Annotatio LXI

”But Adam knew his wife, and she bore Cain.” — Genesis 4:1

Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in the first book On Cain and Abel, chapter 2,¹ treating this passage, incidentally fell upon the exposition of a period from Deuteronomy: in which, according to the Septuagint edition, it is read, “AND MOSES died διὰ ῥήματος (dia rhēmatos)” — that is, “by the word of God,” etc.² On the occasion of which word he asserted that Moses was not yet dead, but translated to a better life, like Elijah. For what Scripture said — that Moses died — he wished to be understood not of the destruction which happens through the separation of the soul from the body, but of the translation to a happy and blessed life. For thus he wrote: “We do not read of Moses, as of the rest, that failing he died; but that he died by the word of God. For God admits neither defect nor addition; whence Scripture also added that no one knows his burial — so that you may understand [it] rather of a translation than of a destruction. For death is a certain separation of soul and body. He died, therefore, by the word of God, says Scripture — not according to the word: that you may note [it was] not a message of death, but the gift of grace expressed; [he] who was translated rather than forsaken, whose burial no one has known. For who could detect anything among his earthly remains — [him] whom the Son of God, in the Gospel, showed to be with him? Finally, Elijah too was seen at the same time by certain persons — [he] who was translated in a chariot, and is read [to have been] neither buried nor dead: for he lives who is with the Son of God. But Moses indeed is read [to have] died, yet he died by the word of God, through which all things were made; through the word of God, therefore, he is not a falling-away of the work, but a firmament [support]. Not, therefore, as one fallen back into the earth is he detected by a dissolution of the body, but as one endowed, by the operation of the heavenly word, with a gift: so that his flesh received rest rather than a tomb.” These things Ambrose [says]: to whom Hilary of Poitiers assents,³ in canon 20 on Matthew, where these things are written:⁴ “The Lord, having taken Peter, and James, and John, appeared with the habit of his glory on the mountain, [Moses and Elijah] accompanying [him]; and these same two we understand [to be] the two Prophets preceding his coming, whom the Apocalypse of John says are to be slain by Antichrist⁵ — although the opinions of very many have arisen variously, whether concerning Enoch or concerning Jeremiah, [as to] whether one of them, like Elijah, must die: but we cannot corrupt the assurance of the truth — which the Lord revealed by the three witnesses above — by the opinion of our own perception, nor think that others are to come than those who were seen to have come for the pledge of the faith. And although it is not necessary to hold an opinion beyond the evangelical truth, yet, if anyone diligently considers the condition both of the death and of the sepulchre of Moses, he will understand that all things were so handled that Moses could [now] seem to be already dead.” This opinion have followed, in our times, Ambrose [Catharinus], Bishop of Compsa, in the commentaries on Genesis, and John Arboreus [Jean Arboreau], in the eleventh book of the Theosophia — though the truth of the Hebrew Scripture, and almost all the ecclesiastical writers, cry out against [it]. See Annotation 59 of this book, and Annotation 91 of Book 6.