Taxo's Martyrdom and the Role of the Nuntius in the Testament of Moses: Implications for Understanding the Role of Other Intermediary Figures

(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) The Testament of Moses, also known as the Assumption of Moses, is a pseudepigraphon that contains Moses's farewell discourse to his successor, Joshua. In this document, Moses predicts a series of historical events from the conquest of Canaan to the partial destruction of the temple during the reign of Herod the Great's sons (T. Mos. 1-6). Moses tells Joshua that a Levite named Taxo will appear at this time of persecution and say to his seven sons, "let us go into a cave which is in the open country, and let us die rather than transgress the commandments of the Lord of Lords, the God of our fathers, for if we do this and die, our blood will be avenged before the Lord" (T. Mos. 9:6-7). In the remainder of the work, Moses describes the eschaton and the arrival of God's "messenger," the nuntius, who will punish the wicked (T. Mos. 10-12). The relationship between Taxo's martyrdom and the nuntius continues to be the most debated topic among scholars seeking to understand the Testament of Moses's date of composition as well as its philosophy of noble death. The purpose of this study is to present a new scenario for understanding Taxo's martyrdom and his relationship with the nuntius. In the first section I examine previous scholarship on the Testament of Moses, while the second part offers a proposal for dating the Testament to the Herodian period. This is followed by an examination of how the writer of the Testament of Moses, like the authors of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has combined traditions from Deuteronomy 31-34 and Numbers 25 to portray his current situation in the Herodian era as a modern-day wilderness experience to accentuate the vulnerability of Israel and to emphasize the importance of strict adherence to the words of Moses. In the fourth section I explore the identity and function of the nuntius. The Testament of Moses, once it is properly dated to the Herodian period, emerges as a valuable, yet largely neglected, source for understanding the role of other intermediary figures of the Second Temple period. I. CRITIQUE AND ANALYSIS OF SCHOLARSHIP ON THE TESTAMENT OF MOSES The Testament of Moses is a prophecy attributed to Moses that survives in a single, incomplete, partly illegible sixth-century C.E. Latin palimpsest in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan, Italy.1 This Latin copy was apparently translated from a Greek edition, which was most likely based on a Semitic original.2 The references to the work in ancient lists of apocryphal books, which mention both a Testament of Moses and an Assumption of Moses, suggest that it circulated widely during the early Christian era.3 Based on the Christian references to the Testament of Moses, including a possible quotation from a lost portion of the text in Jude 9, it is very likely that it once contained an account of Moses's assumption to heaven and possibly a dispute between Michael and the devil over the final disposition of his body.4 Because the extant version of the Testament of Moses contains Moses's final instructions to his successor, Joshua, it is generally classified as a testament.5 Since the Testament largely imitates Deuteronomy (T. Mos. 1:5), it is perhaps best to view this work as belonging to the genre of literature commonly referred to as "rewritten Bible," which is a type of literature that generally contains a narrative that follows Scripture and also includes substantial amounts of supplements and interpretative discussions.6 This designation of the work accurately describes the content of the Testament of Moses, since it is largely a rewritten version of the historical material found in Deuteronomy 31-34, where Moses recounts Israel's past and future history in his final charge to Joshua.7 The author of the Testament likely chose to base his composition primarily on Deuteronomy because he believed that Moses had predicted the recent burning of the temple (T. …