THE BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES OF PHILO
TRANSLATED FROM THE OLD LATIN VERSION
BY
M. R. JAMES, LITT.D., F.B.A.
CHAPTER XIX.
XIX. At that time Moses slew the nations, and gave half of the spoils to
the people, and he began to declare to them the words of the law which God spake
to them in Oreb.
2. And he spake to them, saying: Lo, I sleep with my fathers, and shall go
unto my people. But I know that ye will arise and forsake the words that were
ordained unto you by me, and God will be wroth with you and forsake you and
depart out of your land, and bring against you them that hate you, and they
shall have dominion over you, but not unto the end, for he will remember the
covenant which he made with your fathers.Dt. 31:27
3. But then both ye and your sons and all your generations after you will
arise and seek the day of my death and will say in their heart: Who will give
us a shepherd like unto Moses, or such another judge to the children of Israel,
to pray for our sins at all times,
1 and to be heard for our iniquities?Dt.
4:26
4. 2 Howbeit,
this day I call heaven and earth to witness against you, for the heaven
shall hear this and the earth shall take it in with her ears, that God hath
revealed the end of the world, that he might covenant with you upon his high
places, and hath kindled an everlasting lamp among you. Remember, ye wicked,
how that when I spake unto you, ye answered saying: All that God hath said unto
us we will hear and do. But if we transgress or corrupt our ways, he shall call
a witness against us and cut us off.
5. But know ye that ye did eat the bread of angels 40 years. And now behold
I do bless your tribes, before my end come. But ye, know ye my labour wherein
I have laboured with you since the day ye came up out of the land of Egypt.
6. And when he had so said, God spake unto him the third time, saying: Behold,
thou goest to sleep with thy fathers, and this people will arise and seek me,
and will forget my law wherewith I have enlightened them, and I shall forsake
their seed for a season.Dt. 32:52, 34:4
7. But unto thee will I show the land before thou die, but thou shall not
enter therein in this age, lest thou see the graven images whereby this people
will be deceived and led out of the way. I will show thee the place wherein
they shall serve me 740 (l. 850) years. And thereafter it shall be delivered
into the hand of their enemies, and they shall destroy it, and strangers shall
compass it about, and it shall be in that day as it was in the day when I brake
the tables of the covenant which I made with thee in Oreb: and when they sinned,
that which was written therein vanished away. Now that day was the 17th day
of the 4th month.
8. And Moses went up into Mount Oreb, as God had bidden him, and prayed,
saying: Behold, I have fulfilled the time of my life, even 120 years. And now
I pray thee let thy mercy be with thy people and let thy compassion be continued
upon thine heritage, Lord, and thy long-suffering in thy place upon the race
of thy choosing, for thou hast loved them more than all.
9. And thou knowest that I was a shepherd of sheep, and when I fed the flock
in the desert, I brought them unto thy Mount Oreb, and then first saw I thine
angel in fire out of the bush; but thou calledst me out of the bush, and I feared
and turned away my face, and thou sentest me unto them, and didst deliver them
out of Egypt, and their enemies thou didst sink in the water. And thou gavest
them a law and judgements whereby they should live. For what man is he that
hath not sinned against thee? How shall thine heritage be established
except thou have mercy on them? Or who shall yet be born without sin? Yet wilt
thou correct them for a season, but not in anger.1 K. 8:45
10. Then the Lord shewed him the land and all that is therein and said: This
is the land which I will give to my people. And he shewed him the place from
whence the clouds draw up water to water all the earth, and the place whence
the river receiveth his water, and the land of Egypt, and the place of the firmament,
from whence the holy land only drinketh.
1 He shewed him also the place from
whence it rained manna for the people, and even unto the paths of paradise.
And he shewed him the measures of the sanctuary, and the number of the offerings,
and the sign whereby men shall interpret (lit. begin to look; upon) the
heaven, and said: These are the things which were forbidden to the sons of men
because they sinned.Dt. 34:1
11. And now, thy rod wherewith the signs were wrought shall be for a witness
between me and my people. And when they sin I shall be wroth with them and remember
my rod, and spare them according to my mercy, and thy rod shall be in my sight
for a remembrance all the days,
1 and shall be like unto the bow wherein I made a
covenant with Noe when he came out of the ark, saying: I will set my bow in
the cloud, and it shall be a sign between me and men that the water of a flood
be no more upon the earth.
12. But thee will I take hence and give thee sleep
2 with thy fathers and give thee
rest in thy slumber, and bury thee in peace, and all the angels shall lament
for thee, and the hosts of heaven shall be sorrowful. But there shall
not any, of angels or men, know thy sepulchre wherein thou art to be buried,
but thou shalt rest therein until I visit the world, and raise thee up and thy
fathers out of the earth [of Egypt]
3 wherein ye shall sleep, and ye shall come together
and dwell in an immortal habitation that is not subject unto time.
13. But this heaven shall be in my sight as a fleeting cloud, and like yesterday
when it is past, and it shall be when I draw near to visit the world, I will
command the years and charge the times, and they shall be shortened, and the
stars shall be hastened, and the light of the sun make speed to set, neither
shall the light of the moon endure, because I will hasten to raise up you that
sleep, that in the place of sanctification which I shewed thee, all they that
can live may dwell therein.
14. And Moses said: If I may ask yet one thing of thee, O Lord, according
to the multitude of thy mercy, be not wroth with me. And shew me what measure
of time hath passed by and what remaineth.
15. And the Lord said to him: An instant, the topmost part of a hand,
1 the fulness
of a moment, 2
and the drop of a cup. And time hath fulfilled all. For 4 have passed by, and
2 remain. 3 Dt. 34:6
16. And Moses when he heard was filled with under standing, and his likeness
was changed gloriously: and he died in glory according to the mouth
of the Lord, and he buried him as he had promised him, and the angels lamented
at his death, and lightnings and torches and arrows went before him with one
accord. And on that day the hymn of the hosts was not said because of the departure
of Moses. Neither was there any day like unto it since the Lord made man upon
earth, neither shall there be any such for ever, that he should make the hymn
of the angels to cease because of a man; for he loved him greatly; and he buried
him with his own hands on an high place of the earth, and in the light of the
whole world.
Footnotes
127:1 XIX. 3. to pray for our
sins at all times. cf. Assumption of Moses, 11:11, 11:17; 12:3.
127:2 4. DCCXL. years of the MSS.
should, as Dr. Cohn suggests, be changed to DCCCL. From the death of Moses to
the building of the first temple 440 years are reckoned, and from thence to
its destruction 410. The Seder Olam Rabbah XI. reckons seventeen Jubilees
(850 years) from the entrance into the Holy Land to the Captivity (Cohn, p.
327, note).
129:1 10. the place of the firmament
from whence the holy land only drinketh. cf. Babylonian Talmud Taanith
I (tr. Rodkinson, p. 24). "The land of Israel is watered by the Lord himself,
while the rest of the world is watered by a messenger. . . The land of Israel
is watered by rain, while the rest of the world is watered by the residue remaining
in the clouds."
130:1 11. The rod of Moses is to
be transported to heaven and to become a sign like the rainbow. Perhaps the
Milky Way is meant. No such tradition is cited in Mr. I. Abrahams' interesting
paper on "The Rod of Moses," in Papers read before the Jews' College Literary
Society (1887, p. 28), nor in Daehnhardt's Natursagen, nor in other
sources which I have consulted.
130:2 12. give thee sleep.
Dormificabo R., which must be preferred, I think, to glorificabo
of AP.
130:3 the earth [of Egypt].
The word Aegypti is certainly intrusive, written mechanically after
excitabo te, etc., de terra.
131:1 Lit.: Here is
honey, a great summit.
131:2 15. The corrupt words istic
mel apex magnus I emend into stigma et apex manus, cf. 4 Esdr. 4:48-50;
6:9, 6:10. The fulness of a moment: momenti plenitudo. Perhaps this renders
ρηοπῆσ πλήρωμα, that which fills the scale of the balance and causes it to sink.
131:3 four and a half have passed
and two and a half remain (cf. 4 Esdr. 14:11). The total, seven, agrees
with that in the Vision of Kenaz (XXVI I 1. 8), "men shall dwell in the world
VII. (i.e. 7000) years." The calculation in the present passage ought
to mean that 4500 years are past and 2500 remain: but no other authority seems
to place the death of Moses so late as AM. 4500. The Assumption of Moses
puts it in 2500, the Hebrew in 2706, the LXX in 3859, Jubilees in 2450.
There is a certain plausibility in the following view: 4 stands for 45,
and 2 for 25: the 45 and 25 consist of weeks of years. Then 45 = 3150, and
25 = 1750: total 4900, or 7 X 700, a good mystical number. Only it disagrees
with the 7000 of XXVIII. 8. With that passage in view, I think we must take
it that 4 = 4500, and 2 2500, the unit being 100 years.
The Assumption of Moses (10:11) says that from the death of Moses
"to the advent of Messiah there will be 250 times," which is superficially like
2. The "times" here are commonly taken to mean weeks of years, making 1750.
But if we could take each "time" to be ten years, then 250
times would
be 2500 years or fifty jubilees, and we should only have to alter
bis millesimus et quingentesimus (I:2) to quater (IIII.)
millesimus, etc., to bring it into exact agreement with Philo!
Perhaps this method of dealing with authorities may find more favour with others
than it does with me.
I think it quite possible that the unexplained verse in Apoc. Bar.
28:2, "and the measure and reckoning of that time are two parts weeks (or two
parts a week), of seven weeks" may contain the same calculation, the week being
1000 years, and "two parts a week" being corrupt for 2 weeks. But if so we
should have to assume that the writer of Apoc. Bar. had not allowed for
the difference in date between Moses and Baruch--some 850 years. I do not think
that such an inadvertence is quite out of the question.
Another possibility is that our author, in making his calculation, has in
mind not so much the date of Moses, as that at which he is himself writing.
Taking the texts as they stand, the calculation, and the whole account of
the death of Moses, show that Philo quite disregards the Assumption,
though he may very likely have read it. When I came across the passage as a
separate extract in a MS. and published it, in 1893, I spent much space in trying
to prove that it was actually part of the Assumption. The view neither
was nor deserved to be accepted.
