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: 4½ stands for 45, and 2½ 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 4½ = 4500, and 2½ 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 2½. 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 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.