Why was there a dispute about the body of Moses? And how did this dispute arise, if it happened? What (if anything) is known about this? //

A:

Origen claims that the Letter of Jude picked up the story of Michael and the devil arguing over the body of Moses from a Jewish text called the Ascension of Moses. //

References to this apocryphal story are found in early Christian literature.

The text we have which is titled the Ascension of Moses, however, does not contain this particular event. It may be that our text is missing the section containing the story of the dispute over Moses' body, or we may have misidentified which text we have.

Richard Bauckham, arguing that the various references to the story are independent of the Letter of Jude, attempts to reconstruct the story's key points... //

Joshua accompanied Moses up Mount Nebo, where God showed Moses the land of promise. Moses then sent Joshua back to the people to inform them of Moses' death, and Moses died. God sent the archangel Michael to remove the body of Moses to another place and bury it there, but Samma'el, the devil, opposed him, disputing Moses' right to honorable burial. The text may also have said that he wished to take the body to the people for them to make it an object of worship. Michael and the devil therefore engaged in a dispute over the body. The devil brought against Moses a charge of murder, because he smote the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. But this accusation was no better than slander (βλασφημία) against Moses, and Michael not tolerating this slander, said to the devil, "May the Lord rebuke you, devil!" At that the devil took flight, and Michael removed the body to the place commanded by God, where he buried it with his own hands. Thus no one saw the burial of Moses.

The base form of the story seems influenced by Zechariah 3.