Retelling the Story of Judah and Tamar in the Testament of Judah

Abstract

Many Christians assume that Old Testament documents were  „Christianised. during the New Testament era, although the process predates the New Testament. This assumption may be premised on the lack of much information about how early Christians re-interpreted Old Testament stories to meet new trends of thinking during the Inter-Testament period. This paper, therefore, focuses on the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38, which is retold in the Testament of Judah to discover the intentions and the worldviews of the author of the Testament of Judah. For the presupposition of this paper, the Testament of Judah will be studied as a Christian document. The other side of the debate that the Testaments are the works of a Jewish author is thus put aside at least for a while in this paper. This is because the Testaments look more like a Christian document than Jewish. As a result, the texts for comparison would be the LXX and the Greek version of theTestaments. The paper utilizes literary analyses of the two passages while it progresses through three main headings; the overall structure of the Testament of Judah, exegesis of the story of Judah and Tamar in both Genesis 38 and The Testament of Judah, an analysis of key characters and a summary of the significant differences between the two stories. The paper concludes that the world view of the author of the Testament thought of women as channels through which the devil overcomes man in battles of the mind, thereby, leading men into impurity. Hence, Bathshua and Tamar are thus presented as the „victimizers. while Judah is portrayed in the Testament as an old man who had gained experience with time whose strengths and weakness serve as example for his sons.

Keywords: Testament of Judah, Second Temple Judaism, Pseudepigrapha, Judah and Tamar, Retelling.