lied in bringing Moses into the land which He swore he should not enter." Michael, aghast at the blasphemy, said, "The Lord rebuke thee." The Lord, in answer, thundered and lightened out of heaven, and Satan fled.
There were some mortal spectators of the scene: perhaps only Joshua and Caleb, perhaps the contest was visible to the people, as Severus seems to indicate, and after that a cloud of light shut off their view. At any rate, of what followed, Joshua and Caleb were the only spectators, and one of them (almost certainly Joshua) saw more than the other. Both were caught up into the air, and below them they saw a wonderful spectacle: there were two figures of Moses, one being laid in the earth by angels in a mountain valley, the other, accompanied by angels, passing upwards to the heavens. Caleb, who seems to have been ceremonially impure, sank to the earth before Joshua: Joshua descended after him and related what he had seen to the people. He was able to tell them that the angels who had buried Moses had contracted no ceremonial pollution by touching that dead body, and also that he had heard a new name of Moses proclaimed in heaven, namely, Melchi.
Some points in the story are so interesting and unusual that we must greatly regret the loss of the full text.
There is no doubt that the complexion of the Latin fragment which we have is quite unlike what we have of the Assumption. The one is wholly prophecy, and dialogue with Joshua, the other is mystical romance. So far Dr. Charles has a plausible case for his suggestion that two books, originally separate, have been amalgamated. We have a parallel in the Ascension of Isaiah, which consists of two distinct parts, the Martyrdom and the Vision. The fashion has been to regard these as originally distinct; or rather, perhaps, to say that the Vision is a later appendix to the Martyrdom. However, in this case Professor Burkitt (Christian and Jewish Apocalypses: Schweich Lectures) has brought forward strong grounds for believing that the book may really be a unity: and I am on the whole prepared to follow
