#3 Enoch and Moses Assumed Assumption

There are two cases of possible assumptions in the Old Testament.  The first was of a man who disappeared and the second of burial in a grave that was never found.

Enoch

Enoch was the great grandfather of Noah.  He was a prophet who walked with God.  He is the first example of someone assumed into heaven.  In the case of Enoch it is not stated that he died before being taken up.

Genesis 5

²¹ When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. ²² After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. ²³ Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. ²⁴ Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Hebrews 11:5

“By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away,  for before he was taken, he was commmended as one who pleased God.”

Jude 14 is another reference to Enoch in the New Testament.  Enoch who lived in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied about the judgment of ungoldly men.

Moses

There is a tradition that Moses was assumed into heaven.  There is no tomb for Moses.  Deuteronomy 34 records the death of Moses as follows:

¹Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land—

⁵ And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. ⁶ He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. ⁷ Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone. 

Belief in the assumption of Moses is alluded to in the New Testament in Jude 9:

⁹ But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

It is said that the letter writer Jude was referring to a pseudepigrapha book called The Assumption of Moses or Testament of Moses written in the 1^st century AD.  However, this writing does not say anything about the assumption of Moses after he died, although a good part of the text is missing.  The key thing is that after burial in a cave, the cave and the body were never found again.

Ezra

Some Jews saw Ezra as the new Moses and claimed he was assumed into heaven at the end of his life.  Ezra lived at the time of the return from exile in Babylon and was the priest and prophet who set up Second Temple Judaism.  The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius  wrote that when Ezra died there was a big funeral and he was buried at Jerusalem.  There is no evidence of any assumption for Ezra.

When I googled it, I found that there was the assumption that Ezra was the prophet Malachi.  But this is a different meaning of the word assumption.