The Testament of Benjamin, like the other Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, is considered to be a Jewish work that was added to by Christians in the Christian era. It is unclear when it comes from, however, fragments of the Testaments of Joseph and Levi have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Aramaic, dating to between 135 and 37 BC, implying the rest of the Twelve were compiled at the same time. It survives in a Christianized Armenian translation, which was added to the Oskan Armenian Orthodox Bible in 1666.
During the crusades, Latin translations of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs began to circulate in Western Europe, which were considered to be authentic testaments written by the children of Jacob until the Protestant reformation. During the Protestant reformation the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs were generally been discredited as Christian era forgeries, and stopped being used by Catholics and Protestants. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs continued to be viewed as authentic in orthodox countries, and were integrated into the Oskan Armenian Orthodox Bible in 1666. Scholarly analysis of the testaments in the 1800s led to the conclusion that the testaments began as Pharisee texts, written in Hebrew, sometime the before 200 AD, when they were expanded by the Christian monks on Mount Athos. Since the discovery of fragments of four of the testaments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pharisee view has been generally discredited. The oldest fragments discovered so far date to between 135 and 37 BC, and are written in Aramaic, which make it unlikely that they were written by a Pharisee. Additionally, the contents of the testaments are no longer viewed as being consistent with the Pharisee’s theology, as they include a number of references to Greek gods, making the testaments more likely to be a Sadducee text, or from another Jewish sect.
