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 him in thinking (as he does) that the Assumption of Moses also originally contained both elements, of prophecy and romance. The amalgamation of the two, if it took place, must have been effected within a very short space. The prophecy is dated by Dr. Charles in the first century, and the Assumption story was joined with it, as we have seen, before Jude wrote his Epistle.

Dr. Charles asks, reasonably enough: If the title Assumption includes the Latin fragment, what was the Testament? Not the Jubilees; for that is far more than 1100 lines long—probably 4000 or 5000. Well, we cannot go much behind our evidence. The Catena of Nicephorus quotes a piece which occurs in Jubilees and calls its source the Testament. We are reduced, I think, to supposing either that the number of lines in the MSS. of the Stichometry is grossly wrong, or that some excerpt or shortened text of Jubilees was current under the name of the Testament of Moses.

It seems clear that the Jubilees and the Assumption were circulated together. There are two pieces of evidence of this. The Milan palimpsest contains the Latin version of both: the versions of the two works were made, it appears, by different translators; but there they are together. Also Severus of Antioch, as we have seen, says that his source was the Leptogenesis (=Juhilees), but the story he has told relating to the death and burial of Moses and to the contention of Michael with Satan finds no place in Jubilees, whereas it was treated of in the Assumption. My inference is that he or his authority (for his expressions suggest that he is writing at second hand) used a volume in which both Jubilees and the Assumption were contained.

The Latin fragment, it is calculated, contains 384 whole stichoi: the Assumption (entire) had 1400. We appear to possess the whole, or very nearly the whole, of the Prophecy of Moses: the writer has brought his sketch of events down to and beyond his own time. The story of the Assumption might well occupy the 1000 stichoi that remain. But Dr. Charles supposes that the Latin fragment is the Testament (of 1100 stichoi),