Ascension of Moses
The Assumption of Moses (Latin assumptio Mosis , other name Testament Moses ) is an apocalyptic script from the 1st century AD. It has been preserved in Latin and originally goes back to an Aramaic or Hebrew version via a lost Greek version . In it the dying Moses reveals to Joshua the coming history of Israel up to the time of the sons of Herod. Almost all introductory questions such as the origin of the author, the time of writing and the original language are controversial.
The book consists of 12 chapters.
In the letter of Jude ( Jude 1,9 EU ) a quarrel between Michael and the devil is mentioned, which according to Origen ( De principiis , III, 2,1) comes from the assumptio Mosis , but is not included in the surviving version. It is not certain whether this means that there was a non-preserved version that contained this scene, or whether Origines gave an imprecise or incorrect reference to the source.
Text output
Latin text
- Johannes Tromp: The Assumption of Moses: a critical edition with commentary. Leiden, New York, Cologne 1993 (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 10). ISBN 90-04-09779-1
English translation
- John Priest: Testament of Moses , in: Charlesworth, James Hamilton (ed.): The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. Garden City, New York 1983, 919-934.
German translations
- Egon Brandenburger : Ascension of Moses. In: Jewish writings from the Hellenistic-Roman period V / 2, 1976, 57–84.
- Carl Clemen : The Ascension of Moses. In: Emil Kautzsch (Ed.): The Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphen of the Old Testament , Vol. 2, Tübingen (Mohr) 1900, pp. 311–331.
- Paul Rießler : Ascension of Moses. In: ders .: Old Jewish literature outside the Bible. Augsburg 1928, pp. 485-495.
literature
- Norbert Johannes Hofmann : The Assumptio Mosis. Studies on the reception of moderate tradition. Journal for the Study of Judaism, Supplements 67. Leiden et al. a. 2000. ISBN 90-04-11938-8
- Edna Israeli: “Taxo” and the Origin of the Assumption of Moses. In: Journal of Biblical Literature 128 (2009), 735-757.
- Günter Reese: The history of Israel in the conception of early Judaism: an investigation of the animal vision and the ten-week apocalypse of the Ethiopian Book of Enoch, the history of Assumptio Mosis and the Book of Esra. Berlin u. a. 1999. ISBN 3-8257-0134-4
