All deny [it], and deservedly. For in the same Deut. ch. 34, v. 6, we read: “No man has known his
(col. 246)
sepulchre” (Moses’s) “even to the present day.” But someone of men would have known [it], had Joshua been present at the burial. Yet these [objections] can be raised. 1. In the 70 [LXX], in the same place, it is read thus: ἐτελεύτησε Μωϋσῆς, καὶ ἔθαψαν αὐτὸν ἐν [γᾷ] [etleutēse Mōusēs… “Moses died, and they buried him in the valley”]. Who, pray, buried [him]? Were they not men? And was not Joshua present with them, above all? But as for what we read in the Hebrew and Latin, “And He buried him,” we can refer [it] not to GOD, but to a man. For such nominatives are often so understood among the Hebrews. 2. In a certain most ancient manuscript codex of St. Ephrem, which is at Rome, these [words] are read: “Jesus [Joshua] buried Moses” — as [Vossius] attests, in the sermon of the same St. Ephrem On the Transfiguration (Vossius, vol. 3, f. 192, 3). How could it be so distinctly known that he [was] buried in the valley of Mount Nebo, and not elsewhere — if [it were] not in a far-off region (because in the lot of Gad, ch. 33, he was signified [as] to be buried) — at least buried also, in another manner, in another place of the same Moabite region, in that part of the valley which is over against the shrine of Phogor [Peor], or, as in the 70 it is said, “near to it” — unless some men had been present and had seen [it]? And even if some saw [it], [was it] not with — and before all others — Joshua? Of all these [objections], from the questions handed down about Moses’s burial (at that place of Deuteronomy, and in the Epistle of St. Jude), the solution is clear. Now briefly:
To the first: Angels buried Moses, by God’s command — as St. Epiphanius says (heresy 9).
To the second: He who is said to have buried Moses, “Jesus,” was not this our typical Jesus [Joshua], but the true [Jesus, Christ]. For in the same place is subjoined: “He called, and led forth Elijah, He the Lord of all.” But He is said to have buried [him] because [Moses] was buried by His command, as of God (as already said); or because — as will be said [on] Joshua ch. 5 — there were some by whom “Jesus” is called Michael. But in the Epistle of St. Jude, v. 9, Michael buried Moses. Since, however, I scarcely assent to these, it is enough [that] Moses was laid to rest and interred, by our Christ’s command, by Michael and other inferior Angels.
To the [third]: [that] the writer of this narrative knew it prophetically, Abulensis says. But Cajetan says [that], with all who were present at Moses dying looking on, his body [was] carried into the valley by the Angels, and then — a certain cloud being spread, lest the place of the sepulchre be distinctly seen — [he] was buried there. But Isaac ben Arama [Harama] writes (in gate 105, f. 272, col. 3) [that], when Moses was dead, our Joshua wept, tore [his] garments, mourned, and said: “Abbi, Abbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, Abbi she-giddaltani min-neʿurai, Rabbi she-limmadtani torah” [אבי אבי רבי רבי, אבי שגדלתני מנעורי, רבי שלמדתני תורה], that is, “My Father, my Father, my Master, my Master, my Master, who didst rear me from my youth, who didst teach me the Law” — namely, as Elisha [did] nearly [so] to Elijah (2 Kings [4 Reg.] ch. 2). But the commentary Rabbah, cited in the superior question (f. 303b), says [that] Joshua sought his Master, and said that [verse] from Psalm 11[:2]: “Save me, O Lord, for the holy one has failed; for truths are diminished from among the sons of men.”