[1] The text is thought to have been originally written in Hebrew or another Semitic language, and then translated to Koine Greek.
From references in ancient works, it is thought that the missing text may have depicted a dispute over the body of Moses, between the archangel Michael and Satan.
The Assumption of Moses is known from a single sixth-century incomplete manuscript in Latin that was discovered by Antonio Ceriani in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan in the mid-nineteenth century and published by him in 1861.
[5][6] The text is in twelve chapters: Due to the vaticinia ex eventu, most scholars date the work to the early 1st century AD, contemporary with the latest historical figures it describes.
[9] Other scholars[10] date the work to the previous century and suggest that the 1st-century references in Chapters 6 and 10 were later insertions.