The Assumption of Moses

Pseudonymously attributed to Moses; actual author unknown, a Jewish Pharisaic writer commonly dated to the early 1st century AD, shortly after Herod the Great's death. Survives in a single incomplete 6th-century Latin manuscript, discovered in Milan in the 19th century. Presents itself as Moses's farewell testament to Joshua before his death: a review of Israel's history down to the writer's own day, the story of the martyr Taxo, and a vision of God's coming vindication of the righteous. Despite its title, the surviving text is really a 'Testament of Moses' -- it breaks off mid-sentence before any account of an assumption into heaven, and does not contain the dispute between Michael and the devil over Moses's body that later Christian writers (traditionally linked to Jude 1:9) associate with a now-lost 'Assumption' proper. Not part of any church's canon.