ASSUMPTIO MOSIS and the Hadrianic Persecutions: A New Argument for an Old Dating

• In Event: The Bible and Second Temple Literature

Abstract

Apocalypses and eschatological visions are shrouded in mystery and difficult to interpret. The authors speak in code and are often vague about what exactly they are describing or predicting. The eschatological prediction found in ASSUMPTIO MOSIS is no different. Set in the narrative context of Moses’ final speech to Joshua—a narrative frame which I have argued elsewhere once existed independently of the apocalypse—Moses hands Joshua a scroll describing Israel’s future until the end of days. The scroll is filled with enigmatic references to wicked kings and corrupt Jews. The work describes the final days before redemption as a period of tremendous persecution and suffering. A number of attempts to discern the referents for many of the characters in the eschatological prediction have been attempted, some more convincing than others. In this paper, I will offer an interpretation of the overall flow of history according to the author of ASSUMPTIO MOSIS and suggest an understanding of what the key events are in the author’s historical overview. I will argue that the author of this vision wrote during the persecution described in the eschatological prediction, and he imagined that the terrible period through which he was living could be nothing less than the final persecution before the end of days. Most significantly, I will try to defend the possibility, once suggested by Solomon Zeitlin, that the persecution in question was none other than the Hadrianic persecutions in the wake of the failed Bar Kochba rebellion.

author

• Zev Israel Farber