Before moving forward we should clear up a few disclaimers. First off — and no disrespect meant to believers — we only have religious texts to go on when talking about Moses. There isn’t any historical evidence that anyone named Moses actually existed. He’s more of a mythical figure who plays a function in the Old Testament plot and whose story mirrors earlier “folk memor[ies]” of peoples in the Levant, as The Washington Post quotes archaeologist Cyprian Broodbank. So when this article talks about what happened to Moses’ body, we’re talking about what Bible stories say about what happened to Moses’ body. Also, when Jude talks about “the devil,” bear in mind that “diabolos” — the Greek that gives us our word “devil” — is a common noun meaning “slanderer” and not a specific, hellish entity that any of us moderns would likely envision after centuries of accumulated art and stories.
Bearing all of that in mind, we’ve got what the aforementioned Bible verses describe happening to Moses’ body after he died. Like we said and which Deuteronomy 34 attests, we at least know that his body was apparently buried and not cremated, torn apart in battle, lost at sea, or something else. In fact, depending on the translation, the passage in Deuteronomy says that God Himself buried Moses — “He buried him,” with “He” being “the Lord” and “him” being Moses. As for where – the biblical “Moab” refers to the modern nation of Jordan east of the Dead Sea.
