Gog and Magog

This article is about the Biblical and Qur'anic figures. For the giant of British folklore, see Gogmagog (folklore). For the range of hills in Cambridgeshire, see Gog Magog Downs. For other uses, see Gog (disambiguation) and Magog (disambiguation).
Dhul-Qarnayn with the help of some jinn, building the Iron Wall to keep the barbarian Gog and Magog from civilized peoples. (16th century Persian miniature)

Gog and Magog (/ɡɒɡ/; /ˈmeɪɡɒɡ/; Hebrew: גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג Gog u-Magog, Arabic: يأجوج ومأجوج‎ Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj) are names that appear in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), notably Ezekiel, and the Book of Revelation, sometimes indicating individuals and sometimes lands and peoples. Sometimes, but not always, they are connected with the end times, and the passages from the Book of Ezekiel and Revelation in particular have attracted attention for this reason. From ancient times to the late Middle Ages, Gog and Magog were identified with Eurasian nomads such as the Khazars, Huns and Mongols and were conflated with various other legends concerning Alexander the Great, the Amazons, Red Jews, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and became the subject of much fanciful literature. They appear in the Qur'an as Yajuj and Majuj, and the Muslim world identified them first with Turkic tribes from Central Asia and later with the Mongols. In modern times they remain associated with apocalyptic thinking, especially in the United States and the Muslim world.

The names Gog and Magog

The first mention of the two names occurs in the Book of Ezekiel, where Gog is the name of an individual and Magog the name of his land; in Genesis 10 Magog is a person and no Gog is mentioned, and in Revelation both Gog and Magog appear together as the hostile nations of the world.[1][2] 1 Chronicles 5:4 features a descendant of Reuben who is called Gog or Goug, but this name appears to have no connection with the Gog of Ezekiel and Genesis.[3]

The meaning of the name Gog remains uncertain, and in any case the author of the Ezekiel prophecy seems to attach no particular importance to it; efforts have been made to identify him with various individuals, notably Gyges, a king of Lydia in the early 7th century, but many scholars do not believe he is related to any historical person.[4] The name Magog is equally obscure, but may come from the Assyrian mat-Gugu, "Land of Gyges", i.e., Lydia.[5] Alternatively, if Gog is derived from Magog rather than the other way round,"Magog" might refer to Babylon, by turning BBL ("Babylon" in Hebrew script, which originally had no vowel-signs) into MGG (Magog).[6]

Judeo-Christian texts

A mid-12th century Flemish piece of copperwork depicting Ezekiel's Vision of the Sign "Tau" from Ezekiel IX:2–7. The item is currently held by the Walters Museum.

Ezekiel and the Old Testament

The Book of Ezekiel records a series of visions received by the 6th century BC prophet Ezekiel, a priest of the Temple who was enduring exile in Babylon. The exile, he tells his fellow captives, is God's punishment on Israel for turning away, but God will restore his people to Jerusalem when they return to him.[7] After this message of reassurance, chapters 38–39, the Gog oracle, tell how Gog of Magog and his hordes will threaten the restored Israel but will be destroyed, after which God will establish a new Temple and dwell forever with his people (chapters 40–48).[8]

Son of man, direct your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy concerning him. Say: Thus said the Lord: Behold, I am against you, Gog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal ... Persia, Cush and Put will be with you ... also Gomer with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah from the far north with all its troops—the many nations with you.[9]

In all the books of the Old Testament, Gog appears only in these chapters.[10] (The Gog, son of Reuben, in I Chronicles 5:4 is an Israelite, and can hardly be the same as the Gog of Ezekiel).[11] Of Gog's allies, Meshech and Tubal were 7th-century kingdoms in central Anatolia to the north of Israel, Persia is located to Israel's east, and Cush (Ethiopia) and Put (Libya) to the south; Gomer is the Cimmerians, a nomadic people north of the Black Sea, and Beth-Togarmah was on the border of Tubal.[12] The confederation thus represents a world-wide alliance against Israel.[13] "Why the prophet's gaze should have focused on these particular nations is unclear," but possibly their remoteness and reputation for violence and mystery "made Gog and his confederates perfect symbols of the archetypal enemy, rising against God and his people."[14] The theological message of the Gog oracle is that even Gog is under God's will, and its placement before the Utopian future of chapters 40–48 (the restoration of the the Temple and God's eternal presence with his people) emphasises the eschatological character of that event.[15]

Internal evidence indicates that the Gog oracle is substantially later than the chapters around it and was composed between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE.[16] The author has created his list of Gog's allies by blending names from Genesis 10, the "Table of Nations"–Magog, Meshek, Tubal, Cush, Put, and Gomer–with the names of Tyre's trading partners in Ezekiel 27, which includes all these names except Magog, plus Persia–and has decided they are the end-time enemies of Israel by means of Isaiah 66:19, which has several of the names and, like the Gog prophecy, addresses an eschatological future.[17]

Gog and Magog from Ezekiel to Revelation

Over the next few centuries Jewish tradition changed Ezekiel's Gog from Magog into Gog and Magog.[18] The process, and the shifting geography of Gog and Magog, can be traced through the literature of the period. The 3rd book of the Sibylline Oracles, for example, which originated in Egyptian Judaism in the middle of the 2nd century BCE,[19] changes Ezekiel's "Gog from Magog" to "Gog and Magog," links their fate with up to eleven other nations, and places them "in the midst of Aethiopian rivers"; this seems a strange location, but ancient geography did sometimes place Ethiopia next to Persia or even India.[20] The passage has a highly uncertain text, with manuscripts varying in their groupings of the letters of the Greek text into words, leading to different readings; one group of manuscripts ("group Y") links them with the "Marsians and Dacians", in eastern Europe, amongst others.[21]

The Book of Jubilees, from about the same time, makes three references to either Gog or Magog: in the first, Magog is a descendant of Noah, as in Genesis 10; in the second, Gog is a region next to Japheth's borders; and in the third, a portion of Japtheth's land is assigned to Magog.[22] The Book of Enoch, another intertestamental work, tells how God stirs up the Medes and Parthians (instead of Gog and Magog) to attack Jerusalem, where they are destroyed.[23] The 1st-century Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, which retells Biblical history from the Adam to Saul, is notable for listing and naming seven of Magog's sons, and mentions his "thousands" of descendants.[24] The Samaritan Torah and the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made during the last few centuries of the pre-Christian era) occasionally introduce the name of Gog where the Hebrew original has something else, or use Magog where the Hebrew has Gog, indicating that the names were interchangeable.[25]

Chapters 19:11–21:8 of the Book of Revelation, dating from the end of the 1st century CE,[26] tells how Satan is to be imprisoned for a thousand years, and how, on his release, he will rally "the nations in the four corners of the Earth, Gog and Magog," to a final battle with Christ and his saints:[2]

When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore.[27]

Judeo-Christian tradition from antiquity to the early modern period

The Caspian Gates in Derbent, Russia, often identified with the Gates of Alexander

By the 1st century Jewish circles had identified Gog and Magog with the Scythians, horse-riding barbarians from around the Don and the Sea of Azov, who were supposed to have been locked up by Alexander the Great behind iron gates in the "Caspian Mountains", generally identified with the Caucasus Mountains. This story can be traced in a fragmentary form in the works of the 1st century Jewish historian Josephus, and was vastly elaborated in later versions such as the Alexander Romance and the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius.[28]

After the failure of the anti-Roman Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century AD which looked to a human leader as the promised messiah, Jews began to conceive of the messianic age in supernatural terms: first would come a forerunner, the messiah of Joseph, who would defeat Israel's enemies, identified as Gog and Magog, to prepare the way for the messiah of David; then the dead would rise, divine judgement would be handed out, and the righteous would be rewarded.[29] The aggadah, homiletic and non-legalistic exegetical texts in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism, treat Gog and Magog as two names for the same nation who will come against Israel in the final war.[30] The rabbis associated no specific nation or territory with them beyond a location to the north of Israel,[31] but the great Jewish scholar Rashi identified the Christians as their allies and said God would thwart their plan to kill all Israel.[32] Much later, in the early 19th century, some Chasidic rabbis identified Napoleon's invasion of Russia as "The War of Gog and Magog."[33]

Early Christian writers (e.g. Eusebius) frequently identified Gog and Magog with the Romans and their emperor.[34] After the Empire became Christian, Ambrose (d.397) identified Gog with the Goths, Jerome (d.420) with the Scythians, and Jordanes (died c.555) said that Goths, Scythians and Amazons were all the same; he also cited Alexander's gates in the Caucasus.[35] (The idea that Gog and Magog were connected with the Goths was longstanding; in the mid-16th century, Archbishop of Uppsala Johannes Magnus traced the royal family of Sweden back to Magog son of Japheth, via Suenno, progenitor of the Swedes, and Gog, ancestor of the Goths).[36] The Byzantine writer Procopius said it was the Huns Alexander had locked out, and a Western monk named Fredegar seems to have Gog and Magog in mind in his description of savage hordes from beyond Alexander's gates who had assisted the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610–641) against the Saracens.[37]

As one nomadic people followed another on the Eurasian steppes, so the identification of Gog and Magog shifted. In the 9th and 10th centuries these kingdoms were identified by some with the lands of the Khazars, a Turkic people who had converted to Judaism and whose empire dominated Central Asia–the 9th-century monk Christian of Stavelot referred to Gazari, said of the Khazars that they were "living in the lands of Gog and Magog" and noted that they were "circumcised and observing all [the laws of] Judaism".[38] Arab traveler ibn Fadlan also reported of this belief, writing around 921 he recorded that "Some hold the opinion that Gog and Magog are the Khazars."[39] According to the famous Khazar Correspondence (c. 960), King Joseph of Khazaria claimed that his people were the descendants of "Kozar", the seventh son of Togarmah.[40]

Some time before the 12th century the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel became identified with Gog and Magog.[41] The Franciscan traveller William of Rubruck reported that he had seen Alexander's wall in Derbent on the shores of the Caspian Sea in 1254, and that there were other walls holding back Jews that he been unable to visit; William shared his information with Roger Bacon, who urged the study of geography to discover where the Antichrist and Gog and Magog might be found.[42]

After the Khazars came the Mongols, seen as a mysterious and invincible horde from the east who destroyed Muslim empires and kingdoms in the early 13th century; kings and popes took them for the legendary Prester John, marching to save Christians from the Saracens, but when they entered Poland and Hungary and annihilated Christian armies a terrified Europe concluded that they were "Magogoli", the offspring of Gog and Magog, released from the prison Alexander had constructed for them and heralding Armageddon.[43] As traveler and Friar Riccoldo da Monte di Croce put it in ca. 1291, "They say themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog: and on this account they are called Mogoli, as if from a corruption of Magogoli." Marco Polo traveled in the Mongol empire when the initial terror had subsided: he places Gog and Magog among the Tartars in Tenduc, but then claims that the names Gog and Magog are translations of the place-names Ung and Mungul, inhabited by the Ung and Mongols respectively.[44][45] Some accounts and maps began to place the "Caspian Mountains", and Gog and Magog, just outside the Great Wall of China. The Tartar Relation, an obscure account of Friar Carpini's 1240s journey to Mongolia, is unique in alleging that these Caspian Mountains in Mongolia, "where the Jews called Gog and Magog by their fellow countrymen are said to have been shut in by Alexander", were moreover purported by the Tartars to be magnetic, causing all iron equipment and weapons to fly off toward the mountains on approach.[46]

The author of the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a 14th-century best-seller, said he had found these Jews in Central Asia where as Gog and Magog they had been imprisoned by Alexander, plotting to escape and join with the Jews of Europe to destroy Christians.[47]

Gog and Magog in Muslim tradition

The Monster of Gog and Magog, by Zakariya al-Qazwini (1203–1283).

The conflation of Gog and Magog with the legend of Alexander and the Iron Gates was disseminated throughout the Near East in the early centuries of the Christian era.[48] In Islam, Alexander probably lies behind the figure of Dhul-Qarnayn, "the two-horned one", mentioned in Surah 18 of the Qu'ran.[49] Dhul-Qarnayn (Alexander), having journeyed to the ends of the world, meets "a people who scarcely understood a word" who seek his help in building a barrier that will separate them from the people of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog), who "do great mischief on earth". He agrees to build it for them, but warns that when the time comes (Last Age), Allah will remove the barrier and Yajuj and Majuj will swarm through.[50]

The early Muslim traditions were summarised by al-Qazwini (d. 1283) in two popular works called the Cosmography and the Geography. Gog and Magog, he says, live near to the sea that encircles the Earth and can be counted only by God; they are only half the height of a normal man, with claws instead of nails and a hairy tail and huge hairy ears which they use as mattress and cover for sleeping.[51] They scratch at their wall each day until they almost break through, and each night God restores it, but when they do break through they will be so numerous that "their vanguard is in Syria and their rear in Khorasan."[52]

When Yajuj and Majuj were identified with real peoples it was the Turks, who threatened Baghdad and northern Iran;[53] later, when the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258, it was they who were Gog and Magog.[54] The wall dividing them from civilised peoples was normally placed towards Armenia and Azerbaijan, but in the year 842 the Caliph Al-Wathiq had a dream in which he saw that it had been breached, and sent an official named Sallam to investigate.[55] Sallam returned a little over two years later and reported that he had seen the wall and also the tower where Dhul Qarnayn had left his building equipment, and all was still intact.[56] It is not entirely clear what Sallam saw, but he may have reached the Jade Gate, the westernmost customs point on the border of China.[57] Somewhat later the 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta reported that the wall was sixty days' travel from the city of Zeitun, which is on the coast of China; the translator notes that Ibn Battuta has confused the Great Wall of China with that built by Dhul-Qarnayn.[58]

Modern apocalypticism

In Europe expectations of the end-times have receded with the advance of a secular worldview during the 19th century.[59] This has not been the case in the U.S., where a 2002 poll indicated that 59% of Americans believed the events predicted in the Book of Revelation would come to pass.[60] During the Cold War the idea that Russia had the role of Gog gained popularity, since Ezekiel's words describing him as "prince of Meshek"—rosh meshek in Hebrew—sounded suspiciously like Russia and Moscow.[7] Even some Russians took up the idea, apparently unconcerned by the implications ("Ancestors were found in the Bible, and that was enough"),[61] as did Ronald Reagan.[62]

Post Cold War-millenarians still identify Gog with Russia, but they now tend to stress its allies among Islamic nations, especially Iran.[63] For the most fervent, the countdown to Armageddon began with the return of the Jews to Israel, followed quickly by further signs pointing to the nearness of the final battle–nuclear weapons, European integration, Israel's seizure of Jerusalem, and America's wars in Afghanistan and the Gulf.[64] In the prelude to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush allegedly told Jacques Chirac that Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East: "This confrontation is willed by God," he told the French leader, "who wants us to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."[65] Chirac consulted a professor at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) to explain Bush's reference.[66]

In the Islamic apocalyptic tradition the end of the world would be preceded by the release of Gog and Magog, whose destruction by God in a single night would usher in the Day of Resurrection.[67] Reinterpretation did not generally continue after Classical times, but the needs of the modern world have produced a new body of apocalyptic literature in which Gog and Magog are identified as the Jews and Israel, or the Ten Lost Tribes, or sometimes as Communist Russia and China.[68] One problem these writers have had to confront is the barrier holding Gog and Magog back, which is not to be found in the modern world: the answer varies, some writers saying that Gog and Magog were the Mongols and that the wall is now gone, others that both the wall and Gog and Magog are invisible.[69]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Bøe 2001, p. 89–90.
  2. 1 2 Mounce 1998, p. 372.
  3. ↑ Bøe 2001, p. 1.
  4. ↑ Lust 1999b, p. 373–374.
  5. ↑ Gmirkin 2006, p. 148.
  6. ↑ Lust 1999a, p. 536.
  7. 1 2 Blenkinsopp 1996, p. 178.
  8. ↑ Bullock 1986, p. 301.
  9. ↑ Ezekiel 38
  10. ↑ Block 1998, p. 432.
  11. ↑ Tooman 2011, p. 140.
  12. ↑ Block 1998, p. 72–73,439–440.
  13. ↑ Hays, Duvall & Pate 2009, p. no pagination.
  14. ↑ Block 1998, p. 436.
  15. ↑ Petersen 2002, p. 158.
  16. ↑ Tooman 2011, p. 271.
  17. ↑ Tooman 2011, p. 147–148.
  18. ↑ Boring 1989, p. 209.
  19. ↑ Wardle 2010, p. 89.
  20. ↑ Bøe 2001, p. 142–144.
  21. ↑ Bøe 2001, p. 145–146.
  22. ↑ Bøe 2001, p. 153.
  23. ↑ Bøe 2001, p. 178.
  24. ↑ Bøe 2001, p. 186–189.
  25. ↑ Lust 1999a, p. 536–537.
  26. ↑ Stuckenbruck 2003, p. 1535–1536.
  27. ↑ Revelation 20:7–10
  28. ↑ Bietenholz 1994, p. 122–125.
  29. ↑ Schreiber, Schiff & Klenicki 2003, p. 180.
  30. ↑ Skolnik & Berenbaum 2007, p. 684.
  31. ↑ Mikraot Gedolot HaMeor p.400
  32. ↑ Grossman 2012, p. 54.
  33. ↑ Wessels 2013, p. 205.
  34. ↑ Lust 1999b, p. 375.
  35. ↑ Bietenholz 1994, p. 125.
  36. ↑ Derry 1979, p. 129 (fn).
  37. ↑ Bietenholz 1994, p. 125–126.
  38. ↑ Brook 2006, p. 7–8,96.
  39. ↑ Brook 2006, p. 8.
  40. ↑ Brook 2006, p. 9.
  41. ↑ Gow 1995, p. 23–24.
  42. ↑ Westrem 1998, p. 66.
  43. ↑ Marshall 1993, p. 12,120–122,144.
  44. ↑ Strickland 2008, p. 38.
  45. ↑ s:The Travels of Marco Polo/Book 1/Chapter 59
  46. ↑ The Tartar Relation edited by George D. Painter, Yale University 1965, p. 64–65
  47. ↑ Westrem 1998, p. 68–69.
  48. ↑ Bietenholz 1994, p. 123.
  49. ↑ Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 57 and fn.3.
  50. ↑ Hughes 1895, p. 148.
  51. ↑ Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 65–68.
  52. ↑ Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 74.
  53. ↑ Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 82–84.
  54. ↑ Filiu 2011, p. 30.
  55. ↑ Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. xvii-xviii,82.
  56. ↑ Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. xvii-xviii,244.
  57. ↑ Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. xvii-xviii.
  58. ↑ Gibb & Beckingham 1994, p. 896 and footnote 30.
  59. ↑ Kyle 2012, p. 34–35.
  60. ↑ Filiu 2011, p. 196.
  61. ↑ Marsh 2011, p. 254.
  62. ↑ Boyer 1992, p. 162.
  63. ↑ Kyle 2012, p. 171.
  64. ↑ Kyle 2012, p. 4.
  65. ↑ Block 2012, p. 151.
  66. ↑ Wessels 2013, p. 193, footnote 6.
  67. ↑ Cook 2005, p. 8,10.
  68. ↑ Cook 2005, p. 12,47,206.
  69. ↑ Cook 2005, p. 205–206.

Bibliography

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