Why this story matters

(commentary on Jude 1:9)

(Page 2 of 4)

The death of Moses and the source for the story

The Bible describes several events just before Moses’ death but says almost nothing about what happened afterwards. In chapter 31 of Deuteronomy, as the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land, Yahweh takes Moses and Joshua aside and appears to them as a thick cloud. He tells them what is about to happen. First he is going to give Moses a song for the people to sing. If they learn the words of the song, they will know what Yahweh wants them to do and will have no excuses if he subsequently makes them suffer terribly. Next, he tells them that Moses will die, and the people will enter the Promised Land. Once there they will break his rules (as they always do), and Yahweh will smite them with lots of disaster and suffering (as he always does) (Deut. 31:13-24).

Next, after teaching the people Yahweh’s new song, Moses walks up Mount Nebo where Yahweh appears to him again, presumably still in the form of a thick cloud. Yahweh shows him all the wonderful land flowing with milk and honey that Moses spent 40 arduous years leading the people towards. Unfortunately, though, Moses will not get to enter the Promised Land because of something he did at a place called Merebah. As discussed in the story, God the Father, God the Son, God the Serpent, no one is really sure what that was.

Once Yahweh had shown Moses how wonderful the land was that he would never enter, he killed him. We know Yahweh killed Moses because the Bible tells us he was still strong and in good health: “Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone” (Deuteronomy 34:7). Next, we're told that Yahweh personally buried the body in a place that is still unknown to this day: “He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is” (Deut. 34:6). Deuteronomy does not give us any more information about what happened to Moses' body, but we know from Jude that there was more to the story. Unfortunately, though, Jude didn't give us much in the way of detail. He didn't have to. He knew his contemporizes were familiar with the source of the story. Fortunately we know from early Christian sources, what that source was: The Assumption of Moses.

Origen of Alexandria, in his work On First Principles, refers to Jude’s source as the Ascension of Moses:

“In the beginning in the book of Genesis the devil is recorded as having deceived Eve, and in regards to this, in the Ascension of Moses (a book which the apostle Jude mentions in his letter), Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, says that the serpent, inspired by the devil, was the cause of the transgression of Adam and Eve” (De principiis III.2.1).

In a surviving fragment of Clement’s commentary on the epistle of Jude, the church father first quotes Jude 1:9, and then adds that this quote “confirms” Jude’s source, which he states is the Assumption of Moses:

“‘When Michael, the archangel, disputing with the devil, debated about the body of Moses.’ Here he confirms the assumption of Moses. He is here called Michael, who through an angel near to us debated with the devil” (available on line at the Catholic web site New Advent).

Didymus the Blind, was revered as one of the foremost Christian scholars of the fourth century and an influential spiritual leader and teacher of St. Jerome. He mentions Jude’s words and the Assumption of Moses in the same breath:

“Those who oppose this consideration object to the present epistle and to the Assumption of Moses, on account of that place where the word of the archangel to the devil about the body of Moses is indicated” (quoted in Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, p. 259).

It appears, then, that Jude’s source is the Assumption of Moses. Remember, if all the books of the Bible represent the inspired word of God, then Jude was also inspired when he alluded to this work with its information about what happened to Moses' body. So what do we know about this book and the details it provides?

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