EQ 75:1 (2003),23-43

Nicholas M. Railton

Gog and Magog: the History of a Symbol

Dr Nicholas Railton is lecturer in German at the University of Ulster. He has
published books on the history of the Evangelical Alliance (The German
Evangelical Alliance and the Third Reich, 1998; No North Sea. The
Anglo-German Evangelical Network in the Middle of the Nineteenth
Century, 2000) and articles on Christian responses to the Third Reich.
Key words: Bible; Gog; Magog; symbolism.
World politics, like the history of Gog and Magog, are very confused and
much disputed. (Winston Churchill, 9 November 1951).

Introduction

Gog from the land of Magog, one of the great enemies of the people
of God to appear at the end of the historical process, has vexed and
bewildered exegetes for centuries. The prophet Ezekiel seems to
speak of an unrepentant nation and its head and communicates
God's impending judgement (Ezekiel 38:1-3, New American Standard Bible) :
. .
And the word of the Lord came to me saying, 'Son of man, set your face
toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal
and prophesy against him and say, "Thus says the Lord God, 'Behold, I am
against you, 0 Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.'"'

An examination of the historical development of this eschatological idea, this Feindbild, will introduce us to the never-ending attempts
to decipher these millennial foes inhabiting the areas to the far north
of Palestine. This brief survey shows how the desire to interpret the
signs of the times and understand the period in which one is living
can, and usually has entrenched religious believers in an inflexible,
nationalistic and self-righteous mind-set. This became abundantly
clear in the period of the Cold War. The interpretation of biblical
texts has not liberated the interpreter, but bound him (we are dealing almost exclusively with men in this domain) ever tighter with the
chains of bigotry tinged with racism.

24
English mythology

Though the following study will limit itself to Judeo-Christian interpretations of this eternal Feindbild some examination of how Gog and
Magog became the tutelary deities of the city of London might be a
good starting point. l The two giants, carved by William Goos, welcomed Henry V in 1415 on his return to London after Agincourt and
during the following centuries have offered protection to official ceremonies, midsummer pageants, Lord Mayor Shows, banquets and
proceedings within the Guildhall. To Queen Elizabeth I they were
known as Gogmagog and Corineus as they guided her to her coronation on 12January 1558. The former, a descendant of Albion, was
armed with arrows and a globe of spikes attached by a chain to a pole
(known in the Middle Ages as a 'morning star'), the latter, in traditional Roman costume, as a Trojan invader with spear and shield.
The figures no doubt contributed to the myth that London was
founded by Greek invaders from Troy under the leadership of Brutus (Corineus' commander-in-chief) as Troja Nova. Both figures were
warriors, bearing the scars of war on their faces and hands, and
found a home in the London Guildhall by 1593 at the latest. Gogmagog mutated into two giants - most probably under the influence
of Scripture - and Corineus was thrown on to the rubbish heap of
history. Gog and Magog continued to 'watch and ward' events in the
heart of the English capital and were even used to win votes. A handbill produced during a mayoralty election, dated 4 October 1816 and
addressed to the London Tavern Livery and their Spouses, promised
the giants would 'dance a minuet by steam' once the candidate had
been elected. The honour and liberty of England was closely bound
up with the presence and protection afforded by the two warriorheroes. New giants carved by Richard Saunoers in 1708 were
destoyed by German bombs which hit the building on 29 December
1940, but in 1953 new statues carved by David Evans were unveiled in
the west gallery of the Guildhall, Gog to the north and Magog to the
south. A phoenix was added to the shield to underline the resurrecHarold Bayley, Archaic England (London, 1919), ch. 5; The GuildhaU ofLondon (Corporation of London, 1990), 20-2; WiIliam Hone, Ancient Mysteries described, especiaUy
the English Miracle Plays, founded on Apocryphal New Testament Story (London, 1823),
262-76; Transactions of the GuildhaU Historical Association, 2 (1957), 136-141; Unveiling of Cog and Magog and New Clock in GuildhaU on Monday, 8th June, 1953 (in Guildhall Library); George F. Vale, London Fairy Tales (London, 1949),29-35; Sir John].
Baddeley, The GuildhaU of the City of London (London and Colchester, 1951), 78-80;
Lewis Spence, The Minor Traditions of British Mythology (London, 1948), 58-62; H.
Bieling, 'Zu den Sagen von Gog und Magog', Wissenschaftuche Beilage zum Programm
tier Sophien-&alschule Ostern 1882 (Berlin, 1882), 3-23.

Gog and Magog: the History of a

SJmbol

25

tion of the ancient mythical Britons.

A struggle between the two, recorded in Geoffrey of Monmouth's
twelfth<entury Histories of the Kings of Britain, is said to have ended in
a wrestling match near Plymouth, Corineus being Trojan general in
Cornwall. Gogmagog loses the match and is thrown into the sea at a
place Geoffrey said was still called Goemagot's Leap in the twelfth
century. In 1494 figures of the two giants were re<ut into the turf on
Plymouth Hoe. Huge rocks known as Gog and Magog can still be
seen off Land's End. They also gave their names to the Gog Magog
Hills near Cambridge. 2 It is said that semblances of the legendary
giants were once cut into the turf of this chalk outcrop which dominates the whole of the plain to the Wash.

Islamic apocalyptic
Composed in a completely different culture setting, the books of the
Persians and Arabians are nevertheless full of stories surrounding
Gog and Magog, or Yajuj and Majuj as they are called in the Koran
(Arabic for 'those who use fire' as in Sure XXI:96 and Sure XVlII:9298).3 These two figures play an important role in Muslim eschatology,
in particular with regard to the re-appearance of 'Isa Oesus) and are
linked to the cycle of Alexander romances such as the early eleventh
century Life and Acts of Alexander the Macedonian. The wall, dam or
2

Adrian Room, A Concise Dictionary of Modem Place Names in Great Britain and Ireland
(Oxford, 1983), 45; Ronald Russell, Shire Cormty Guide 23. Cambridgeshire and Cambridge (Haverfordwest, 1988), 17; P. H. Reaney, Place Names of Cambridgeshire, 35-6;
T.C. Lethbridge, Gogmagog: the Buried Gods (London, 1957),4-10; I. Wilkens, Where
Truy Once Stood (London, 1990), 84-90..
The Holy Qur'an. Arabic Text and English Translation with Commentary, ed. by Malik
Ghulam Farid (London, 1981), 621, 623, 635, 637, 707, 710; The Message of the
Qur'an, tt. and explained by Muhammed Asad (Dar al-Andalus, Gibraltar 1980),
454 (footnote 100); Handwiirterbuch des Islam, herausgegeben von AJ. Wensinck,
J.H. Kramers (Leiden, 1941),801-2; H.A.R. Gibb,J.H. Kramers, ShorterEncyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden-London, 1961), 637; Abdullah Yusuf A1i, The Holy Koran. Text,
Translation and Commentary (Brentwood, Md. 1989), 738-742; A1lamah Khadim
Rahmani Nuri, The Running Commentary of the Holy Quran (Shilling 1964), 457-8,
505; The Holy Qur'an with English Translation and Commentary, Volume n, Part n
(Rabwah, 1960), 1718-21; The Holy Qur'an with English Translation and Commentary,
Volume n, Part I (Rabwah 1969), 1540-43; Josef Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients, Heft IV (Berlin-Leipzig
1926),150-1; Der Koran. Kommentarund Kmlwrdanz von Rudi Paret (Stuttgart-BerlinCologne-Mainz, 1977), 320; Sh. Nasir Ahmad, Islam. 60 Fragen und Antworten
(Zurich, n.d.),70; Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 15 (1911), 61;
A1lamah Khadim Rahmani Nuri, The Running Commentary of the Holy Qur'an (Shillong 1964), 458, 505; AR Bhutta, Prophez.eiungen iiber die Endzeit (Frankfurt a.M.,
1986), 16-19.

26

The Evangdical0uJrlerly

iron gate said to have been built 'where the sun rises' (some have
associated this with the great wall of China) by Dhu al Qarnayn (generally interpreted by Muslims as being Alexander the Great) between
the Caspian and Black Seas to keep back the wild marauding tribes
of Central Asia is often referred to as the wall ofYajuj and Majuj.
Muslim commentators on the Gog passages in the Koran, just like
their Jewish and Christian counterparts, can be grouped into those
who seek an historical interpretation, either in the past or in the
future, and those who see these eschatological personages as 'purely
allegorical, applying not to any specific tribes or beings but to a series
of social catastrophes which would cause a complete destruction of
man's civilisation before the coming of the Last Hour' (Muhammad
Asad). The judgement on earth will be horrific. Yajuj and Majuj will
break through the 'wall' in such numbers that they will drink all the
water of the Euphrates and Tigris or of the Lake of Tiberias. When
they have killed all the inhabitants of the earth they will shoot their
arrows against heaven. God in his anger will send plagues of worms
or birds upon them which will eat into their nostrils, necks and ears,
so that no man will escape.
Many recent exegetes followed the tradition established by the classical commentators such as Tabari and regard the prediction as referring to a definite historical event. The Mongols and Tatars have been
identified as possible candidates in the past. Muhammad Asad notes
that 'ever since the late Middle Ages, Muslims have been inclined to
discern in this dream [Sure XVIII] a prediction of the great Mongol
invasion in the thirteenth century, which destroyed the Abbasid
Empire and, thus, the political power of the Arabs'. The recent trend
amongst commentators to demonise Christian nations as Yajuj and
Majuj is, however, predominant. The words may apply, says the commentary in the Koran published in 1960 under the auspices of
Hadrat Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad, Second Successor of
the Promised Messiah, to the Christian nations of the West as 'they
have made much use of the burning fire and boiling water and
because all their material progress and great discoveries and inventions are due to the proper use of these things'. Here in the Koran
we find the equation of Gog's allies, as listed in Ezekiel, with historical nations: Rosh with Russia, Meshech with Moscow and Tubal with
Tobolsk. 'The nations of Europe have been legitimately called Gog
and Magog in the Biblical prophecy', states the official commentary
for Ahmadiyyah Muslims. Reference is made, moreover, to the presence of the effigies of Gog and Magog in the Guildhall: 'these heroes
have been connected with Britain from very ancient times'. The commentary produced under the auspices of the Third Successor of the
Promised Messiah continues this tradition.

Cog and Magog: the History of a Symbol

27

Anti-colonialism has clearly impacted Muslim thinking on the matter. Nasir Abmad says that Cog and Magog put their roots into the
earth exactly one thousand years after Mohammed (born 570) began
his public ministry when the Moghul government allowed the English to found a trading station in the Bay of Bengal in 1611. The reign
of Cog and Magog is linked here to the era of English imperialism.
The 'breaking of the wall', mentioned in the Koran, has thus been
seen to signify the spread of the Christian world's tentacles across the
globe and the decline of the political power of Islam, particularly of
the Turks in Europe. Mawli Muhammad Ali, a translator of the
Koran, took the presence of the statues in the Guildhall seriously and
similarly linked England with the barbarians behind the gates.
Another commentator, Allamah Khadim Rahmani Nuri, sees Cog as
a type of the Anglo-American Christian nations and Magog as a type
of the Soviet or Communist block. In this vein, A.R. Bhutta says the
prophecy relates to war between two superpowers, Cog and Magog,
fighting to maintain their interests in the Persian Gulf and, in particular, to keep control of the oil reserves there. Cog and Magog would
one day wage war against Irak to gain control of its oil supplies. Even
space becomes the scene of their grasping nature. The 'fire' the
superpowers play with refer, in his view, to jets and nuclear weapons
which will be used in a Third World War.
Like many a Christian commentator, as we shall see, Allamah K.R.
Nuri accepted that Majuj represented the tribes of Tubal and
Meshech (he refers to Ezekiel 38:2) that occupied the territories to
the north of the Black Sea, tribes connected in his opinion with the
cities of Tobolsk and Moscow. The Anglo-American 'democratic'
Christian block and the Soviet-led 'Communist' block, in this study
(as in the Abmadiyyah Koran), are the Yajuj and Majuj in the Islamic
end-times scenario. They represent, metaphorically, the forces of
materialism and falsehood. Together they will wage war and no
earthly power will be able to resist their military might. Cod Himself
will bring about the circumstances which will usher in their annihilation. The material glory of Christendom, in its Western democratic
and Comminist expressions, both camps showing in different ways an
utter disregard for Cod and religion, will be destroyed by Allah at the
end of history.

Jewish apocalyptic
Ezekiel's prophecy provided images that sparked the imagination of
later Jewish apocalypticists. The Septuagint Translation of Numbers
24:7 has Cog instead of Agag and adds the name Cog in Amos 7:1,

28
where the locusts are at Gog's command. The oldest Jewish Sibylline
text (Ill, 663ft) employs the Gog prophecy in its description of the
end times. 1 Enoch 56 and 57 interpret Gog as the wild hordes of
Parthians and Medes which, at the time, were a major threat to Israel.
Here we have then one of the earliest equations of the eschatological
foe with an historical enemy, that is if one does not adhere to the view
that Ezekiel was in fact making cryptic reference to Babylon, the one
nation not listed in Chapters 25 to 32.4 The pre-Christian Sibylline
books say the country of Gog and Magog 'lies between the rivers of
Ethiopia' and it will suffer a bloodbath and be called 'the place of
judgement' (Or. Sibyll. Ill, 315f. 319. 512). Under Satan's leadership
Gog and Magog will go to battle against God and his Messiah (Aboda
zara 3a). In the Talmud the words of the Psalmist (2:1-3) are repeatedly applied to Gog.Jacob (Genes. rabb. 98), Eldad and Medad (Sanhedrin 17a) prophesy about this last battle and the fall of Gog. 5 In
Pesikta 79a Gog and Magog's plans are compared with those of Esau,
the Pharoah and Haman, i.e. those who wished to exterminate the
Jews. In Tanchuma Schophetim 19 g.E. the peoples following Gog
are filled with an evil spirit prior to rebelling against King Messiah in
the final decisive battle. 6
The eschatological position of this event in the divine timetable
varies depending upon the source used. 7 There are other variations
too. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to the Pentateuch (Exodus 40:11)
suggests that the Ephraimite Messiah will vanquish Gog; another late
apocalyptic writing (Pesikta Sutarta 58a) has Gog and Magog vanquishing Messiah ben Joseph. 8 The Targum of Ezekiel (on Chapter
39:16) and the Pesiqta Rabbati (on Chapter 17:8) both identifY Gog
as Rome: the final eschatological war would be with Rome which
would be visited by the plagues of Egypt. Sanhedrin 94a sees in Gog
a reference to Sennacherib, a type of the Evil Enemy. Other Rabbis,
however, see Gog-Magog as an eschatological symboP
The Jewish apocalyptic books - 2 Esdras, 4 Esra, 1 and 2 Enoch,
4
5
6
7
8
9

J.

BOhmer, 'Wer ist Gog von Magog?', Zeitschrift for wissenschaftlicheTheolgie

(Leipzig) 40 (1897),346.
Moritz Friedlander, Der Antichrist (GOttingen, 1901), 171-172.
Ferdinand Weber, jiWische Theologie auf Grnnd des Talmud und verwandter Schriftm
(Leipzig, 1897),387-389.
Paul Volz,jiWische Eschatologie von Daniel his Akiba (Tiibingen-Leipzig, 1903), 175176.
Samson H. Levey, The Messiah: An Aramaic Interpretation (Cincinnati-New York,
1974), 50-52; W. Bousset, 'Gog und Magog', Zeitschrift for Kirchengeschichte, Heft 2,
July 1899, 119-120.
Samson H. Levey, The Targum of Ezekiel (Edinburgh, 1987), 107. Rabbis Akiba,
Eliezer and Nehemia all speak of Gog.

Gag and Magog: tM History of a Symbol

29

Jubilees, 2 Baruch, the Sibylline Oracles, the Testaments of the

Twelve Patriarchs - were all written between 167 BC, when the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes began, and 135 AD, when the
Jewish nation was effectively destroyed by Hadrian. In other words,
the context of these Jewish writings was a struggle for survival, a
period of fervent nationalism mingled with pessimism and a feeling
of hopelessness in the face of world powers. Apocalyptic writings contain cryptic references to current political events and are in fact a
reflection on and a reaction to them. lo
Josephus was the first to interpret Gog and Magog as being the contemporary Scythians, a name used by himself and other writers of the
time, to represent all unknown, barbarian peoples inhabiting the
north. He and Pliny say that Alexander had locked up these peoples
behind huge gates in 'the hills north of the Caspian Sea', Alexander
assuming in the accounts Messiah-like featuresY Two mountain
peaks in the Caucusus still bore the names Gogh and Magogh in the
eighteenth century.12 From the third century onwards, however, the
prevailing view among Jewish scholars, following Commodianus,
Ambrose and Isidorus, was that the Goths were meant (Jerusalem
Talmud, Targum of the Chronicles) .13 The fourth century Targumim
of Jerusalem and Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 10:2 both interpret
Magog as Germania l4 and this view, too, was common throughout the
Middle Ages: the ancient Germans, the Teutons, the ferocious enemies of Rome and of the civilised world were named interchangeably
with the Scythians and Gog's confederacy.15 Rabbi David Kimchi
(1160-1235) generalised the interpretation and claimed the Christians and Turks were meant: the perceived major threats to Jewish life
and religion. 16
Ezekiel38:12 says Israel is the navel or centre of the earth, the centre of God's plan of salvation, but attacks on Israel are not necessarily to be understood in any geographical sense. Just as, by the Apostolic age, Gog and Magog had become detached from any topo10 G.B. Baird, The Language and I~ of the Bible (London, 1980),261.
11 Franz Kampers, Alexander der GrojJe und die Idee des Weltimperiums in Prophetie und
Sage (Freiburg LBr., 1901),81.
12 J. BOhmer, 'Wer ist Cog von Magog?', 346.
13 A. Anderson, Alexander's Gate, Cog and Magog and the Enclosed Nations (Cambridge,
Mass. 1932), 10. The Jerusalem Talmud was written about 400 AD. The BabyIonian Talmud (about 500 AD) has China for Magog; A. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babe~
Band 1 (Stuttgart, 1957), 193.
14 A. Anderson, Alexander's Gate, 10.
15 'Die bibIische VoIkertafel in Talmud, Midrasch and Targum', Monatsschrift for
Geschichte und Wissmschaft desJudenthums (BresIau), 39 (1895), 7-9.
16 The Holy Bible with a Commentary and Critical Notes by Adam Clarlce, ed. ThornIey
Smith (London, n.d.), 559.

30
graphical connection with the north (Revelation 20:7-10) and have
lost any vague personal sense - the attack on Israel becoming an
attack on 'the saints' and 'the beloved city' - the Cog oracle has
taken on allegorical significance, particularly in the oral tradition,
throughout the Jewish diaspora, though, following the creation of
the state of Israel, it has once again developed a geographical-political character.
Two examples from the modern era will show the tenacity of the
prophecy. Martin Buber published his novel Cog and Magog in 1943
(its 1945 English edition is called For the Sake of Heaven) and is an
attempt to come to terms with the outbreak of the Second World
War, the atmosphere of crisis, the terrible life and death struggle of
political forces and the signs ofa 'false messianism'. A vision in which
Buber saw 'a false messenger with bats' wings and the facial features
of a Jewish Coebbels' provided the spark for the work which, he said,
he wrote very quickly, 'as if I only had to copy down everything I
could see so clearly before me'. The novel is based on the true story
of certain East European Hassidim and the prophet of Lublin who
pleaded with Cod, even turning to the use of Cabbalistic magic in the
process, to allow Napoleon to become the Cog of the final eschaton,
this in order to speed up the Coming of the Messiah. The seer has a
counterpart in the story, his favourite pupil, Jehudi of Pzycha, who
gives his life to stop the experiment in the belief that Messiah can
only appear following the repentance and spiritual renewal of individuals. Jewish rabbis read great significance into the historical data
of Napoleon's military exploits and connected his name with Apollyon and Abbadon, the angel from hell. In the same way, Buber wants
to remind people of eternal realities which can be a source of
strength to resist present realities. He wants to point out a way
through the dark night of life, to help people persevere till the dawn
breaks, and so survive the struggle between light and darkness, the
presence of evil, in the military conflict being waged in Europe. 17
In passing, let it be noted that Jewish Hassidim were not the only
people in the late eighteenth century to regard Napoleon's military
successes as forboding the end of the world. According to N.S.
Tikhonravov, there were 'many credulous persons' in Russia who
looked upon Napoleon as the Antichrist and sought to see in his
exploits the fulfilment of the prophecies of Methodius of Patara, to
which we will later refer. The prophecies, which have links with the
Cog oracle, were extremely popular at the time, not least as a source
of comfort due to the promise of an eventual 'Christian' victory over
the prophesied invaders. In Russia, too, then, the Revelations of
17 Martin Buber, Gog und Magog (Frankfurt a.M., 1957).

Cog and Magog: the History of a Symbol

31

Methodius were applied to the disordered, seemingly hopeless

period of war and momentous change and Napoleon I and his army,
it was believed, were the Gog and Magog of prophecy. IS
The second example of the continuing relevance of the Gog oracle
brings us into the 1990s. In late rabbinic legend the place of Gog is
taken by Armillus, the wicked one, who will be slain by the word of
the Messiah. 19 In a letter to the Jewish Chronicle on 17 August 1990,
Amnon Goldberg, referring to the events in the Persian Gulf, noted
that 'the cryptic name of the British Navy's Armilla Patrol is sufficiently close to 'Armillus', the Anti-Messiah of Jewish tradition, to
warrant a possible eschatological interpretation'. Goldberg claimed
that, according to Jewish chronology, the Messianic age must commence within the next 249 years and wondered whether the Gog
prophecy was about to be fulfilled.20 EIswhere, in February 1991 Menachem Schneerson, head of a Chassidic brotherhood of the Chabad
School in Brooklyn, declared that 'the Gulf War was the final battle
against the heathen King Gog from the land of Magog, the battle
prophesied by the prophets'. He added that the rebuilding of the
Temple would immediately follow the battle' .21
Such speculation was understandable at a time when the world was
expecting chemical and biological weapons to be employed on a
grand scale, when Scuds and Patriots gripped our attention. Booksellers reported that the sales of astrological and prophetical literature had shot up since the conflict began. Christians, too, were not
unaffected. They learned that modern-day Iraq was ancient Babylon,
an enemy of God. Zondervan, a leading .American publisher of evangelical literature, issued an updated version of John F. Walwoord's
1974 bestseller - Armageddon, Oil and the Middle-East Crisis - with an
initial print order of one million copies. On so-called Christian television, the Rev. Jack van Impe of Detroit, one of the USA's end-times
specialists, claimed Scriptural prophecies clearly pointed to an Iraqi
defeat but also to an eventual world war in the 1990s between Russia
and the West. 22 More will be said about white, middle-class American
responses to Gog and Magog later.
Summing up our examination of Jewish responses to situations of
18 A. Anderson, Alexander's Gate, 14; A. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babe~ Band 1, 322;
Samuel Cross, 'The Earliest Allusion in Slavic Literature to the Revelations of
Pseudo-Methodius', speculum. A journal of Medieval Studies, IV (1929), 331 (footnote 3).
19 Samson H. Levey, Messiah, 52.
20 jtmJish Chronicle, 17 August 1990.
21 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 4 February 1991.
22 'Apocalypse Now?', Time, 11 February 1991.

32
danger in the past we repeatedly note a willingness to eschatologise
the particular situation, equating the threat - whether it be the Teutons, the Goths, the French or the Iraqis - with the Gog of prophecy.
This equation clearly had a lot to do with the perceptions and prejudices of the interpreter as well as with the actual behaviour of an
aggressor. Actual historical facts - for example, the fact that
Napoleon's army brought emancipation to the Jews in Prussia - are
not generally taken into consideration when the enemy is demonised
by this equation. Much like the seer in Buber's novel, one turns to
magic or some form of conjuring trick to make the facts fit the theory, just as the Persian Jewish 'Messiah', Mosheh Eliyahu, used
numerology to prove, at the beginning of this century, that Gog was
no other than Leon Trotsky 25 As John Taylor has said in his commentary on Ezekiel, attempts to read too much into the incidentals
of prophecy betray the ingenuity of the speculator rather than the
sobriety of the exegete. 24 This is particularly true, as we shall see in
the following, of Christian commentators.
Christian apocalyptic
Jewish apocalyptic thinking found a welcoming home in the early
Church. Indeed, Christianity considered herself the eschatological triumph of God in Jesus Christ, who, following ancient prophecies, was
already transforming the world into his new kingdom. The Apostle
John, in particular, resorted to apocalyptic imagery to offer hope to
those oppressed by the Romans - the hope of an early end of world
history as a 'sure way of escape from Roman oppression'.25 Ezekiel38
and 39 and the Book of Revelation were mines of useful imagery and
Wyclifwas by no means the first or last to recognise the 'great polemical use', the propagandistic value ofprophetical Scriptures. 26
Believing the end was nigh, Popes Urban 11 and Innocent III called
for military discipline in the Christian community to prepare for the
onslaught of Christ's enemies under the lead of Antichrist. 27 Both
Pope Urban and St. Bernhard portrayed Jerusalem as being endangered by the forces of Antichrist against whom God was calling good
Christians to crusade. In St. Bernhard's sermons the Saracens were
23 W.F. Albright, 'Gog', Juurnal of Biblical Literature, 43 (1924), 378f.
24 John Taylor, Ezekiel (London, 1969),243.
25 Ernest 1. Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia:A Study in the Background of the Idea of
Progress (Berkeley, 1949),9.
26 Ernest 1. Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia, 23.
27 Ernst Bernheim, Mittelalterliche Zeitanschauungen in ihrem EinflujJ auf Politik und
Geschichtsschreibung (Tubingen, 1918), 75ff.

Gag and Magog: the History of a Symbol

33

the Gog/Magog prophesied long ago. 28

Yet the oracles could not only be used for clerical-imperialist propaganda. Just as apocalyptic thought contributed to the great Jewish
revolts of 60-66 AD and 132-135 AD, eschatological interpretations
pushed Hussite Taborites into active resistance and indeed revolution.29 Norman Cohn has also shown that what he calls the 'eschatological phantasies' of early Christianity were adopted and adapted by
men like John Ball, Martinek Hanska, Thomas Muntzer,Jan Matthys
andJan Bockelson for their own purposes, promising their followers
the conclusion of history.30 A Christian's eschatological understanding could easily lead to social unrest and campaigns for more justice
and political freedom as well as to militaristic campaigns abroad.
Clerical intellectuals could console and support their patrons by
interpreting the times in a favourable way and so move men 'to pursue specified aims at once political and religious in nature' .31 The aim
depended on who one needed to demonise.
There is one other approach to such imagery which should be
noted. In the patristic literature there is no specific mention of the
attack made by Gog and Magog. Irenaeus, who is usually taken to
represent traditional Christian eschatology, deals fully with Antichrist
and the interpretation of his number, but is silent on Gog. 32 This
silence seems to have lasted until the fourth century when a major
shift in eschatological understanding took place in the Church. If the
very first groups of Christians did indeed believe that the last age of
history was about to end - that is, their eschatology was apocalyptic
in emphasis - by the fourth century churches were more willing to
see the socio-political events of their own time in the light of the end
of history rather than as the last events themselves. Bernhard
McGinn suggests that the reinterpretation of eschatological passages
was due not least to the changed attitude to the Roman Empire following Constantine's so-called conversion. Having a more privileged
position in society led to political loyalty to Rome and a shift from a
literal reading of prophetical passages as descriptions of historical
events in the future to an allegorical reading of the same as poems
about the perennial struggle between good and evil. This shift is
linked with the names of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339),
Jerome (347-420) - whose etymological interpretations of the names
28 N. Cohn, Das neue irdische Paradies (Hamburg, 1988),77.
29 The Jerome Bible Commentary, 343; Bernhard McGinn, Visions, 32.
30 N. Cohn, Das neue irdische Paradies, 72, 315.
31 B. McGinn, B. McGinn, Views of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages
(New York, 1979), 32.
32 S.H. Hooke, 'Gog and Magog', The Expository Times, 22 (Oct.1914-Sept.1915),
317ff.

34

The Evangelical Q!Jarterly

ofGog and Magog (Gog means 'roof', Magog 'from the roof') influenced later writers~~ - Tyconius (330-390) and, above all, Augustine
of Hippo (354-430), who has been called 'the fountainhead of all
anti-apocalyptic eschatology in the Middle Ages'.54
Since Tyconius the 'mystical meaning' of Revelation 20:8 has been
emphasised; any connection between Gog and Magog and historical
nations, between Jerusalem and the city in Palestine, was rejected.
Gog's attack on Jerusalem was transformed into an attack on the substance of the universal church by hypocrites and pseudo-priests.~5
Hieronymus (340-420), in his commentary on Ezekiel (410-411),
related Gog and Magog historically to the Scythians or Huns, but
eschatologically to the Antichrist. Gog's army was the horde of false
teachers, the adherents of Arian doctrines such as the Goths who
invaded Italy from the north from about 401 AD, where they desolated places which were in Hieronymus' view holy.36
Augustine too refused to see the prophetical passages as a mirror
of temporal history. He 'transformed the Apocalypse from a revelation of history into a book of consolation for the spiritually besieged
members of the City of God'. Augustine - and in this he was quoted
with approval by Thomas Aquinas - did not believe we could read
about the course of history by studying the prophetic books. 37 In his
view, Gog and Magog are not any barbarian peoples somewhere in
the northern hemisphere, but symbols of peoples inhabited and in
actual fact covertly led by the Devil, the word Gog also meaning in his
view'roof'.38
These men had a supreme influence on thought in the Middle
Ages. Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202) says Gog is 'the final Antichrist'
who leads the 'pagan nations'. In his eschatological timetable Gog
and Magog appear in the last attack of evil during the third status. 39
In the same manner, the 'north' signifies, in the view of Hildegard
von Bingen (1098-1179), the pars sinistra, the 'element of rebellion
pure and simple, the antichrist in our nature'.40 Gerhoch von Reich33 R.K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle A~. A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art
and Literature (Manchester, 1981),85.
34 B. McGinn, Views of the End, 3-4, 26-28.
35 Horst D. Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tychonius z.um deutschen Symbolismus (Munster, 1973),30.
36 Horst D. Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist, 132.
37 Ernst L. Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia, 17-18.
38 Aurelius Augustinus, Vom Gottesstaat. Buck 11 his 22 (Munich, 1978), 615-616. The
passage on Gog can be found in the eleventh chapter in Book 20.
39 R.K. Emmerson, Antichrist, 87; Apocalyptic spirituality (New York-Toronto, 1979),
136-141.
40 H.D. Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist, 29-30, 508.

Cog and Magog: the History of a Symbol

35

ersberg (1092/93-1169) accepts this interpretation of the 'north' and

locates it within the Church, that part of the Body of Christ infected
by dark forces: heretics, schismatics, hypocrites, false priests. He
refers to the many wise believers of his day who said that Gog and
Magog had been released and were causing the schism in the Church
at that time. 41
Of course, there was never any lack of medieval exegetes who were
able to trace the descendants of Magog, who was one of Japheth's
sons - as were Gomer, Tubal, Mesech, who also play roles in Ezekiel
38-39. Any 'barbaric' nation that threatened the interests of western
Europe turned out to be a descendant. As Christopher Hill says in his
study of Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England, the charge was 'part
of the normal vocabulary of abuse' employed by medieval politicians.42 The treatment of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is a case in point.
Matthew Paris speculates in his English History from the Year 1235 to
1273 that the growing power of the Mongols in the mid-thirteenth
century was the gradual revelation of Gog and Magog. The Mongols,
he said, were Tartars, for they were inspired by Tartarus (i.e. hell)
and have 'the nature of beasts'.43 The Histaria de Preliis, written
between 1185 and 1236, identifies the Mongols as Gog and Magog. 44
Marco Polo, too, emphasised the association of the Tartars with the
Magog nations. 45 A late 13th century itinerant in the Holy Land, the
Franciscan C. de Bridia Ricoldo, did much to publicise this interpretation and asserted that 'they themselves [the Tartars] say that they
are descended from Gog and Magog whence they are called Moguls,
as it were, a corruption of the word Magoguls.46 As late as 1930 a German ethnograther claimed Goger was the ancient name the Mongol
had given themselves and that their sphere of influence south of the
Caucusus Mountains was called Gogarene - the land of the Goger. 47
The Mongols were only one people that suffered such character
assassination. The Goths, the Saracens, the ten tribes of Israel, the
descendants of Ishmael, the Huns, the Danes, the Magyars all came
41
42
43
44

H.D. Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist, 457-450.

C. Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1971), 7.
E.R. Chamberlain, Antichrist and the MiUennium (New York, 1975),51-52.
Martin Haeusler, Das Ende der Geschichte in der mittetalterlichen Weltchronistik
(Cologne-Vienna, 1980),211.
45 C.W. Connell, 'Western Views of the Origins of the "Tartars": an example of the
influence of myth in the second half of the thirteenth century', The Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 3:1 (Spring 1973), 132-133.
46 C.W. Connell, 'Western Views', 127-8; Gian A Bezzola, Die Mongolen in abendliindischer Sickt 1220-1270 (Bern-Munich, 1974), 129.
47 A Wagner, ZurEthnographiederbiblischen VOlkertafel(Saarbnicken, 1930),17.

36

The Evant,dical Q!uJrterl,

in for the same gogification. 48 Bishop Geoffrey of Monmouth (11001155), in his history of Britain, claimed the Picts, Scots and Irish were
all descended from the Scythians and so were related to Magog.49
Bishop Vergil of Salzburg (700-784) believed the Turks were the true
heirs of Magolt' and this interpretation took on renewed significance during the Protestant Reformation.
At the end of the 15th century writers such as Sebastian Brant (Revelationes Methodii, 1498) and Wolfgang Aytinger (Tractatus super
Methodium, 1496) saw the prophecies of Saint Methodius of Pataraprophecies concerning the eschatological nations under Gog's leadership whose influence during the Middle Ages was second only to
the Canon of Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers, not
least due to the fact that they were available in several vernacular
translations51 - being fulfilled in the Turkish advances. 52 The writer of
the fifteenth-century Book with One Hundred Chapters accepted this
end-times role of the Turkish army, interpreting their existence as
God's instrument of punishment for the sins of Christendom. 53 Of
course, one also found solace in the idea that the advance of the Muslims was in fact just part of a divine plan to annihilate them.
Martin Luther's ideas on the Turks and Gog were shaped by a commentary on Revelation written by the Franciscan monk from Eisenach, Johann Hilten (c.1425-1500), who made the identification at
the end of the 15th century. In 1518 Luther felt strongly that Christians should not physically fight the Turks - their role was to evangelise them, to pray for their conversion and to accept Turkish attacks
as a punishment ordained by God for the sins of Christendom. 54
Luther's new eschatological understanding of the political situation
and of the Turks in particular led him to readopt the 'crusade mentality'. The real causes of this change were no doubt the Turkish victory over the Hungarian King Ludwig 11 at Mohacs in 1526 and the
siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529. These two events heightened
expectations of the end of the world. In calling for a holy war against
the Muslim Turks under Sultan Suleiman 11 (1520-1566), Luther
emphasised that Christian armies would 'not be fighting with flesh
and blood but against the Devil's hosts' and their 'blasphemous
A. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babe~ Band 1, passim.
A. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babe~ Band 2, Teil 2, 688ff.
A. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babe~ Band 2, Teill, 484486.
R.K. Emmerson, Antichrist, 270 (footnote 39); A. Anderson, Alexander's Gate, 49.
M. Haeusler, Das Ende tier Geschichte, 139.
Das Buch tier Hundert Ko.pitel und tier vierzig Statuten des &genannten Oberrheinischen
Revolutioniirs, ed. Gerhard Zschiibitz (Berlin, 1967), 151.
54 H. Junghans, Leben und Werl! Martin Luthers von 1526 his 1546. Festgabe zu seinem
500. Geburtstag (Berlin, 1985), Band 11, 960, fn. 97.
48
49
50
51
52
53

Gog and Magog: the History of a Symbol

37

Mohammed'.55 The finalis JuTOT was to be shortly revealed, but Christ

would come to destroy this Turkish Cog and Magog. 56 With a little
help from his friends of course, for Luther did not neglect to soberly
exhort Christians to do their politico-religious duty by enlisting in the
campaign; the Church was obliged, moreover, to pray for the military
victory of the Christian armies. In his 1529 Military Sermon against the
Turks Luther taught that all those who died fighting the Turks would
'fill heaven as martyrs'.57 He was careful to distinguish between the
Turkish Cog and the Popish Magog (November 1529): both were
enemies of the gospel, the former external and overt, the latter internal and covert. Of the two Luther felt Popery was the more dangerous for whereas the Turkish Cog filled heaven with saints, the Popish
Magog filled hell with Christians. 58
Luther's whole attitude to the Book of Revelation changed radically in these years. A new set of ideas and interpretations of Church
history was required by the Reformation movement. His commentary on the prophecies was a useful tool in the attempt to refute arguments against the Reformation. Indeed, Bible commentaries became
during this period of history propaganda arsenals. Luther's translation and notes on Ezekiel 38-39, written in 1530, incorporated the
new approach to the Turks. The whole prophecy had nothing to do
with the Jews, he said, the hills around Jerusalem being symbolic of
the Christian Churches. Claiming that Cog was Hebrew for 'roof, he
stated that the Turks were unconcerned about houses and lived like
cattle, covered solely by a roof structure. 59 Neither Luther's reasoning
nor application of the text to the Turkish people was new. He did,
however, add his own portion of irrational prejudice: the Turks were,
he said, 'a wild, rapacious people ... always ready to rob and wage
war', demon-possessed, in fact. The final judgement would immediately follow on from the Turkish advance. 60
Luther's influence was, of course, enormous. One hundred years
later, in 1644, an English translation of his interpretation of the times
was published in London under the title The Prophecies of the
Incomparable Dr. Martin Luther concerning the Downfall of the
Pope of Rome and the Subversion of the German Empire, to be overrun by the armies of the Turks, together with the many reasons that
he giveth for it'.61 This was a key to history, popular at a time of Turk55
56
57
58
59
60
61

H.Junghans, Leben und Werk Martin Luthers, Band I, 65~58; Band 2, 963 fn. 18l.
H.Junghans, Leben und Werk Martin Luthers, Band I, 653.
H.Junghans, Leben und Werk Martin Luthers, Band I, 654.
H.Junghans, Leben und Werk Martin Luthers, Band I, 655.
Dr Martin Luthers Auslegung des Alten Testaments, Band 6 (St. Louis, Miss., 1897),882
G. Maier, Die johannesoffenbarung und die /(ireM (Tubingen, 1981), 297.
Ernst L. Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia, 28.

38

The Evanpical ~

ish strength and accessible to the common man. The Turk was here
'the battle axe and scourge of God', the 'soul and body of
Antichrist' .62
English Reformers, strongly influenced by opinion on the Continent, revealed a wide acceptance of apocalyptic eschatology. The
Geneva Bible (1560) in the vernacular helped to disseminate
through its marginal notes the eschatological views of Bullinger and
John Bale to generations of Bible students in Britain. 63 In ways that
foreshadowed the 1909 Scofield Reference Bible, these notes
'acquired an authority almost equal to that of the text itself'.64 Readers will have learned that Gog and Magog represented the followers
of Mohammed in league with the papacy. This was the conclusion to
which a rather pessimistic Bale came while at work, between 1540
and 1545, on his commentary on Revelation. 65 Bale accepted
Luther's view of the open and covert enemies of Christ in his Image of
bothe Churches 66, as did John Foxe in his Actes and Monuments (1566).67
Foxe, too, applied Gog and Magog to the Saracens and the Turks.
Another English Reformer felt confident enough to pinpoint the
time of the release of Gog and Magog. In his A Plaine Discovery of the
Whole Revelation of St. John (1595) John Napier identified the release
of the Pontificate of Boniface VIII (1294-1303), the 'covered' enemy
of God, and the rise of the Ottoman Turks, the 'discovered' enemy.68
English Reformers had similar polemical and psychological needs
as their brethren in Germany and revealed the same basic inclination
to incorporate contemporary socio-political events into 'a transcendent scheme of meaning', which of course simultaneously gave to
their own lives and work religious significance and validation. 69 This
need to feel important led many Christian commentators - Thomas
Brightman was the first - to read English events, which they felt
deserved special prominence, into the interpretations of the Apocalypse. 70 Bible commentaries became the place where one emphasised
one's own identity in opposition to the 'Enemy'. KingJames VI, in a
sermon on Revelation 20 published in 1616, saw the Turkish treaty
62 Ernst L. Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia, 29.
63 Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon. English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War (Toronto, 1978), 39.
64 Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon, 37-38.
65 Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse (n.p., 1978), 217-218.
66 Katharine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 153()'1645
(Oxford, 1979),55.
67 R. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, 98.
68 R.K. Emmerson, Antichrist, 208, 212.
69 B. McGinn, Views of the End, 31.
70 R. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, 223.

Gag and MLIgog:

t~ History

of a Symbol

39

with Philip of Spain as preparing the way for Gog's invasion of Christendom. 7I Politics, not biblical exposition, is the game being played
here.
One final example of this misuse of Scripture is provided by Bernhard Capp in his study on apocalyptic thought in Revolutionary England. Capp quotes William Sancroft, who would later become Archbishop of Canterbury, an enthusiastic royalist. Sancroft mocked the
'radical preacher' who cried 'Babylon is fallen!' on hearing of
Charles I's defeat at the Battle of Preston. The Scottish Antichrist had
been overthrown, it was believed in some circles. This preacher, Sancroft continues, 'having transmuted his quondam brethren into Gog
and Magog, is now puzzling to find Armageddon about Preston and
Warrington Bridge'.72 Perhaps mockery is the best response to the
politicisation of such biblical prophecies.
American apocalptic
The concluding section of this essay deals with the reception of the
Gog oracle in God's own country, the United States of America. In
the beginning was the work ofJose ph Mede (1586-1638), whose 1627
Clavis Apocalyptica became 'the handbook of all who wished to interpret current events by biblical prophecy'. 73 Long after his death in
1638 Mede remained the 'undisputed authority' on such matters. His
own biblical exegesis was a response to the international tensions of
his time, in particular the events of the Thirty Years War and the
Protestant struggle with the Papacy.74 His influence extended to the
Puritan experiment in America where-men like Increase Mather
(1637-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728) and many others 'inaugurated an era of apocalyptical expectation in America'. 75
American Puritans were upset for the next century by a letter written (1635) by Mede in reply to Mr William Twisse in which he
expressed his opinion that America 'might escape the burning of the
earth, not, however, because it was pure, but because it was evil, so
evil in fact that it had been chosen to house Gog and Magog'. 76
71 K.R. Firth, T~ Apocalyptic Tradition, 131-132.
72 B. Capp, 'The Political Dimension of Apocalyptic Thought', in: C.A. Patrides, J.
Wittreich, T~ ApocalypY in English Renaissance Thought and Literature. Patterns,
Antecedents and Repercussions (Manchester, 1984), 113.
73 H. Trevor-Roper, Religion, Refurmation and Social Change (London, 1967) 247-248.
74 P. Christianson, Reformers and Babylun, 126.
75 R. MiddlekaufI, T~ Mathers. ThTtl! Generations of Puritan Intellectuals 1596-1728
(New York, 1971), 323.
76 R. MiddlekaufI, T~ Mathers, 342; Sacvan Berkovitch, T~ American Jtremiad (University ofWlSConsin, 1978), 72.

40

The Evangdical QJuzrtniy

Increase Mather felt Mede's idea was 'ingenious' and 'may probably
come true': 'I am very afraid that in the process of time New England
will be the woefullest place in all America' if not 'Hell itself'.77 His son
Cotton - whose initial prediction of the end of the world in 1697 had
to be revised to 1736 - could not accept that America would be 'cast
off: 'I that am an American must needs be loathe to allow all America still unto the Devil's possession when our Lord shall possess all the
rest of the world' .78 Cotton clearly felt very uneasy about allowing his
loyalty to America to influence, indeed to dominate his interpretation of Scripture and for years after completing his Problema Theologicum refused to try to explain Gog and Magog. This reaction was
symptomatic of the New England response to Mede's conjecture.
Another American, Samuel Stoddard (1643-1729), also denied that
American Christians would be 'indianised' and thus become Gog
and Magog.79
Though Cotton Mather wanted to keep the stage of cosmic warfare
firmly in Europe, in the middle of the 19th century Protestants
nearly unanimously affirmed that' on the fields of Shiloh, Gettysburg
and the Wilderness, a decisive eschatological struggle was being
enacted'.80 The Civil War was, in the eyes of one Methodist preacher
in Brooklyn, 'the first great conflict to precede the millennium' .81
Each battle had been charted out in the Book of Revelation. Chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel were raided by both sides for ammunition. A
hymn written in 1842 by Arthur Cleveland Coxe, a future bishop of
the Episcopal Church, affirmed this millennial expectancy:82
We are living, we are dwelling
In a grand and awful time
in an age, on ages telling,
to be living is sublime.
Hark! The waking up of nations,
Cog and Magog to the fray.
77 James W. Davidson, The Logic ofMillennial Thought in Eighteenth-Century New England
(New Haven-London, 1977),54, 6lf;Joy Gilsdorf, The Puritan Apocalypse. New England Eschatology in the Seventeenth Century (New York-London, 1989), 134-9.
78 R. Middlekauff, The Mathers, 342ff.
79 CA Patrides,j. Wittreich, The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, 281.
80 James H. Moorhead, American Apocalypse. Yankee Protestants and the Civil War 18601869 (New Haven-London, 1978),65.
81 James H. Moorhead, American Apocalypse, 59.
82 James H. Moorhead, 'Between Progress and Apocalypse: A Reassessment of MiIlennialism in American Religious Thought 1800-1880', TheJournal ofAmerican History, 71:3 (1984),524.
83 James H. Moorhead, American Apocalypse, 81.

Cog and Magog: the History of a Symbol

41

Hark! What soundeth is creation's

groaning for the latter day.

L.S. Weed, the Methodist from Brooklyn, believed Revelation

Chapter 12 foretold the defeat of the Confederacy and that Ezekiel
38 prophesied that, shortly after the defeat, a coalition of corrupt
European powers would confront the United States, probably on the
battle field, where they would be 'entirely overthrown' by the American Israel, for God had ordained the American Republic to be his
'indispensable tool for world renovation'.83 The Gog prophecy
became a source of comfort for those seeking meaning and relevance
for their particular historical situation, both in the North and the
South.
This certainty of the approaching end had not a little to do with the
speculative literature emanating from the British Isles and disseminated in the United States, particularly after 1840. Authors such as
John Nelson Darby, George S. Faber and Dr John Cumming became
well-known in evangelical circles. Cumming, a minister of the
Church of Scotland in Covent Garden, an anti-Catholic bigot, provided the evangelical world with a political interpretation of Ezekiel
which still bedevils a section of evangelicalism today. Two of his works
published in 1855 - Signs of the Times: or Past, Present and Future
(Philadelphia) and The End: or the Proximate Signs of the Close of This
Dispensation (London) - became, as Dwight Wilson has pointed out,
the 'seedbed for many premillenarian volumes'.M Cumming linked
Rosh, Mesech and Tubal with the inhabitants of Russia, who would
one day combine with Gomer, that is Germany, to form a great confederacy. Indeed, Cumming believed that the fulfilment of Ezekiel38
was taking place before his eyes: 'Is not Prussia practically allied to
Russia?' he asked in 1855.85
Cumming's and Darby's dispensationalist views were popularised
by the C.1. Scofield Reference Bible which 'virtually canonised's6 the
view that Ezekiel 38 identified the modern nation of Russia as Israel's
and God's eschatological enemy. Many late twentieth-century premillennialists - John F. Walwoord, Herbert Vander Lugt, Jack van
Impe, Thomas S. McCall, Zola Levitt, Tom Westwood, Hilton Sutton,
Salem Kirban, Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey, to name but a few rep84 D. Wilson, Armageddon Now! The Premillenanan Response to Russia and Israel Since
1917 (Michigan, 1977),24-25.
85 D. Wilson, Armageddon Now!, 28.
86 J. Ruthven, 'Ezekiel's Rosh and Russia', Bibliotheca Sacra, 125 (1968), Nr 500, 324.
87 T.M. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming. American Premillenialism 18751982 (Chicago, 1987),221. On Gog as the first Cold Warrior, see Paul Boyer, When
Time soon Be No More. Prophecy Beliefin Modern American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.,
1992),152-179.

42

The Eva~lical Quarterly

resentatives of this booming market - have spent a great deal of time

(and earned a great deal of money) spreading this 'bad news'. In
their book Armageddon. Oil and the Middle East Crisis (1974) John F.
and his son John E. Walwoord emphasise that the millennial foes in
Ezekiel 'could only refer to what we know today as Russia'.
Hal Lindsey is typical of most evangelical leaders - and nearly all
TV preachers - in that he has 'wedded Biblical interpretation to the
needs of various right-wing causes'; he 'juxtaposes, however awkwardly, eschatology and right-wing politics' .87 In the name of Christ
they vehemently attacked all attempts to relax tensions in the world
(for example, when President Nixon sought rapprochement with
China, or when peace talks and arms control talks were being organised), thus providing a theological veneer to the bi-polar world. This
dualistic, gnostic world view, couched in the language of Scripture,
was and is extremely reactionary.
One particularly reactionary spokesman of the Christian Right,
Tim La Haye, in his book on The Coming Peace in the Middle East (Zondervan 1985), makes no secret of his profound dislike of liberal
democracy. One example taken from this book shows how not to read
Scripture. When Ezekiel 39:6 talks of 'those who dwell securely in the
coastlands', La Haye sees a clear reference to Marxist spies who, after
years of indoctrinating students, will sudenly drop dead. He says:
'There will be a lot of vacancies in some university chairs'.ss La Haye
was only one of a number of TV preachers who, in the 1980s, claimed
that God had foreordained Christian America to fight an eschatological nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The head of what was once
called the Moral Majority - critics always claimed it was neither Jerry Falwell, certainly believed in this future event. 89 And Pat Robertson, a 1988 Presidential candidate, said on his television programme,
the 700 Club, in January and again inJune 1982, three days after the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon, that the Soviet Union, in league with
Armenia, South Yemen, Libya and Ethiopia, would invade Israel
before the autumn of 1982.90 'I mean, from now on, it's going to be
bloodshed, war, revolution and trouble', he is reported to have said. 9 )
President Ronald Reagan seemed to share these eschatological
views. James Mills, a Reaganite in the Californian State Senate, went
on record as saying that 'most of Reagan's policy decisions' were
influenced by his perception of Russia being Gog, the focus of evil in
88 Andrew Lang, 'Armageddon Theology', GALe Report, Vol.XIII, Nos. 3-4, 13.
89 Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics. Militant Eva~li.sts on the Road to Nu.clear War
(Westport, Conn., 1986), 195.
90 Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, 40fT.
91 New Yorlt Times, 27 December 1987.

Cog and Magog: the History of a Symbol

43

the modern world.92 (We now know, of course, that most of his policy decisions were shaped by Nancy Reagan's astrologer). Mills told
the San Diego Magazine in August 1985 that Reagan was right to
believe he had a mandate to spend trillions of dollars preparing for
a nuclear war with Gog and Magog; Armageddon, after all, could not
take place in a world that had been disarmed. 93 The New York Times
expressed consternation that the American President was seriously
'reckoning with Armageddon' .94
Following the demise of the Soviet Union, fundamentalist Christians of the Old Right like Billy James Hargis and charismatic Christians of the New Right like George Otis Jr. found good reasons to
transform Gog into Kazakhstan and the predominantly Muslim
states which have since become independent.95 It is already clear
who the 'bad guy' is going to be in the new millennium. Evil in the
21st century will be given a Central Asian or Middle Eastern face.
History is full of examples of how symbols such as Gog and Magog
have been manipulated by sectarians. The books of Ezekiel and Revelation are full of imagery, so full in fact that 'intolerance, ignorance, sectarian fierceness, the sanguinary factiousness of an irreligious religionism, the eternal Pharisaism of the human heart, have
made of it their favourite camping ground'.96 In short, religious
hatred has driven many to discover their identity and the destiny of
others in the happy hunting ground of apocalyptic literature.
Abstract

All three monotheistic religions face the same problem posed by

prophetical-apocalyptic passages in their holy texts: Can names of
people and place names be identified with historical persons, places
and events? This study reveals inherent difficulties in such an exegetical approach. The war against 'Gog' has proved to be a very flexible
form of political rhetoric. While men of varying religious convictions
have neatly divided the world into God's camp and an evil empire,
they have instrumentalised and politicised eschatological imagery
and fitted it into their own socio-political setting. The author reveals
how the Gog-Magog oracle has shaped the thought and coloured
the judgements of believers in their relations to other ethnic and
religious groups.
92 G. Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, 47.
93 G. Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, 50.
94 New Yorlc Times, 25 October 1984.
95 Charisma, April 1991.
96 FA Tatford, Prophecy's Last Word. An Exposition of the Revelation (Thetford, 1978), 14