bringing the soul, and Sammael failed to obtain it. "And Moses prayed, Lord of the world, give not my soul over to the angel of death. And there came a voice from heaven, Fear not, Moses; I will provide for thy burial. And Moses stood up and sanctified himself as do the Seraphim, and the Most High came down from heaven, and the three chief angels with Him. Michael prepared the bier, and Gabriel spread out the winding-sheet.... And the Most High kissed him, and through that kiss took his soul to Himself" (Plumptre _in loco_). These legends bring us a little nearer to the illustration used by St. Jude, for they bring Michael and the evil spirit into connexion with what is related respecting the death and burial of Moses. But the contest between Michael and Satan respecting the body is not there. Origen tells us that this comes from an apocryphal book called _The Assumption_ or _The Ascension_ (ἀνάληψις or ἀνάβασις) _of Moses_: "In Genesis the serpent is described as having seduced Eve, regarding whom, in _The Assumption of Moses_ (a little treatise of which the Apostle Jude makes mention in his Epistle), the archangel Michael, when disputing with the devil regarding the body of Moses, says that the serpent, being inspired by the devil, was the cause of the transgression of Adam and Eve" (_De Princip._ III. ii. _sub init._). The book was fairly well known in the early Church. Clement of Alexandria quotes it (_Strom._ VI. xv. _sub fin._); and in the Latin translation of the _Hypotyposeis_ his note on Jude 9 is "_Hic confirmat Assumptionem Moysis_." Didymus of Alexandria says the same as Origen about St. Jude's use of it, and censures those who made this an objection to the Epistle of Jude (_In Epist. Judæ enarratio in Gallandi Biblioth. Patr._ VI. 307). Evodius, Bishop of Uzala, one of Augustine's early friends (_Confess._ IX. viii. 17; xii. 31), in writing to him, speaks of it as the _Mysteries (Secreta) of Moses_, and calls it a writing devoid of authority (Aug. _Ep._ clviii. 6). It was known in the second half of the fifth century to Gelasius of Cyzicus, and in the second half of the eighth to Nicephorus of Constantinople, who, in his _Stichometria Sacrorum Librorum_, tells us that it was about as long as the Apocalypse of St. John. But from that time we hear no more of it until 1861, when Ceriani published about a third of it from a palimpsest in the Ambrosian Library at Milan (_Monumenta Sacra et Prof._ I. i., p. 55). This fragment contains the passage quoted by Gelasius, but most tantalizingly comes to an end before the death of Moses, so that we are still without the passage about the contest between Michael and the devil respecting his body. Nevertheless, we have no reason for doubting the statements of Origen and of Didymus that the book contained this incident, and that this is the source of the illustration used by St. Jude. Such evidence as we have confirms the statements, and there is no evidence on the other side.