Volume 1

The Jewish encyclopedia : a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day / prepared ... under the direction of ... Cyrus Adler [and others] Isidore Singer ... managing editor.

Date:: 1901-1906

Credit: The Jewish encyclopedia : a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day / prepared ... under the direction of ... Cyrus Adler [and others] Isidore Singer ... managing editor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

737/752 (page 679)

$The Messianic doctrine in this fragment, in whicli David figures as the Messiah, is uniciue, not only as far as the Neo-Hebrew, but as far as apocalyptic in general is concerned. It compels the conclusion that this fragment is distinct from the “Book of Enoch ” (treated above) as the work of an altogether different author. Further, it indicates a very early oi'igin, which is fully confirmed by the “ prophecy after the event ” ; the Ishmael in this apocalypse too can only be the rabbi Ishmael, extolled in legend as a martyr of the Hadrianic persecution. Hence the date of composition must fall after the destruction of the Temple: and the only event which can come into consideration as making such a prophecy com- prehensible is the disastrous termination of the reign of Bar Kokba. At that juncture the conditions and events furnished a basis for the “prophecy after the event ” contained iu the apocalypse under consider- ation: that the Temple would be profaned and destroyed, the royal palace demolished, Jerusalem turned into a desert, and the whole land of Israel rendered desolate. Indeed the fragment reads as if it were written under the immediate impression of the Hadrianic persecution. It seems plausible that this book was the intermediaiy through which the peculiar metamorjihosis of the “Secrets of Enoch,” into the Neo-Hebrew Book of Enoch, was accom- plished. 3. The Ascension of Moses: The Latin ver- sion of “The Assumption of Mo.ses,” which is pre- served only as a fragment, must certainly have contained, in its missing part, an account of the death of Closes and of the dispute between the archangel Michael and Satan (or the angel of death) over tlie dead body. Among the Neo-Hebrew apocalyjises there is an “Ascension of Moses,” as well as a frag- ment which, besides revealing the future, tells of the death of Moses and of the dispute that ensued after his death. This apocalypse was published for the first time in Salonica in 1727, under the title nC’D n^nj. and has been printed several times •since (in Amsterdam, 1754: Warsaw, 1849, etc.). It was translated by Gaster {l.c. pp. 572-588) under the title “The Bevelation of Moses.” An Arabic tianslation also exists in the Karaite manuscript, written in 1828, discovered by Tischendorf in the libiary of the University of Leipsic (Codex Tisch- endor'f, xliv.), and described by him in “Anecdota Sacra et Profana,”p. 74, and by Jellinekin “Dlonats- schrift,” ii. 245, 360 et set]., and “ B. H.” ii. 9 et seq., 19. This Arabic version has a longer introduetion, and varies somewhat in the text from our version. The contents of the book, according to Caster’s translation, are thus summarized. For the modesty displayed by Moses when summoned to appear be- fore Pharaoh to demand the liberation of the Israel- ites. God commands Metatron (Enoch) to allow Closes to ascend into heaven. After Ascension Metatron has transformed Moses’ body of Moses, into a fiery figure like unto that of the angels, he leads him up through the seven heavens. In the first heaven Moses sees waters “standing in line,” and windows to let in and out all the things pertaining to human life and its needs. In the seeond heaven he sees the angels who control the clouds, the wind, and the rain: in the third, the angels placed over vegetation: in the fourth, those over the earth, sun, jiioon, stars, planets, and spheres: in the fifth, angels half of fire and half of snow; in the sixth, the “ Irin and Kaddishin ” ; in the seventh, ‘Arabot, he .sees first the angels “Wrath and Anger,” then the angel of death, then the hayyot standing before God, and finally an angel engaged in teach- ing the souls which were created by God at the time of the Creation and placed in paradise. (At this point occur two passages of later interpolation, one from Pes. 54«-i, treating of Nebuchadnezzar’s pre- sumptuous desire “to ascend the heights of the cloud and to be like the Most High ” [Isa. xiv. 14], and the other from the Zohar, intended to show that Moses really ascended to heaven.) God then tells Closes that He will confer on him the further privilege of seeing hell and jiaradise, and, at God’s command, the angel Gabriel conducts Moses to hell. There he sees the manifold torments and punishments of the different classes of sinners, those who were envious of their fellow men ami bore false witness against them; women who exposed their charms to young men; sinners who committ<'d adultery, theft, and murder; those who perjured themselves: those who desecrated the tsabbatli. de- spised the learned, and persecuted orphans; those who committed sodomy and idolatry, or cui'scd tlieir parents: those who took bribes, put their fellow men to shame, delivered up their brother-Israelite to the Gentile, and denied the oral law; those tha* ate all kinds of forbidden food; usurers; apostates, and blasphemers; those who wrote the ineffable name of God, and those who ate on Yom Kippur. Gabriel then leads Moses into paradise. Here he sees first the guardian angel of i)aradisc, sitting Hell and under the tree of life, who shows him Paradise, the several costly thrones erected in paradise, each surrounded by seventy angels—the thrones for the Patriarchs, for the scholars who studied the Law day and night for the sake of heaven; for the jiious men, for the just, and for the rejientant—and a throne of copiwr, i)rcpare(l for the wicked whose sons are pious, as in the case of Terah. Finally, he sees the fountain of life welling forth from beneath the tree of life, and dividing itself into four streams, and four rivers flowing under each throne, “the first of honey, the second of milk, the third of wine, and the fourth of ]mre balsam.” (Here another passage from the Zohar, interrupting the narrative, is inserted.) As Closes is leaving paradise a voice calls from heaven : “Moses, ... as thou hast seen the reward wliich is ju'epared for the just iu the future world, so also in the days to come shalt thou see the rebuilding of the Temple and the advent of the Dlessiah, and shalt behold the beauty of the Lord and shalt meditate in His Temple.” Up to the present no attempt has been made to ascertain the date of composition of thisapocalypse; but the allusion in the last chapter to the rebuilding of the Temple places it after that event. The de- scriptions of the different classes of sinners in hell and their punishment are strikingly similar to (in fact, are in parts identical with) those found iu a num- ber of Christian apocalypses; namely, the “Apoc- alypse of Peter,” that of “Pastor Hernias,” and the second book of the “Sibylline Oracles” (all three written iu the second century), and the later apoc- alypses of Esdras and Paul, both jicrhaps depend- ent upon the “Apocal,ypse of Peter.” It is pos- sible that a critical examination of these relations might throw further light on the date of composition of “The Ascension of Moses.” 4. The Assumption of Moses : This is a frag- ment preserved in the “Midrash Bereshit Rabbati ” of K. Moses ha-Darshan (a manuscript in the library of the Jewish congregation in Prague), which was published by Jellinek in “B. H.” vi. § 22. It is intended as an exegesis to Gen. xxviii. 17i. The following is a synopsis of its contents: As the time for Moses’ death approached, God permitted him to ascend into heaven, and unveiled$