page-index file does, so a PDF viewer shows each one higher by one.
One misprint, kept as printed: the 1917 English reads “Get wisdom in the tear of God” at 13:7; the 1908 English has fear, and the Greek read here has Σοφίαν κτήσασθε ἐν φόβῳ Θεοῦ.
The Shape of the Passage
Sequence, with a counted echo: four openingsThis is a sequence, and it is not offered as a chiasm. The testament runs forward — visions, family, forecasts, hymn, death — and the four openings pair the first vision with the hymn without folding the rest around a centre. The section headings in the 1917 printing are the SPCK editors’, not the text’s, and are not used.
⚠️ Where this page sits. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are filed here under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple. They are not Scripture for us, and they are not among the deuterocanonical books either. Nothing taught at Pleasant Springs rests on them.
Author
Anonymous, speaking as Levi. The book calls itself “The copy of the words of Levi” (1:1): a dying father’s charge to his sons, spoken in the first person between a narrator’s opening (1:1–2) and close (19:2–5).
Its date and origin are argued, and this page measures neither side. R. H. Charles (1908) read a Jewish work of the late second century BC with later additions, which he marked with square brackets, and concluded that “the Testaments were written between 109 and 105” BC. M. de Jonge, in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study of Their Text, Composition and Origin (1953), argued that the Testaments as transmitted are a Christian composition drawing on Jewish material. Both are reported here; neither is tested.
Charles’s brackets, counted. In the English file Levi carries 13 bracketed spans — more than any other testament in the file (Benjamin and Dan come next) — and 8 of the 13 fall in chapters 14–18. They are Charles’s judgements, and the page counts them as nothing else. His Greek edition does not bracket the same places: in the verses read here it brackets a line at 4:1 that his English prints without brackets, and a line at 18:9 that his English leaves out.
Audience
His sons — and the priestly line. The narrator calls them his sons at the start and the end (1:1; 19:2–4); Levi calls them my children (five verses, 12:6 to 19:1). Priesthood stands in 13 verses of the English and priest in 6: much of the testament turns on who serves at the altar, and what becomes of them.
Readers who would hear their own priests accused. Chapters 14–17 charge Levi’s descendants with robbing the offerings, defiling marriages and profaning the priesthood. The page reports these as the testament’s charges against its own priestly line and adopts none of them; the two clauses that name the Saviour of the world (10:2, 14:2) stand inside Charles’s brackets.
And readers waiting for a better priest. Chapter 18 is a hymn to one the Lord will raise up. It names no one.
Orient on the Testaments, on Levi, and on the edition behind every Greek word here.
Search by topic: Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; Testament of Levi; Aramaic Levi Document; Beliar; priesthood in Second-Temple Judaism; seven heavens; R. H. Charles.
Which articles are relevant?
- Anchor Bible Dictionary — on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, on Levi and the Levites, and on Belial.
- Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — on the Testaments, the Aramaic Levi Document and the priesthood.
- Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — on the Testaments and on heavenly ascent. These are subjects to look up; the exact entry titles were not checked, and none of these works is held on this disk.
Bibliography surfaced:
- R. H. Charles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Oxford, 1908) — the Greek on this page, read off its page images.
- R. H. Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (London, 1908; SPCK reprint 1917) — the English on this page, and the introduction and notes read in OCR.
- M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study of Their Text, Composition and Origin (1953).
- M. de Jonge et al., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (PVTG I.2; Leiden, 1978).
- H. W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (1985).
- J. C. Greenfield, M. E. Stone and E. Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document (2004). The last four are named for the reader; none is held here and none was consulted.
A deathbed testament, a priest’s ascent, and a sword at Shechem.
Charles translated both this Testament and the shelf’s Jubilees, so an English-against-English comparison between them would measure Charles, not the texts. None is made. The links below are named, not measured.
Which parallels shed light on the world of the text?
A deathbed testament. Jacob’s last words (Genesis 49) and Moses’ blessing (Deuteronomy 33) are the canonical farewells; Tobit 4 and the farewell of 2 Enoch are Second-Temple ones on this shelf. Genesis 49:5–7 and Deuteronomy 33:8–11 speak of Levi (49:5–7 of Simeon and Levi together) — a curse on his anger, and a blessing on his priesthood. The Testament stands between the two.
Levi at Shechem. Genesis 34 tells the killing of the men of Shechem after Dinah was taken; Genesis 49:5–7 curses the anger that did it. The Testament tells it differently: an angel gives Levi a shield and a sword and sends him (5:3), and its verdict on the city is 6:11. This page reports what the Testament says and does not adopt it. The church’s reading of Genesis 34 — that Jacob’s curse stands as Scripture’s verdict on the killing — is set out on the Genesis 34 study, and Jubilees’ telling on Jubilees 30–34.
A priest who climbs. Levi sleeps on a high mountain and is taken up through the heavens (2:5–5:1). How many heavens depends on the column. Charles prints three side by side, and the α column never numbers a heaven above the second, while the β column says seven (3:1). Charles himself held that “an original description of the three heavens was transformed into a description of the seven” — his judgement, reported. Paul’s third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2) is the one place the Greek New Testament counts heavens upward; 2 Enoch’s heavens are on 2 Enoch 1–22.
Charles’s history. Charles read 6:11 as the destruction of Samaria under John Hyrcanus and 18:6 as a heavenly voice Hyrcanus heard in the Temple; he dated the book by the first, and found possible confirmation in the second. His reconstruction, reported; nothing on this page tests it.
Counted on Charles’s pages 30–34 (PDF 96–100), in the Greek read off the images: the α column names a first heaven and a second (2:7–8; 3:3), promises another — ἄλλον γὰρ οὐρανὸν ὄψει φαιδρότερον καὶ ἀσύγκριτον — and then speaks of the lowest and the highest of all. The β column goes ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου οὐρανοῦ εἰς τὸν δεύτερον (2:7), sees a third (2:8), is promised four more — ἄλλους γὰρ τέσσαρας οὐρανοὺς ὄψει φαιδροτέρους καὶ ἀσυγκρίτους — and opens chapter 3 with Ἄκουσον οὖν περὶ ἑπτὰ οὐρανῶν. In 3:3 the α column has Ἐν δὲ τῷ δευτέρῳ εἰσὶν αἱ δυνάμεις τῶν παρεμβολῶν where the β column has Ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ εἰσὶν αἱ δυνάμεις τῶν παρεμβολῶν; and where α has only καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτούς εἰσιν οἱ ἅγιοι., and above them are the holy ones, β numbers them: Οἱ δὲ εἰς τὸν τέταρτον οἱ ἐπάνω τούτων ἅγιοί εἰσιν.
Charles’s English follows α here, with two brackets of his own: “In [the heaven next to] it are the archangels” (3:5) and “And [in the heaven below this] are the angels” (3:7) — while 3:8 has “in the heaven next to this” with no bracket. The Greek of the same verses prints neither bracket. Not counted: the Armenian column (Aα), which Charles gives in Greek of his own making, and the 1913 English columns, which were not used.
A name, an office, a garden, a tree, a veil — and a number.
Counts are over the 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament and the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened here (the Odes excluded), in occurrences of a word form’s stem unless a phrase is named. Levi itself is counted only in the English file and in the 28 verses read off the Greek pages — no other Greek of the testament is held in a form that can be counted.
In Charles’s English of Levi, three times — in the heavens (3:3), bound by the new priest (18:12), and set against the law of the Lord in the last choice (19:1); the Greek read at 18:12 and 19:1 has Βελίαρ. In the Greek New Testament once: 2 Corinthians 6:15, τίς δὲ συμφώνησις Χριστοῦ πρὸς Βελιάρ — a verse Charles set beside Levi 19:1, and the two share no two consecutive words. In the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units: no Beliar; Judges (A) 20:13 has Βελιαλ once.
Three times in the Greek New Testament, all in Hebrews 7 (7:11, 7:12, 7:24) — the chapter about a change of priesthood. Eight times in the Greek Old Testament units, none of them in the Torah: 1 Chronicles, 1 Esdras, 1 and 4 Maccabees, Sirach. In Levi 18:9, read off the page, it stands twice: ἐπὶ τῆς ἱερωσύνης αὐτοῦ. The English says priesthood in 13 verses of the testament.
Three times in the Greek New Testament — Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 12:4, Revelation 2:7. Forty-five in the Greek Old Testament units, Eden’s garden among them. Levi 18:10 has τὰς θύρας τοῦ παραδείσου, the doors of the garden — and those four words stand four times in the Greek Old Testament, every one in Theodotion’s Susanna, of the doors of the garden in Susanna’s story; none in the New Testament. Charles’s English says gates of paradise.
The genitive of the tree of life, τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς, stands three times in the Greek Old Testament units — Genesis 3:22, 3:24 and Isaiah 65:22 — and twice in the New Testament, Revelation 2:7 and 22:19. Genesis 2:9 has the accusative, and the Psalms of Solomon 14:3 a plural. With to eat from in front of it, six words, it stands in Levi 18:11 and Revelation 2:7, in no other New Testament verse, and in no Greek Old Testament unit held here.
Six times in the Greek New Testament — the three Gospel verses of the veil torn at the crucifixion, and Hebrews 6:19, 9:3, 10:20; 38 times in the Greek Old Testament units, most in the tabernacle chapters. The veil of the temple, four words, is in none of them — and in Levi only in Charles’s α text (10:3), where his note on the word reads c. h reads καταπετάσματα. β, A, S¹ ἔνδυμα. — manuscript c as printed, h the plural, and β, the Armenian and the first Slavonic garment.
The β column of Levi 3:1. Not in the Greek New Testament and not in the Greek Old Testament units, in any case. Paul’s τρίτου οὐρανοῦ, third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2), stands in one New Testament verse and in no Greek Old Testament unit. Charles’s α column never numbers a heaven above the second, though his own note on 3:5–8 holds that even α has been reworked there, its next to and below now “an enumeration of the angels in the sixth, fifth and fourth heavens”; his English, which follows α here, never says seven in chapters 2–3.
Counted here, not assumed:
- The English file: 161 verses in 19 chapters; chapter 8 is the longest (19 verses), chapter 1 the shortest (2).
- The verb open: exactly four verses — 2:6, 5:1, 18:6, 18:10 — and in the Greek of all four, a form of one verb.
- In my heart: exactly two verses, 6:2 and 8:19, each closing a vision.
- Charles’s brackets: 13 spans in Levi in the English file, 8 of them in chapters 14–18; the file also shows an empty pair at 2:10 that the printed page does not have (Stage 5).
- Charles’s English against his own Greek, in the 28 verses read: at least eight departures — 2:6, 2:7, 4:1, 5:1, 6:11, 14:3, 18:9, 18:14. At 18:14 he prints δικαιοσύνην (righteousness) and translates joy, and his own note on the word says of the other reading, ‘The latter seems preferable.’
Charles’s fourteen, measured on his own Greek — and the six words he did not list.
Each of the 28 whole verses read off Charles’s pages is screened against all 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) and all 30,348 Greek Old Testament units (CATSS, the Odes excluded). A run is a sequence of consecutive whole word forms, identical after the shelf’s cross-corpus normaliser grk_seq_cmp: accents, breathings and case dropped, final sigma folded, and MorphGNT’s own spelling equivalences applied — so an elided ep’ counts as epi, and some movable-nu forms are joined (ênoixe counts as ênoixen) but not all: ephthase and ephthasen stay different, because MorphGNT records no such pair. Charles’s daggers, brackets and half-brackets are removed and the words inside them kept. The tie band — how many verses reach the same depth — is printed beside every run, and for the deepest runs the band from the New Testament side too (that verse against all 30,348 Greek Old Testament units). A run of 1 means one shared word and no two in a row. English renderings in this stage are the page’s own literal glosses unless labelled as Charles’s.
The distribution, all 28 verses:
Against the 7,927 verses of the SBLGNT: all 28 reach two, 20 reach three, 9 reach four, 4 reach five, 2 reach six, and nothing reaches seven.
Against the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units: all 28 reach two, 25 reach three, 13 reach four, 7 reach five, 2 reach six, and nothing reaches seven.
Depth is not rarity. Two of the four verses that reach five with the New Testament are formulas. 3:9 shares ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ, the heaven and the earth, with four Gospel verses (band 4), and Genesis 2:1 runs six with the same Levi verse. 18:14 shares Ἀβραὰμ καὶ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ Ἰακὼβ with four New Testament verses and eighteen Greek Old Testament units. A run is read with its band, or not at all.
All 28 verses read — the deepest partner on each side, with its tie band both ways (click to open)
| Levi | NT run | band | New Testament partner(s) | each partner’s own deepest run in the Greek OT · band | Greek OT run | band | Greek OT partner(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2:6 | 3 | 5 | Ac 22:10 Ac 22:21 Lk 2:9 + 2 more | 4 · 4 4 · 56 4 · 1 | 4 | 1 | 1Chr 21:18 |
| 2:7 | 2 | 45 | Ac 11:5 Ac 11:6 Ac 14:15 + 42 more | 4 · 22 5 · 5 13 · 1 | 2 | 225 | 1/3Kgs 11:17 1/3Kgs 12:16 1/3Kgs 13:25 + 222 more |
| 2:8 | 2 | 112 | 1Co 11:19 1Co 12:31 1Co 15:52 + 109 more | 2 · 1130 2 · 61 3 · 2 | 3 | 1 | Qoh 3:16 |
| 3:4 | 2 | 418 | 1Co 11:21 1Co 11:25 1Co 12:18 + 415 more | 2 · 1907 3 · 32 3 · 44 | 2 | 1848 | 1/3Kgs 11:15 1/3Kgs 11:29 1/3Kgs 12:24a + 1845 more |
| 3:6 | 2 | 43 | 1Co 15:31 1Co 6:13 1Co 6:17 + 40 more | 3 · 7 4 · 1 3 · 27 | 2 | 493 | 1/3Kgs 18:11 1/3Kgs 18:13 1/3Kgs 18:14 + 490 more |
| 3:7 | 3 | 8 | Ac 11:15 Ac 9:3 Lk 10:38 + 5 more | 4 · 4 3 · 72 3 · 22 | 3 | 30 | 1/3Kgs 13:6 1Esdr 6:1 1Esdr 6:16 + 27 more |
| 3:9 | 5 | 4 | Lk 21:33 Mk 13:31 Mt 24:35 + 1 more | 5 · 3 5 · 3 5 · 3 | 6 | 1 | Gen 2:1 |
| 4:1 | 3 | 7 | 1Co 11:30 Ac 12:11 Col 3:6 + 4 more | 3 · 5 5 · 2 3 · 32 | 5 | 2 | Ps 13:2 Ps 52:3 |
| 5:1 | 3 | 18 | 1Jn 2:3 1Jn 2:4 1Jn 3:24 + 15 more | 3 · 35 4 · 7 3 · 76 | 3 | 119 | 1/3Kgs 12:24m 1/3Kgs 18:38 1/3Kgs 8:32 + 116 more |
| 6:2 | 3 | 32 | 1Co 7:37 2Co 8:16 Ac 16:36 + 29 more | 4 · 10 3 · 76 4 · 5 | 4 | 15 | 1Sam/K 2:35 2/4Kgs 10:30 DanTh 7:28 + 12 more |
| 6:11 | 4 | 3 | Col 3:6 Eph 5:6 Jn 3:36 | 3 · 32 3 · 32 3 · 2 | 3 | 13 | 1Chr 22:19 1Esdr 5:54 1Sam/K 5:10 + 10 more |
| 8:2 | 4 | 1 | 1Jn 4:6 | 5 · 2 | 3 | 22 | 1Esdr 8:68 1Mac 13:39 2Esdr 23:29 + 19 more |
| 10:3 | 4 | 3 | Lk 23:45 Mk 15:38 Mt 27:51 | 2 · 90 3 · 5 3 · 56 | 4 | 2 | Jer 42:11 Jer 44:11 |
| 13:9 | 3 | 3 | Jn 11:21 Lk 12:8 Mt 18:21 | 3 · 4 4 · 1 4 · 2 | 3 | 15 | 1Mac 5:17 2Esdr 10:8 2Esdr 7:26 + 12 more |
| 14:3 | 3 | 52 | 1Co 14:12 1Co 14:9 1Co 16:1 + 49 more | 2 · 272 2 · 293 2 · 342 | 5 | 1 | 1Sam/K 7:6 |
| 14:4 | 3 | 5 | Ac 7:19 Jn 11:9 Jn 8:12 + 2 more | 3 · 10 3 · 283 3 · 7 | 3 | 12 | 2Mac 6:1 2Mac 7:16 Bar 2:15 + 9 more |
| 18:2 | 4 | 1 | Eph 1:10 | 4 · 4 | 4 | 3 | Amos 8:9 Gen 6:4 Jer 3:16 |
| 18:3 | 2 | 396 | 1Co 10:2 1Co 10:5 1Co 11:23 + 393 more | 4 · 2 3 · 134 3 · 33 | 3 | 1 | Isa 10:23 |
| 18:6 | 3 | 14 | 1Co 11:28 1Co 9:7 Re 14:15 + 11 more | 4 · 1 3 · 36 3 · 16 | 3 | 33 | 1/3Kgs 17:6 1/3Kgs 7:46 1Chr 6:63 + 30 more |
| 18:7 | 3 | 6 | 1Jn 5:6 2Th 2:6 Ac 21:27 + 3 more | 4 · 3 3 · 31 3 · 42 | 3 | 44 | 1/3Kgs 16:11 1/3Kgs 2:34 1/3Kgs 3:20 + 41 more |
| 18:9 | 4 | 6 | Jas 5:5 Lk 21:23 Mk 14:35 + 3 more | 4 · 45 4 · 46 4 · 45 | 4 | 45 | 1Esdr 5:49 1Mac 14:11 1Mac 14:13 + 42 more |
| 18:10 | 2 | 25 | 1Co 15:15 1Co 4:6 Ac 16:27 + 22 more | 3 · 15 3 · 1 3 · 28 | 5 | 2 | SusTh 1:18 SusTh 1:36 |
| 18:11 | 6 | 1 | Re 2:7 | 5 · 1 | 5 | 1 | Gen 3:22 |
| 18:12 | 2 | 475 | 1Co 11:12 1Co 12:12 1Co 12:5 + 472 more | 3 · 21 4 · 1 2 · 793 | 3 | 8 | 1/3Kgs 12:24h 1Esdr 1:31 1Mac 10:82 + 5 more |
| 18:13 | 2 | 189 | 1Jn 1:5 1Jn 1:6 1Jn 3:12 + 186 more | 3 · 52 5 · 1 4 · 9 | 4 | 2 | 1/3Kgs 12:24h Ps 103:31 |
| 18:14 | 5 | 4 | Ac 3:13 Ac 7:32 Lk 13:28 + 1 more | 6 · 2 6 · 2 6 · 3 | 5 | 18 | 2/4Kgs 13:23 2Mac 1:2 4Mac 13:17 + 15 more |
| 19:1 | 3 | 11 | 1Jn 3:8 Jn 10:37 Jn 3:19 + 8 more | 3 · 24 3 · 82 4 · 1 | 3 | 18 | 1/3Kgs 2:35h 1/3Kgs 7:31 1Chr 22:12 + 15 more |
| 19:4 | 6 | 1 | Ac 13:36 | 6 · 2 | 6 | 1 | 1Mac 2:69 |
Charles’s fourteen, measured on his own Greek:
In section 26 of the introduction to his 1908 English edition Charles set fourteen passages of Levi beside New Testament verses, as the two OCR copies held here read his list. Of four he wrote that the New Testament depends on Levi: 1 Thessalonians 2:16 is one of “two passages which are direct quotations from the Testaments”; of Luke 2:19, “Here the dependence of Luke on our text seems clear”; of John 1:9, “The dependence of the N.T. here can hardly be questioned”; of Luke 10:19, that the Testaments “seem clearly here to have suggested, or to have been the source of, the N.T. passage”.
Measured on the Greek he printed, those four share three, three, two and one consecutive words with the SBLGNT. And in all four the Levi verse runs as deep or deeper with other New Testament verses: 6:11 runs four with Colossians 3:6, Ephesians 5:6 and John 3:36; 6:2 runs three with 32 verses, Luke 2:19 among them; 14:4 runs three with five others; 18:12 reaches two with 475. From the other side, Luke 2:19, John 1:9 and Luke 10:19 each run deeper into the Greek Old Testament than into Levi (four, three and four), and 1 Thessalonians 2:16 reaches three in both.
Over all fourteen: one entry reaches four — the veil of the temple, which Charles himself called doubtful — three reach three, two reach two, and eight reach one.
| New Testament | Levi | Charles | run on SBLGNT | the Levi verse’s own deepest NT run · band | the NT verse’s own deepest Greek OT run · band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew 5:19 | 13:9 | 1 | 3 · 3 | 4 · 1 | |
| Matthew 27:51 | 10:3 | “doubtful” | 4 | 4 · 3 | 3 · 56 |
| Matthew 27:51 | 3:9 | with 4:1 in the same entry (4:1 measures 1) | 3 | 5 · 4 | 3 · 56 |
| Luke 2:19 | 6:2 | “dependence … seems clear” | 3 | 3 · 32 | 4 · 5 |
| Luke 10:19–20 | 18:12 | “suggested, or … the source of” | 1 | 2 · 475 | 4 · 12 / 3 · 2 |
| John 1:9 | 14:4 | “dependence … can hardly be questioned” | 2 | 3 · 5 | 3 · 2 |
| 1 Thessalonians 2:16 | 6:11 | “direct quotation” | 3 | 4 · 3 | 3 · 8 |
| Romans 6:1 | 4:1 | 1 | 3 · 7 | 2 · 11 | |
| Romans 12:1 | 3:6 | 1 | 2 · 43 | 3 · 1 | |
| 2 Corinthians 6:14–15 | 19:1 | 1 | 3 · 11 | 2 · 67 / 2 · 29 | |
| Philippians 2:15 | 14:3 | 1 | 3 · 52 | 2 · 62 | |
| 2 Timothy 4:8 | 8:2 | 2 | 4 · 1 | 4 · 33 | |
| Revelation 5:8; 8:3–4 | 3:7 | 1 | 3 · 8 | 3 · 1 / 5 · 1 / 3 · 32 | |
| Revelation 11:19 | 5:1 | 1 | 3 · 18 | 4 · 18 |
Six words, band 1, and not on the list:
Levi 18:11 → Revelation 2:7 — a run of six, tie band 1 — one of the two sixes on Charles’s text; the other, 19:4, is printed below as a counter-example.
Levi: Καὶ δώσει τοῖς ἁγίοις φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς, καὶ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης ἔσται ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς.
Revelation 2:7: τῷ νικῶντι δώσω αὐτῷ φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς, ὅ ἐστιν ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ τοῦ θεοῦ.
Measured: φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς — to eat from the tree of life — stands in this Levi verse and in one New Testament verse, and in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened, nor in the 30,637 with the Odes. From Revelation’s side the deepest Greek Old Testament run is five, band 1 — and it is the verse’s other clause, ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ τοῦ θεοῦ (Ezekiel 31:8), in the garden of God. Genesis 3:22 shares four words with Revelation 2:7 and five with Levi 18:11 — τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς καὶ — and Revelation 22:19 shares five with Levi 18:11 too.
The six words do not move between editions of Revelation. The SBLGNT apparatus held here records one variant in Revelation 2:7: Robinson–Pierpont has my after God. Westcott–Hort, Tregelles, NA28 and Robinson–Pierpont all read the six as the SBLGNT does.
So Revelation 2:7 joins two clauses: to eat from the tree of life, which runs six with Levi and four with Genesis, and in the paradise of God, which runs five with Ezekiel. Levi 18:10 has a paradise in the verse before, τοῦ παραδείσου — genitive where Revelation has the dative, so the engine does not join them.
It is not on Charles’s list. He names the verse in the next section of his introduction, among the works he assigns to the coming deliverer — to “give the saints to eat of the tree of life” — and his note on the verse cites 4 Ezra and 1 Enoch and then Revelation 22:2, not Revelation 2:7; his index of parallel passages, as both OCR copies read it, pairs 18:10–11 with 4 Ezra 8:52 and nothing else. Direction is not asserted: whether the words of Revelation 2:7 owe anything to this line, or both to a shared way of speaking of Eden, cannot be measured here. What can be said is narrow: on Charles’s α text it ties 19:4 for the deepest contact among the verses read, at band 1, and unlike 19:4 no Greek Old Testament unit carries its six words; on the spelling Charles reports for the other manuscripts at 2:6, Matthew 3:16 reaches the same depth and band, with no Greek Old Testament carrier either. None of the three is on Charles’s list.
The page’s counter-examples:
- Levi 19:4 → Acts 13:36 — a run of six, tie band 1. καὶ προσετέθη πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας αὐτοῦ, and was added to his fathers — Levi’s death, and David’s. It is the other six on Charles’s text of the 28, and it is a formula: 1 Maccabees 2:69 has καὶ προσετέθη πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας αὐτοῦ word for word, and from Acts’ side the Greek Old Testament reaches six twice (1 Maccabees 2:69 and Theodotion’s Bel 1:1). It is printed so that the six at 18:11 is not read as more than it is — and so that it is not read as less.
- Levi 18:6–7 → the baptism of Jesus — two words at most. The heavens opened, a father’s voice, a spirit resting on him, and, inside Charles’s brackets, [ἐν τῷ ὕδατι], in the water. Against Matthew 3:16–17, Mark 1:10–11, Luke 3:21–22 and John 1:32 the deepest run is two, and 18:13’s well pleased in his beloved shares one word with Matthew 3:17. The likeness is in the scene, not the wording. Charles’s own index of parallel passages sets Matthew 3:16–17 beside Levi 18:6, a pair outside the fourteen of section 26; the six-word contact with Matthew 3:16 is at 2:6, and only on the spelling of the other manuscripts.
- Levi 18:12 → the binding of the adversary — two words, and one. ὁ Βελίαρ δεθήσεται ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, Beliar shall be bound by him. Against Revelation 20:2, where the dragon is seized and bound, the run is two (and the); against Matthew 12:29, the strong man bound, one. The verb is there in all three and joins nothing: Levi has δεθήσεται, Revelation ἔδησεν, Matthew δήσῃ — three forms, and the engine compares forms.
- Levi 10:3 → the veil — four words, band 3, and no Greek Old Testament unit has them. Only in Charles’s α text (his note: manuscript c; h has the plural; β, the Armenian and the first Slavonic garment). His margin gives the β manuscripts other than d, with the Slavonic, as σχίσαι τὸ ἔνδυμα, to rend the garment — one word with Matthew 27:51 — and he called the pair doubtful.
Which Greek — of Levi, and of Paul — decides the number:
Levi 2:6 and Matthew 3:16. Charles prints Καὶ ἰδοὺ ἀνεῴχθησαν οἱ οὐρανοί, καὶ and the run with Matthew is three. His note 33 gives that spelling to the α group and manuscript f only; written with the spelling it gives the other manuscripts, Καὶ ἰδοὺ ἠνεῴχθησαν οἱ οὐρανοί, καὶ, the run is six, band 1 — Matthew 3:16 and no other New Testament verse — and the six words stand in none of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units. From Matthew’s side the Greek Old Testament reaches three, band 17; Ezekiel 1:1 is among them, where the heavens are opened with yet another form, ἠνοίχθησαν οἱ οὐρανοί. The note abbreviates the word, and the page writes it out; no other note of Charles’s falls on these six words. The SBLGNT apparatus for Matthew is not held here, so how other editions of Matthew read them is not checked.
Levi 6:11 and 1 Thessalonians 2:16. Charles’s text: Ἔφθασε δὲ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ τοῦ θεοῦ εἰς τέλος. Paul, in the SBLGNT: ἔφθασεν δὲ ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος.
- Charles’s text against the SBLGNT: three — them the wrath.
- Charles’s text against Paul with of God after wrath: seven — them the wrath of God to the end. Charles reports the addition from Codices D, E, F, G, the Gothic and Latin witnesses, and notes that most authorities lack it; the Clementine Vulgate here reads ira Dei. The Greek manuscripts are not held; the run is measured on the SBLGNT with the two words inserted where Charles prints them.
- Manuscript g, as Charles’s note reports it: five — and upon them the wrath: ἔφθασε δὲ ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ κυρίου εἰς τέλος. Charles abbreviates the reading; the page writes it out, and says so. Fold the movable nu and it is six.
- Manuscript b and the Slavonic: two. They put the wrath of the Lord before upon them.
- The footnote to the verse in Charles’s Greek edition: ‘This verse, as Grabe (Spicileg. Patrum, 1698, i. 138) saw, was adopted by St. Paul in 1 Thess. ii. 16’. His argument that Paul used the α form rested on the reading of God, which among the manuscripts he reports only the α group has — and his English translation of the same verse says the Lord.
Levi 19:1 and John 3:19. Charles’s text puts the light first and runs three; manuscripts a, b, f, g and the Slavonic put the darkness first and run five — and John 3:19’s own deepest Greek Old Testament run is four, band 1, with Wisdom 14:14. Levi 10:3: four in α, one in β. At least four times in 28 verses (2:6, 6:11, 10:3, 19:1), the number a reader repeats depends on which manuscript was opened.
And on the Greek Old Testament side:
- Levi 18:10, the doors of the garden: five words with Theodotion’s Susanna 1:18 and 1:36, band 2 — τὰς θύρας τοῦ παραδείσου καὶ — the garden where Susanna bathed. The same Greek words, a different garden. With Genesis 3:24, where the cherubim and the flaming sword guard the way to the tree of life, 18:10 shares Adam, the sword and the garden — and no more than two words in a row.
- Levi 3:9 → Genesis 2:1: six — the heaven and the earth and. A formula, band 1.
It does not settle whether anyone read the Testament of Levi. Charles’s case rested on more than wording — on ideas, on expressions he judged rare, on the Hebrew he believed lay behind the Greek — and a screen for verbatim runs cannot weigh those. Nor can it see allusion.
The honest sentence is the narrow one: on Charles’s own Greek, read off his pages, the four pairs he said show dependence share three, three, two and one consecutive words with the SBLGNT; the deepest New Testament runs among the 28 verses read are two of six, both band 1 and neither on his list: one with Revelation 2:7, in words no Greek Old Testament unit held here carries, and a death formula that 1 Maccabees 2:69 carries too. On the spelling his note gives the other manuscripts, 2:6 makes a third six, with Matthew 3:16. Direction of influence is nowhere asserted.
What this page could not check, what nearly misled it, and where it is weakest.
This is the section that makes the shelf trustworthy. It is long because the Greek of this book exists here only as photographs.
⚠️ What the OCR would have said — and why no OCR reading is used as a measurement:
The scanned edition comes with a machine-read text layer, and it was used for one thing only: to screen all Levi pages (PDF 91–133) for places worth reading by eye. Two of its results show why it could not be used for more.
Screened against the New Testament, the OCR of Charles’s page 41 (PDF 107) gives 6 consecutive words with 1 Thessalonians 2:16 — twice the run his Greek text of the verse makes. The six are in his footnote, where he prints Paul’s words, not in the Testament.
On page 64 (PDF 132) the OCR reads ξύλον where the page has ξύλου, and the run with Revelation 2:7 falls in the OCR stream to 3. The screen that chose the verses would have missed the six at 18:11; 18:11 was read because the acquisition plan named Levi 18:10–12. An OCR run is a lower bound with an unknown error in both directions, and none is reported here as a measurement.
⚠️ Faults in the shelf’s own files, found while building this page — reported, not buried:
- The English file, three lines. At 2:7 it reads from- -the where the 1917 page reads from the — a reader’s pen stroke on the scanned copy, read as hyphens. At 2:10 it has an empty pair of square brackets that the page does not have. At 18:6 it has a stop where the page has a comma. The two printed here (2:7, 18:6) are repaired against the scan, and the self-check proves nothing else in either line changed.
- The English file’s description. Its provenance note calls the text Charles’s α column. In the 28 verses read it carries β readings at least six times (2:7, 4:1, 5:1, 6:11, 14:3, 18:14), reads God for the α text’s Lord at 2:6, and leaves out a line at 18:9 that the α Greek prints in brackets. It is Charles’s own translation, choosing readings verse by verse — at 4:1 his 1908 note says “I have with much hesitation recognised this line as genuine”, while his Greek of the same year brackets it with the note ‘Bracketed as a Christian interpolation’.
- Live statements this page contradicts. Several pages on this shelf say that the Testaments, or the Aramaic Levi material, are not held on this disk. They are now out of date and are reported for correction.
⚠️ What this page could NOT check:
- 133 of Levi’s 161 verses. Only 28 whole verses were read off the images (with spans and variants). A deeper run elsewhere in the testament is not excluded — the OCR screen found none, and the OCR screen also missed 18:11.
- The critical edition. M. de Jonge’s edition (1978) is in copyright and was not consulted, so how its text stands at 2:6, 6:11, 10:3 and 19:1 — where this page shows the manuscripts Charles calls β changing the numbers — cannot be said here; every figure on this page is on Charles’s α text or on a reading his apparatus reports.
- The Armenian and the Slavonic, except as Charles reports them.
- The Aramaic Levi material — held (the Qumran copies in the ETCBC corpus; the Genizah fragments in Charles’s Appendix III, as images), not read, not measured.
- Charles’s 1908 English edition is held only as OCR. Every phrase quoted from its introduction or notes is checked against two independent OCR copies, not against a page image.
- The manuscript readings at 2:6, 6:11, 10:3 and 19:1, and at 1 Thessalonians 2:16, are taken from Charles’s apparatus; neither the Testament’s manuscripts nor Codices D, E, F and G are held.
- The text of Matthew 3:16 in other editions. The SBLGNT apparatus is held here for Luke, Romans, Jude and Revelation only; Matthew’s is not, so the six at 2:6 is measured on the SBLGNT alone.
- The dictionaries and studies named in Stage 1. None is held and none was consulted.
⚠️ Where this page is weakest:
- The Greek was read by one reader, once. Accents, breathings and Charles’s signs were taken off photographs; only the readings at 18:11 and 18:14 were checked on both scans of their page. A misread letter can change a run. The sidecar records the page and column of every reading so that anyone can check it.
- The third six rests on an abbreviation. At 2:6 Charles’s note prints the other manuscripts’ word as ἠνεῴχ. and the page writes it out in full; the six with Matthew 3:16 measures the reading he reports, not a manuscript.
- The 28 are a chosen set, not a sample. They are the verses on Charles’s list, the verses the acquisition plan named, and the OCR’s leads. The distribution describes them, not the testament.
- The English is quotation, and eclectic. It is Charles’s translation and does not always translate the Greek beside it; the page flags each place it found.
- The structure diagram counts the English. The four openings and the two in my heart verses are counted in Charles’s English; the Greek was read for the four openings, not for every verse.
- Dating and origin are reported from Charles and de Jonge and are not tested; nothing on the page depends on either.
Commentaries & studies:
- R. H. Charles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Oxford, 1908) — read.
- R. H. Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908; SPCK 1917) — quoted.
- M. de Jonge et al., A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (1978) — not consulted.
- H. W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, A Commentary (1985) — not consulted.
- J. C. Greenfield, M. E. Stone and E. Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document (2004) — not consulted.
A scholar’s list, a tree, and a priest from Judah.
Name what you learned, why it matters, and one concrete response.
What should we carry away — and do?
- A scholar’s list is a list of questions. Charles’s fourteen Levi parallels are worth having; measured on his own Greek, the four he was surest of share three, three, two and one consecutive words with the New Testament. Measure before you repeat.
- Ask which Greek. At 2:6, 6:11, 10:3 and 19:1 the number depends on the manuscript — and at 6:11 on which text of Paul as well.
- The tree of life. Six words, to eat from the tree of life, stand in Levi 18:11 and Revelation 2:7 and in no other verse screened here. Genesis closes the way to the tree with a sword (3:24); the promise of Revelation opens it to the one who conquers.
- The church’s confession, stated as the church’s. Pleasant Springs confesses Jesus as the great high priest of Hebrews, a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 7:17), who arose from Judah, not from Levi (Hebrews 7:14). Levi 18 names no one, and this page does not identify its new priest with anyone.
- One concrete response. Read Genesis 3:22–24 and Revelation 2:1–7 side by side this week, and notice what is given back.
Testament of Levi 18:11 · to share
Greek: Charles 1908, read off the page · English: CharlesEvery 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 and not deuterocanonical; 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, from the University of California copy scanned by Google (archive.org), read off the page images for this study and recorded verse by verse in a sidecar file; not M. de Jonge’s edition. English: R. H. Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908; SPCK reprint 1917), public domain, quoted verbatim from the transcription held here, two lines repaired against the 1917 scan; Charles’s 1908 introduction and notes quoted from two OCR copies. Greek New Testament: SBLGNT; the SBLGNT apparatus, Michael W. Holmes (ed.), Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software / Faithlife, CC BY 4.0. Greek Old Testament: the CATSS morphological Septuagint. Latin: the Clementine Vulgate. No ESV verse is printed on this page; English renderings not labelled Charles’s are the page’s own literal glosses. 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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