Scriptural Savant

Assumption of Moses 3

Related ancient text — scholarly reference

Extra-canonical text — not LDS scripture and not in the KJV Apocrypha. Provided as scholarly reference for parallel literature of the Second Temple period and the early Christian era. Read with discernment; the Apostle Jude quotes 1 Enoch and Paul knew this material, but inclusion here is for study, not doctrine.

1And in those days a king from the east shall come against them and his cavalry shall cover their land.

2And he shall burn their colony with fire together with the holy temple of the Lord, and he shall carry away all the holy vessels.

3And he shall cast forth all the people, and he shall take them to the land of his nativity, yea he shall take the two tribes with him.

4Then the two tribes shall call upon the ten tribes, and shall march as a lioness on the dusty plains, being hungry and thirsty.

5And they shall cry aloud: 'Righteous and holy is the Lord, for, inasmuch as ye have sinned, we too, in like manner, have been carried away with you, together with our children.' Then the ten tribes shall mourn on hearing the reproaches of the two tribes, and they shall say: 'What have we done unto you, brethren?

6Has not this tribulation come on all the house of Israel?' And all the tribes shall mourn, crying unto heaven and saying: 'God of Abraham God of Isaac and God of Jacob, remember Thy covenant which You made with them, and the oath which You didst swear unto them by Yourself, that their seed should never fail from the land which You hast given them.' Then they shall remember me, saying, in that day, tribe unto tribe and each man unto his neighbor: 'Is not this that which Moses did then declare unto us in prophecies, who suffered many things in Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness during forty years: and assuredly called heaven and earth to witness against us, that we should not transgress His commandments, in the which he was a mediator unto us?

7Behold these things have befallen us after his death according to his declaration, as he declared to us at that time, yes, behold these have taken place even to our being carried away captive into the country of the east.' Who shall be also in bondage for about seventy and seven years.

Public-domain text (R.H. Charles 1913 and equivalents). These works are not canonical, but several were widely read in antiquity and one (1 Enoch) is quoted by name in Jude 1:14–15. Useful for understanding the doctrinal landscape from which the apostles and earliest saints taught.