Gog and Magog - Identifying Gog and Magog

Identifying Gog and Magog

Separate passages in the "Jewish Antiquities" and "Jewish War" of the 1st century Jewish historian and scholar Josephus show that Jews of that time identified Gog and Magog with the Scythians: Alexander the Great, Josephus said, locked these horse-riding barbarians of the far north behind the Caucasus mountains with iron gates. This gate situates in Georgia over the border of Russia in Caucasus mountains. Georgian kings were mentioned as guards of Gog and Magog gate in variable historical sources, in antique and Medieval.

Some early Christian writers (e.g. Eusebius) identified Gog and Magog with the Romans. After the Roman Empire became Christian this was no longer possible and attention switched to Rome's northern barbarian enemies. Ambrose (d.397) identified them with the Goths, and Isidore of Seville confirmed that people in his day supposed that the Goths were descended from Magog "because of the similarity of the last syllable". 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, (Magnus identified two of Magog's sons as Suenno, progenitor of the Swedes, and Gethar (also known as Gog or Gogus), ancestor of the Goths).

In the 6th century, the Byzantine historian Procopius (d. after 562) saw Attila and the Huns as the nation locked out by Alexander, and a little later other Christian writers identified them with the Saracens. Still later, Gog and Magog became identified with the Khazars, whose empire dominated Central Asia in the 9th and 10th centuries. In his 9th century work Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, the Benedictine monk Christian of Stavelot referred to them as descendants of Gog and Magog, and says they are "Circumcised and observing all Judaism"; the 14th century Sunni scholar Ibn Kathir also identified Gog and Magog with the Khazars, as did a Georgian tradition, which called them "wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of blood". According to the famous Khazar Correspondence (c. 960), King Joseph of Khazaria claimed to be a descendant of Magog's nephew Togarmah.

The Mongols were the next barbarians. Early in the 13th century reports began to reach Europe of a mysterious and invincible horde from the east that destroyed Muslim empires and kingdoms, leading kings and popes to take them for 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.

The Mongolian armies decided to turn back because of the death of Genghis Khan back in the East and their defeat in the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine. Gog and Magog became the subject of literature. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a 14th best-seller, associated the Jews with Gog and Magog, saying the nation trapped behind the Gates of Alexander comprised the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Marco Polo located Gog and Magog as regions of Tenduk, a province belonging to the legendary Prester John, and governed by one George, fourth in descent from the original John. According to this account Gog (locally Ung) is inhabited by a tribe called the Gog, whilst Magog (or Mongul) is inhabited by Tatars. The 14th century Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta reported that "the rampart of Yajuj and Majuj" was "sixty days' travel" from the city of Zeitun; the translator notes that Ibn Battuta has confused the Great Wall of China with that built by Dhul-Qarnayn.

A German tradition claimed a group called the Red Jews would invade Europe at the end of the world; the "Red Jews" became associated with different peoples, but especially the Eastern European Jews and the Ottoman Turks.

Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages, including Rashi, Radak and others, had associated no specific nation or territory with Magog, beyond locating it to the north of Israel. In the early 19th century some Chasidic rabbis identified Napoleon's invasion of Russia as "The War of Gog and Magog" which would precede the coming of the Messiah, so that the Emperor filled the role of Gog. In the 20th century Hitler was seen as a likely candidate.

During the Cold War the idea (first advanced by Wilhelm Gesenius in the mid-1800s) that Russia itself 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). This interpretation has been taken up by several Christian authors and preachers since then (such as Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth; Grant R. Jeffrey's Armageddon: Appointment with Destiny; M. R. De Haan's The Signs of the Times; Tim LaHaye's Are We Living in the End Times?).

The popularity of this theory during the Cold War can be seen in that it was openly advocated in 1971 by the then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. During a dinner address to state legislators Reagan said "Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn’t seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become Communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly."

With the closing of the Cold War, some Christian thinkers who accepted this interpretation altered it after the fall of the Soviet Union (such as Pat Robertson who advocated it in his 1982 book The Secret Kingdom, but in 1992 suggested Gog was "Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan"). Other Christian thinkers do not consider the fall of communism to have any relevance in maintaining their interpretation that Russia is Gog (such as Chuck Missler in his book Magog Invasion).

The biblical interpretation that Russia is Gog, is one that some Russians believe themselves according to historian Christopher Marsh. He writes "Russians and Ukrainians, two peoples with a long history of looking to the Bible for clues to their past and future. At least as far back as the Primary Chronicle, the Rus' looked to scripture for such clues and found them from Genesis to Revelations. They were the descendants of Noah's third son, Japheth, giving themselves direct lineage to the diluvian period, and they were of the tribe of Magog (or Gog), in the land of Rosh. The implications of such identity as expressed in Revelations, where the Gog and Magog were both thrown out of heaven, apparently didn't matter to those drawing these lines. Ancestors were found in the Bible, and that was enough."

In his 1945 book "The Reign of Quantity and The Sign of Times" metaphysician and author René Guénon has a full chapter on the subject of Gog and Magog ("The fissures of the great wall"). Gog and Magog are related to their Hindu counterpart called demon brothers Koka and Vikoka "whose names are obviously similar", and refer symbolically, according to Guénon, not to groups of people on earth, but to entities belonging to the "subtle world" and having an existence presently hidden from the human realm and symbolically described as subterranean.