The Assumption of Moses 1

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.

1[The book of the prophecy of Moses, which was made in the one hundred and twentieth year of his life,]

2That is two thousand five hundred years from the Creation of the world;

3Or, according to Eastern reckoning, two thousand seven hundred years, and four hundred

4When the people had gone forth after the exodus that was made by Moses to Amman beyond the Jordan,

5The prophecy that was made by Moses in the book Deuteronomy,

6When he called unto him Joshua the son of Nun, a man approved of the Lord,

7Who should be the minister of the people and of the tabernacle of the testimony with all its holy things;

8And should bring the people into the land that was given to their fathers,

9That it should be given to them by the covenant and the oath which He spake in the tabernacle to give it by Joshua, and he spake to Joshua these words:

10Promise to perform with all diligence whatsoever thou hast been commanded, that thou mayest so act as to be blameless before God.

11These things said the Lord of the world. For He created the world on account of His own people,

13Though He began not to make manifest this purpose of creation from the beginning of the world, that the Gentiles might be confounded on the matter, and to their shame might confound one another in arguments.

14And so He planned and ordained me, who before of old was prepared to be the mediator of His covenant.

15And now I tell you that the time of the years of my life is finished and I pass to sleep with my fathers in the sight of all the people . . .

16And read thou this writing that thou mayest have regard to the safe-keeping of the books,

17Which I shall deliver thee, which thou shalt arrange and smear with oil of cedar, and lay up in vessels of earthenware in the place which God made from the beginning of the creation of the world,

18That His Name might be called on (there) even to the day of repentance in the visitation, wherewith the Lord will visit them in the consummation of the end of the days.