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Q-man
Posts:2
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Posted:11/02/2006 7:02 AM |
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I am wondering about a passage in the bible concerning the dispute of Moses body after his death between Micheal (angel) and Satan. Why was there a dispute?
Your Brother in christ
Henry
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gfike
Posts:242
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Posted:11/10/2006 3:15 PM |
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Hi, Henry.
Sorry so late in replying...
The account you are asking about is in Jude 9: "But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you!'" A parallel to the book of Jude is the book of 2nd Peter, which addresses the main point - that false teachers took for granted the "authority" God allowed Satan to chastise sinners.
The quote is from a pseudepigraphical (Greek for "false writing")text that circulated in the NT era called "The Assumption of Moses." The context of that tale was that Satan wanted to thwart the burial God intended for Moses by accusing Moses of being a murderer. Michael, who was given the task of burying Moses, did not give Satan tit-for-tat, but simply announced that Satan would have to "take it up with God."
The Assumption of Moses was not regarded as divinely-inspired, as with many books we have heard about in the aftermath of the DaVinci Code. But then why was it quoted? Probably because it was a familiar tradition - one of several stories that arose after the Biblical vision of Zechariah 3 - where Satan is pictured as the "prosecuting attorney" accusing God's servants. It is one of few quotes found in the Bible of non-Biblical sources. The most familiar of these is in Acts 17:28 - "'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'" Here Paul is quoting Greek classical poets of the day, but this by no means implies that their writings were divinely inspired in the same league as the Bible. "All truth is God's truth." But we know it can be mixed with error. That's why cults gain followers.
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