Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

Jude, Michael, Satan and Moses'' Body
Jude 9?

"Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you!'" (Jude 9. In that Old Testament scene Satan, the adversary, is contending with the Angel of the Lord about the high priest Joshua. The full detail of Jude's description of the devil's dispute with Michael, however, is not recorded anywhere in the Bible. Nor is Michael, mentioned also in Daniel, called an archangel elsewhere.

Writing in 1852, in his commentary on the General Epistles, Albert Barnes wrote that, "this verse has given more perplexity to expositors than any other part of the epistle", leading some to regard the whole of Jude as spurious. 150 years later and have we solved the dilemma?

A decent commentary will point you to the non-canonical apocryphal work, the Assumption of Moses, most of the text of which is, typically and frustratingly, not extant. But the mere mention of an apocryphal source is enough to make many evangelicals squirm, despite there being more than 15 such works, like the books of Jasher and the Wars of the Lord, mentioned in the Old Testament, none of which remain, and in addition, those mentioned elsewhere such as that of Og the Giant.

In response to an Internet newsgroup thread about the background to Jude 9)

Let's examine just how ludicrous or liberal this might be. The non-Pauline and non-Johannine epistles share at least one thing in common, they all appear to allude to apocryphal or lost Jewish writings outside the canon of the Old Testament including: the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Slavonic Book of the Secrets of Enoch, the book of Jubilees, and various early Jewish midrashim (lit. 'studies' or 'commentaries') and other rabbinic traditions.

A number of early church writers including Clement^F1, Origen^F2, Didymus the Blind, Gelasius and Severus of Antioch^F3, continued the tradition of quoting from apocryphal works such as the Assumption and cited it as the source for Jude 9 is actually the entire source. The body of Moses becomes Joshua, the servant of Moses, and Michael becomes the Angel of the Lord, both difficult to uphold. Another sees the body of Moses as symbolic of the Old Testament legal corpus. Non-evangelicals are happy to suggest that Jude has augmented a similar but less explicit reference in Peter (2 Peter 2:11) yet most scholars regard Jude's as the earlier letter of the two.

Jude cites probably authentic Jewish tradition that Michael was the angel who watched over the bodies and souls of the righteous. Michael does this with Adam, Abel and Eve, in the Life of Adam and also with Abraham in the Testament of Abraham, both works more than likely circulating in the period up to the writing of the New Testament. Indeed, R. H. Charles^F7 suggests a date of A.D. 7-29 for the Assumption and Testament of Moses. That said there are few early references to angelic disputes over the bodies of the dead rather than the living. Satan wanted to attack Job during his lifetime and appears to have little interest in the dead. In the Dead Sea Scrolls two angels are said to dispute over Moses' father Amran^F8.

The combination of other Jewish traditions^F9 and the excerpts from the Apocalypse, Testament and Assumption, of Moses, give us the following sketchy details. Angels, good and evil alike, would often meet the soul departing from the body at death and each claim it for their own. In Moses' case, Satan arrives and protests that Moses belonged to him for killing the Egyptian (Exodus 2:12) and had not God lied and denied him the Promised Land for his sins? Michael defends Moses and God's name and yet only rebukes Satan "in God's name".

The details of the story and their later interpretation seem to suggest that God intervened in the burial of Moses, on the one hand to stay Satan's hand, but also to ensure that Moses himself would not be worshipped as the golden calf had been. For, if the people knew where Moses' body was buried and human hands had laid him to rest then he would become a pilgrimage site on the wrong side of the Promised Land. This is evident today by Jewish and Muslim veneration of the burial caves of the Patriarchs and indeed of Christians visiting Jesus' tomb. But we worship the God of the living, not the dead, and with respect to Jesus - He is risen, and no longer in the tomb so don't look for him there!

The point of Jude's reference is not the validity of the source, or even the truth of the citation, not that these are necessarily in doubt, but rather his strongly held belief in angels and Satan. This belief he held in common with the Pharisees but in contrast to the Sadducees. Yet others were either promoting angel worship, or, alternatively, their curt dismissal as mere emissaries beneath our regard. Jude certainly dismisses the latter and their speaking "evil of whatever they do not know" (Jude 10). In the same way, we cannot disregard that which is in Scripture despite our misgivings, nor should we allow our ignorance and lack of access to lost documents to prejudice our reading of a biblical epistle, let alone any other passages it may lay behind.^F10

FOOTNOTES:
F1: Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 6; 15. Clement uses the story, like Origen, to teach that gnosis, the higher knowledge is "not for every man, since some look to the body of the Scriptures, ... and others discern the thought, and what is signified..."
F2: Origen, De Principiis (On the Principles), 3.2.1.
F3: Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, 6th century, Catena of Nicephorus on Deuteronomy 34.
F4: Origen, On Joshua, 2.1, "In a certain book, though it be not in the canon, ... it is related that two Moses' were seen, one alive in the spirit, the other dead in the body;", he goes on to draw the typically Origenite assumption that the spiritual is better than the physical and the issue of Moses' body refers to his spiritual body (with the veil of the law taken away) surpassing his physical body (the letter of the law).
F5: Epistle 158.6. http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/npnf101/htm/vii.1.CLVIII.htm
F6: Meaning a work given a pseudonymous name from the past, other than the real author's.
F7: R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, Vol. II, p.407
F8: Q4 Amran
F9: E.g., Philo on Deuteronomy 34:6 says that Moses was buried by celestial beings, Vita Mosis 2.3. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan also on Deuteronomy 34:6 says that angels buried Moses several miles away from where he actually died. Cf. Josephus, Antiquities, 4.8.4,48.
F10: The Testament/Assumption of Moses is said to be a virtual midrash on Deuteronomy 31-34 and to have influenced Jude 9, 12-13, 2 Peter 2:13, Acts 7:36-43, Matthew 24:19-21 and even, doubtfully, a passage in Galatians.

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