https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=HLMNxMGSlNY
But the gates of Alexander, the idea is that he goes up and there are a few different geographical formations that were later named the gates of Alexander and they’re actually actual walls and gates that were named the gates of Alexander. For instance, the Persians built one in, I want to say the sixth century. And they called it the wall of Alexander. They were very, very conscious. Remember, Alexander, everybody is to claim Alexander because he was the king of everything back then. Yeah, they’re Indian legends, they’re legends, they’re Jewish legends. And obviously Islamic legends much later and all these. In the Quran. Yeah, in the Quran. It’s in the Quran. And this story of Alexander’s gates is in the Quran as well, I believe. Yeah, although he’s got a different name. He’s not called Alexander. Alexander. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so the idea is Alexander goes and he builds these unbreakable gates. And for instance, in the, you know, the gates are usually made out of or a calcum or some other kind of magical metal. Yeah, like an alloy, like a weird. Yeah, some kind of a weird alloy because the idea is, it’s got to be magic proof, because the people that he’s, he’s sort of banishing beyond the furthest reaches of human civilization. They’re monsters there. And we can go into all kinds of ways in which they are monsters, you know, the different texts described them differently. The thing that they all tend to have in common is that they’re cannibals. Sometimes they have the heads of dogs that eat bugs. They, they eat, you know, aborted babies and like all this different stuff like they’re really monstrous, you know, and they’re banished beyond the they’re banished beyond. You can just understand the gates of Alexander as being like the furthest point of human civilization. Right. So there’s like, there’s like human civilization, including like the edge and then beyond the edge, there’s the wall and beyond the wall, there’s monsters. Yeah. And we can, we need to understand it as really a mythological representation of something which has many historical iterations, some which precede the apocalypse and some which come later, whether it be the Chinese wall, whether it be the walls in the UK. Yeah, so this is the wall like there’s a lot of this. Yeah, this is the thing that I want to point it wanted to point out is that historically in the east, there were several different walls which were built, obviously there’s the Great Wall of China, Alexander’s Wall, which is the second, I think the second largest wall ever built. And actually bigger in than some of the early sections of the Great Wall of China. But that was built in built by the Persians to keep out a group called the White Huns. And, but then yeah you’ve got the same thing going on in the UK. The Great Wall and the Hadrian’s Wall. Yeah, they built two different walls to keep out the Picts and the other, you know, the really crazy, really out there barbarian civilizations that were like, you know, England, you know, the island of Britain, that’s the edge of the Roman world. And they built walls to try to try to keep that stuff out. Of course, the story of all of these walls is that eventually they fail. And they usually fail because people, people stopped keeping the watch, or people were bought off, and people were bribed, or, or, or the, you know, they didn’t have money to maintain the wall anymore or something like that. Like it’s always, it’s always, you know, not a failure of you can say like a physical structure itself but a failure of the vigilance. Yeah, failure of attention, failure of vigilance. Yeah, failure of attention. And so they, and so something happens, they stop keeping the watch on the wall. And that’s when the monsters start coming in. And, and so this is like kind of the basic pattern of Gog and Magog, and it, it basically informs the way that the Levantine world, by, by, and when I say Levantine world, I mean both the Christian, the Jewish, and also the, the, the Islamic world of the Middle East during the Middle Ages, that this, this colors and affects the way that they think about and experience these Gap Hordes, which from their perspective are coming kind of out of the east and out of the north. And we talked a little bit last time about for Scandinavian peoples who at a slightly earlier, who at slightly earlier juncture in history were Gog and Magog, right? That’s, that’s the, that’s the thing to say about this, this idea of Gog and Magog is a little flexible, right? The way I like to talk about it, that it’s a category like friend and stranger. So the category of stranger, when I say that’s a stranger, it’s a category which is true and which exists, but that, but finds body in whatever embodies it. And so it’s almost like the word barbarian itself. The word barbarian doesn’t actually, it’s not a, it’s not like an ethnic word. It’s a word that talks about that which is outside. And so I think Gog and Magog seems to play that role as well. Yeah, a kind of a weird or goofy or maybe even at this point in history, sensitive example of this, just so that we say nothing at all controversial in Jonathan’s channel, is, is when I was growing up, you know, growing up in this evangelical setting, the, you know, in the south, in the south of North America. In the American South. So I live in the Dallas area and Dallas is actually the home of the origin point of a kind of theology called dispensationalism, which all that left behind stuff, the rapture stuff. You’re guilty. You’re guilty. We invented that. Yeah, you’re all welcome. You’re all welcome everyone. Like, where would you guys be without like a Nicolas Cage remake of a Kurt Cameron movie? I mean, that is the thing. That is the thing that happens, like people, I don’t know. It’s, yeah, amazing. But, and so in this, in this kind of dispensationalist point of view, I mean, I can remember when I was a kid, I would just chuck out. I read every book in our church library, we had a, I don’t know if it’s a thing that a lot of the churches that I grew up in had like a library. Yeah. At my parish now we have a church bookstore, which is not quite the same thing. But, but we had a church library and you could, and actually I volunteered at the church library, surprising to everyone. I volunteered to the church library so I would go and I would, I would work there on Sunday afternoons after church to help people check books out and check books back in and contact people who are late on their books and so on. And anyway, so the, but this church library was mostly books about the end times, about end times prophecy. I mean, that was, it was a very small room. There were probably 200, 300 books and they were mostly about end times prophecy. And at some point in the process of my childhood I read all of these books. I was just really fascinated by this stuff. And one of the things that, you know, I read this one book, and the thing is like I didn’t know how old some of these books were. Like a lot of these books were written in like the 70s and 80s. Yeah. And so this is the thing. This is, this is where this long and rambling story is going, is that I would read this story and it, you know, and it, you know, I’m reading a book that’s written during the Cuban missile crisis, right. And so Gog and Magog are Cuba and Russia. And then I’d go home and I’d be like really freaked out and like dad, do you know about these missiles in Cuba and all this stuff and he’d be like, actually that, that happened like a long time ago and it’s not, you know, when, you know, that happened before you were born. It’s not a problem now. It’s, you know, but yeah. So, so this is the thing is that that Gog and Magog were, you know, Russia and China or Russia and Cuba or, you know, they’re basically like whatever, whoever the other is, whoever the enemy is, whatever the sort of unknown. And it’s kind of like, it, I mean, in, in currently like political correct, critical race theory discourse and things like that, there’s this, there’s a lot of talk about not othering people, right. But there’s, there’s something to that. Right. And what I mean by that is, is basically as soon as, as soon as like something becomes really familiar to you, you could say as soon as it becomes sort of domesticated, you know, so as, so if you, if you don’t know, I mean, for instance, you know, Russia is the bad guy, you know, right now in America. So like, if you don’t know a whole lot about Russian politics or culture or things like this, then it’s really easy. And, and obviously this Russia is Gog and Magog stuff has been making the rounds again, right. Because of that, if you do know a lot about the political situation over there, then you might not, you know, be able to, you know, be able to get into the political You can say, oh, this war is terrible. We need to pray for these people, all this stuff. But, but in your mind, they’re the sort of, they’re other human beings. Nations have wars all the time. We need to pray for the situation. But, but there’s not that, not that same sense that, you know, they’re the barbaric horde on the edge of the world. Right. So it’s, it’s a, so this is an identity that is always kind of looking for a home, you could say. Yeah. Well, that’s why, that’s why one of the reasons why I emphasize St. Christopher so much is because I think that the icon of St. Christopher and the story of St. Christopher is a way to both acknowledge the strangeness, but then give you a method by which to, to domesticate it and then engage it. So I think that that’s, it’s important to understand that. And I, what you see in the old Pentecost icon is something like that too, which is like, we acknowledge the strangeness of the, of the foreigner, but then we don’t, we don’t see that as an absolute limit. Like it is possible to slowly enter into contact with them and then, and then, yeah, kind of bring them into our, bring them into a relationship, but that’s not a, but it’s, so it’s not, it’s when people say don’t other others, like don’t other them. That’s like, you can’t do that. We’re made that way. Like this is something that we do automatically. If you don’t realize that you do it, then you’ll do it unconsciously. And you won’t even realize, just as you’re criticizing people for othering, you’ll be doing it at the same time. Exactly. So it’s better to recognize it as a normal mechanism of perception that we see strange things as kind of monstrous, kind of hybrid, you know, off key. And then how is it then that now we can domesticate that to the extent that it’s possible? Sometimes you also don’t because I’m, there are some strange things that are dangerous for you, you know, it’s like that, that really could. So if you, if you see a dark stranger in an alleyway, you know, you don’t know who it is, but you might not want to domesticate that dark stranger in an alleyway. It might be better to walk away because that dark stranger in the alleyway might just kill you, you know. I mean, weird food is another great example. I mean, I grew up eating in kind of like an Asian American household. So kind of living these two worlds, we ate a lot of Chinese food, like really traditional Chinese food, and a lot of traditional Chinese food, and let’s say like traditional poor people food in general, right? The way that something like, I’ll pick on you because you’re French-ish, the way that a snail becomes a delicacy, right, you’re not supposed to eat snails. You’re not. Snails are bugs, they crawl around on the ground, they’re slimy. You shouldn’t eat snails. But if you’re poor enough, you will figure out a way to cook a snail so that it kind of tastes good. And that’s when a flip happens and you have all these things that used to be basically poor people food. I mean, a great example is shrimp or octopus or any other invertebrate that comes out of the ocean. That’s all trash food, right? That’s Mediterranean trash food. That’s why you’re allowed to eat it during a fast because it’s a bug, right? So that’s trash food. It’s crawling around in the filth at the bottom of the ocean, right? Literally the bottom of the abyss, right? At the bottom of hell, there’s a bug crawling around eating garbage, and you’re allowed to eat that. But eventually people figured out a way to cook that so it’s really tasty. And that’s why in the United States, shrimp, lobster, etc. are delicacies. So, I mean, that’s a good way to understand the process of domesticating a certain thing. But then there’s stuff that’s even beyond that a little bit. I took the kids to the Dallas World Aquarium yesterday, and they had a bunch of puffer fish in the tank. And I was showing them the puffer fish and unfortunately none of them got angry at us. I was hoping we’d see one of them kind of pop up. But we were talking about puffer fish and I was explaining to them how puffer fish work and what they do and how they protect themselves. But then also explaining that puffer fish are extremely toxic and potentially lethal to eat, but that hasn’t stopped them from being a delicacy in certain Asian countries. Japan in particular, right? And so then that’s like taking that to the very edge of what you can do in terms of domesticating something, right? But then there’s stuff that nobody can do. There’s stuff that nobody can integrate. Yeah, but I think the images that we see in the way they represent Gog and Magog, right? That they say that they’re cannibals. The fact that they say that they eat human fetuses, you know, like that other images that could be used would be incest or all these kind of taboos that cannot be integrated. That they just can’t. Like if we integrate them, they could destroy society. Yeah, yeah. And you know, drinking the blood of animals, which is actually a thing that a lot of these nomadic tribes certainly did. You know, drinking mare’s blood, eating horse flesh, things like that. Horse flesh is a, let’s say, a gray area when it comes to food taboos. A lot of societies don’t eat horses for some reason that they don’t eat dogs. It’s like it’s a little, it’s an animal that’s a little too close to the human experience in some way, but also unclean for, you know, other reasons as well. So, yeah. So you’ve got the symbolism of Gog and Magog out on the edge. You’ve got the gates of Alexander and then that idea of the gates of Alexander actually manifests itself literally a bunch of times throughout history, right? So you can, I mean, this is the way to read this apocalyptic literature is to look for the pattern and then see the way the pattern is manifesting. But in the apocalypse and in the Alexander romance and in the Islamic legend, the idea is that at the end of the world, one of the things that will bring about the end of the world or while the end of the world is playing out, the gates of Alexander will be breached and Gog and Magog will be unleashed on the world to kind of devour it, judge it, all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So this is this idea that we find in the apocalypse of Pseudo-Mathodias, but we actually find it way before this in the Old Testament and in the book of Revelation for that matter, right? In all of this apocalyptic literature, even in things like the prophecy of Habakkuk, right? What the prophecy of Habakkuk is all about, why would God use these heathen barbarian nations, in this case, the Neo-Assyrians by historians today in the Bible, they’re called the Babylonians. Why would God use them to punish his own people? Right? Isn’t that? And this is a big question. I mean, there’s a bunch of the Ezra literature. So like, there’s a whole genre of literature in the Second Temple Jewish period around the prophet Ezra and his apocalyptic visions. And so this starts out with a book called Fourth Ezras, which is actually in the Russian Orthodox Bible. So if you’re in the Russian tradition, it’s in your Bible, you should go read it. It’s actually pretty rad. It’s super cool. And it’s all about this idea, like, why would God use unjust people to punish his own people? You know, which is this question that comes up over and over again in the Holy Scriptures. And then kind of more generally, like, why would God use barbarians to punish, you know, Roman civilization? Why would God use demons to chastise humankind? Things like this, right? It’s that same question kind of over and over again. And we see that question kind of expressed here. Like, that’s one of the main things the Apocalypse of Pseudomethorius is dealing with. The time of the writing here is probably during the Muslim conquest of much of the Levant and much of the Byzantine world. And so that’s one of the things that the author is trying to really come to terms with, is to say, why are we, what’s going on here? What happened to the, you know, the kingdom of God? What’s going on? Which is also a question that a lot earlier, for instance, Augustine is trying to answer. And so this is what he’s trying to answer. So Augustine tried to answer when he writes the city of God, right? It’s the same kind of a question when we’re confronted with history that doesn’t seem to be going the way we think it should. We have to sort of we have to step back and get this apocalyptic perspective. And that’s what an apocalypse is for. It’s to show you here are the patterns of the ends of things, but also the larger pattern of how God is working in the world. And so this is what it says. And it says that after the conquest of Bezos or there’s the Byzantines by Ishmael and Ishmael’s children, that he’s going to he’ll eventually be defeated. Ishmael will eventually be defeated and he’ll be defeated by two things. One will be the resurgence of the king of the Romans coming out of Ethiopia, which you’ve already talked about. And then the other thing, the other thing that’s going to happen is going to be that the gates of the north will be opened up and out will come the powers of the nations which were enclosed within. And the whole earth will reel from their face and men will cry aloud and flee and hide themselves in the mountains and in the caves among the gravestones. And they will be deadened with fear and many will perish for none will be to bury bodies. And basically this is the thing that precipitates the end. The king of the Romans after this shortly, he gives up the kingdom. We’ve talked about this already. He gives up the kingdom to God. And when he gives up the kingdom to God, the Antichrist appears and then the end comes. So there’s this idea that as part of the end of a cycle or the end of a period or the end of the world, part of what happens at the end is that the barrier is broken down. And all the things that you were keeping out, they show up and they show up. They show up as this powerful destructive force, but also as sort of a, you know, what St. Gregor Mnissot would refer to as the left hand of God, right, is they show up and their destruction is not without a purpose, right? It becomes sort of like a wildfire, right? Where it kind of burns down all the stuff that shouldn’t, you know, all the corruption, all the decadence that’s building up. And also a flood. It’s really related to the flood. Definitely related to the idea of the flood that comes. But people, and I think just maybe to kind of point to the symbolic aspect, how people understand that this is really the description of death in general. It’s a description of how something in. So you have a. That’s what death is when the outside things finally break in. That’s what death is. So you are there. Your body, you’re fighting the outside. Your body is holding together and kind of, let’s say, integrating some outside things, you know, ejecting some things. But then at some point, your body stops to do that. And then the worms, the things, everything breaks apart and everything from the outside comes in. And then there’s no difference between the inside and the outside. You basically decompose. And so this image of the barbarians coming in, finally breaking the barrier. That’s what it is. It’s the same thing like I have an apple falling to the ground. And then ultimately it starts to get mushy. And finally it breaks down. And then the inside and the outside coalesce. But it also is a breaking down which can produce fertile ground for a new beginning at the same time. Right. And that’s just a natural pattern of things. Thank you.