According to the Brothers: First-Person Narration in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of first-person narration in ancient pseudepigraphical literature by demonstrating its impact on the story of Joseph’s sale into slavery in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs contains multiple firstperson narratives relating to Joseph’s sale, each of which has a different narrator. The work therefore provides a unique opportunity to compare first-person accounts and to see the ways in which first-person narration influences the shaping of the story and its function in each testament.