Pseudo-Methodius
late 7th century CE
translated by Jason Colavito
2026
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NOTE |
The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius is a late seventh-century Syriac apocalyptic text, falsely attributed to Methodius of Olympus, that emerged in the context of the early Islamic conquests and reflects Christian anxieties about the sudden collapse of Byzantine power. Written originally in Syriac (and soon translated into Greek and Latin), it presents a sweeping eschatological narrative in which the rise of the “sons of Ishmael” is interpreted as divine punishment, followed by the reign of the last Roman emperor who will defeat the invaders, restore Christian rule, and ultimately relinquish his crown in Jerusalem before the coming of the Antichrist. Its importance in medieval culture was immense: it became one of the most widely read and influential apocalyptic texts in both the Byzantine and Latin worlds, shaping expectations about sacred history, imperial destiny, and the end times. The work helped crystallize the enduring legend of the Last Emperor and influenced later apocalyptic traditions, crusading ideology, and even Western medieval historiography by providing a theological framework through which Christians could interpret geopolitical upheaval.
For such an important text, it surprisingly remained untranslated until very recently, save for the lengthy, late excerpt Solomon of Akhlat included in the Book of the Bee (1222 CE), which E. A. Wallis Budge translated in 1886, and which I present at the bottom of this page. Benjamin Garstad published an English translation of the Latin and Greek versions in 2012, and Christopher J. Banura translated the full Syriac text in 2025. As these remain under copyright, and no English translation is available online, I have translated the Latin text below from the critical edition published for Ernst Sackur in 1898. For comparison, I have also translated a section of the Syriac original, the first fragment found in Syriac. The text comes from F. Nau’s French translation, which appeared in the Journal Asiatique in 1917. As Nau outlined at the time, the Syriac fragment preserves original readings changed in translation, including the word aimant (“magnets”) for the Gates of Alexander, where the Latin gives the otherwise unknown word asincitum, and it preserves a clearer chronology of events situating the prophecies in the late seventh century CE, the original era of the predicted End Times, a chronology that was revised in translation when the prophecy failed to occur. In 1931, a complete manuscript was discovered, proving the Apocalypse to have been composed originally in Syriac. |
THE APOCALYPSE OF PSEUDO-METHODIUS
THE LATIN VERSION
The preface of the monk Peter begins.
Love is charity and the friend of peace, which often inflames our hearts' discord about you. No one doubts that this is the least true love, which fulfills that Decalogue effect: "You shall love," he says, "your neighbor as yourself." This is a verse of the divine song that we meditate on, and we wish to call each of us a companion of that holy charity. Hence, compelled by love by the love of your brotherhood, not as if we were more learned, but as men who are very inferior in the path of virtue and much more inexperienced in the divine law, but, as I have said before, love commands, what is loved insists that it remain; but the lover, in obedience, submits his neck, and the obedient, for the sake of subjection, makes a better sacrifice. Therefore, want urges us, for humility, to intimate to you some tips from the holy scriptures, requested because of the desire of your soul; which we, out of obedience of charity, answer that we will be able to fulfill if our life is still in God's will. Now, however, not to be rash in inferring anything from some of us, because there are not lacking those who insult the carnally wise, even if the hearing of the truth benefits their ears and others, and especially in these times, which we see, and with the vices committed, which are being constrained in the present ears, especially to those who despise the better or more competently insinuated into the senses of past teachers or ancient fathers who have long since fallen asleep in Christ, I have therefore taken care to translate the doctrine of the blessed martyr Methodius from Greek into Latin, and since it has been prophesied more aptly for our times, in the last centuries, as the apostles did, so that we may now believe that what was predicted by our fathers was true through the very things that we see with our eyes. For this reason, I have thought it more appropriate to translate this little book from Greek into Latin.
Here begins the Sermon of Saint Methodius, Bishop of Patara, on the Kingdom of the Cantii and a Sure Demonstration concerning the End Times.
1. One must know, then, how Adam and Eve, when they went out of Paradise, were still virgins. In the thirtieth year after their expulsion from Paradise they begot Cain, the firstborn, and his sister Calmana; and after another thirty years they bore Abel with his sister Debbora. In the one‑hundred‑and‑thirtieth year of Adam’s life Cain killed his brother Abel, and Adam and Eve made lamentation over him. In the two‑hundred‑and‑thirtieth year, in the first millennium—that is, the first age—Seth was born, a giant‑like man in the likeness of Adam. But in the five‑hundredth year of that same first chiliad, the sons of Cain began to abuse the wives of their brothers with excessive fornications. And in the six‑hundredth year of that first millennium, through the frenzy of their lust and fornication, the women collapsed and were poured out, and were turned into madness; for they behaved toward their own husbands as if toward women, having overstepped all bounds.
They became—if I may speak more plainly—a spectacle of confusion to those who saw them, and in their shameless fornication they appeared openly without shame. In the eight‑hundredth year of Adam’s life the uncleanness of fornication was spread over the earth by the sons of Cain, the fratricide. Adam died in the nine‑hundred‑and‑thirtieth year of his life, in the first millennium. And then the descendants of Seth were separated from the kin of Cain; and Seth took his own lineage upward to a certain mountain near Paradise, where they dwelt. But Cain and his kin lived in the plain where the abominable murder of his brother had been committed. In the fortieth year of the time of Jared the first millennium, that is, the first generation, came to an end.
2. In the three‑hundred‑and‑fortieth year of Jared, in the second millennium, there arose men skilled in evil arts—wicked inventors, filled with every abomination—from among the sons of Cain, namely Jobeth and Tholucel, the sons of Lamech, who was blind and who killed Cain. The devil took dominion over them and turned them toward composing every kind of musical art. In the five‑hundredth year of the second millennium, all the men in the encampments of Cain burned still more fiercely in the most shameful fornication, becoming worse than the former generation; for they came together after the manner of animals, rising up one against another, both in the male and in the female sex. Likewise, those who were of the lineage of Cain practiced these same disgraceful and incestuous acts. But in the seven‑hundredth year of Jared’s life—which is in the second chiliad—the malicious and hostile devil added the warfare of fornication against the sons of Seth, so that they began to desire the daughters of Cain. And when they fell, giants appeared upon the earth from among the sons of Seth, who, having collapsed into the pit of sin, became exceedingly savage; and the Lord God grew angry. At the completion of the second millennium the flood of waters came to pass, and every creature of the first formation was destroyed or swallowed up. The generation of the first‑formed human perished, in the six‑hundred‑and‑twelfth year of the life of Noah.
3. Now, in the three‑thousandth year, after Noah came out of the ark, the sons of Noah built a new settlement in the outer regions of the earth, and they called the name of that region Tham, not according to the numbering of those who came forth from the ark. A son was born to Noah, in his own likeness, and he called his name Ionitus. In the three‑hundredth year of the three‑thousandth period, Noah gave gifts to his son Ionitus and sent him into the land of the East. And after the death of Noah, in the six‑hundred‑and‑ninetieth year of that same three‑thousandth period, the sons of Noah came up from the land of the East and built for themselves a tower in the land of Sennahar; and there the languages were divided, and they were scattered over the face of the whole earth. But Ionitus, the son of Noah, went into the East as far as the sea which is called hiliu chora, that is, “the region of the sun,” where the rising of the sun takes place, and he dwelt there. Ionitus received from God the gift of wisdom—not only this, but every branch of astronomy—and he became its inventor. To him came down Nebroth, who was a giant, and being instructed by him, he received counsel from him concerning the places in which they should begin to reign. Now this Nebroth descended from the sons of the heroes; he was the son of Shem, and he was the first to reign over the earth. In the seven‑hundred‑and‑ninetieth year of the third chiliad, which belonged to the three‑thousandth period, great Babylon was built, and Nebroth reigned in it.
And after these things the sons of Ham made for themselves a king from among their own people, whose name was Pontipus. And now, in the seven‑hundred‑and‑ninety‑ninth year of the three‑thousandth period, in the third year of the reign of Nebroth, they sent mighty men from the sons of Japheth—wise men and craftsmen skilled in the art of building—and they went down into the eastern land to Ionitus, the son of Noah, and built for him a city, which they named Ionitum according to his name. And there was great peace in the kingdom of Ionitus and of Nebroth down to the present day. But in the reign of Nebroth, the sons of Shem and the Pontipus of the sons of Ham and the sons of Japheth rebelled against one another. Therefore Ionitus wrote a letter to Nebroth, saying that the kingdom of the sons of Japheth would begin here to destroy the kingdom of the sons of Ham. These kingdoms first appeared upon the earth, and after these all the nations learned to establish for themselves kingdom after kingdom.
4. Therefore Nebrim, when the third chiliad of years had already been completed, in the eighth year of the fourth chiliad, the two kingdoms were continually fighting against one another; and the kingdom of the Egyptians was defeated by the kingdom of Nebroth, and the dominion of the kingdom of Babylon remained in the seed of Nebroth down to Chuzimisdem. This Chuzimisdem took for himself a wife from the daughters of Ham. But when Chuzimisdem died, Ezdem, his grandson, took his mother as his wife and begot Eresdem by her. This Eresdem gathered many forces for himself and rose up against the kingdom of Ham, and he captured and burned with fire all the regions that lay to the West. In the second year of the reign of Chosdri, the son of Eresdem, the sons of Ham assembled and went down into the land of the East to wage war against King Chosdron. They were three hundred and thirty thousand foot‑soldiers, armed only with staffs in their hands. But when Chosdron heard of this, he laughed and let them come on until they had crossed the river Tigris; and there he sent his army against them, mounted upon elephants, and he killed them all, and not one of them was left. And thereafter the sons of Ham no longer dared to fight against them, and from that time the kingdoms ceased from rebelling against one another.
5. And at the end of the four‑thousandth year, that is, in the twenty‑fifth year of the time of the chiliads, Samsishaibus went down into the East. He was of the lineage of Ionitus, the son of Noah. And he laid waste the land from the Euphrates as far as Edroigan—that is, sixty‑seven cities and their regions. He passed through the three kingdoms of the Indians, and he burned and desolated them, and he went out into the desert of Saba and struck down the encampments of the sons of Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah, the wife of Abraham.
And all the people of Jathrib were driven out, and they fled into the wilderness of Eththrib and entered the land of Ja‑Medina, uninhabited. And they fought with the kingdoms of the nations, and they plundered, and they took captives, and they ruled over the kingdoms of the nations that were in the land of promise; and they exhausted it, and the encampments of those nations as well. They were like locusts, and they went about naked, and they ate the flesh of camels packed in skins, and they drank the blood of beasts mixed with milk.
When, therefore, the sons of Ishmael had gained possession of the whole land and had desolated its cities and regions, and had given themselves mastery over all the islands, then in that time they built ships, and using them like birds they flew over the waters of the sea. They went up into the regions of the West as far as great Rome, and Illyricum, and Gigitum, and Thessalonica, and great Sardinia, which lies beyond Rome; and they held dominion over the land for sixty years and did whatever they wished in it. But after sixty years, when their power had been subdued for eight and a half years—during which they had gained the kingdom of all the nations—their hearts were exalted when they saw that they had conquered and ruled all kingdoms.
In that time there arose for them four tyrant‑commanders of the army, who were the sons of Umee, as they called her. Their names were these: Oreb, Zeb, Zeber, and Salmana. These fought against the Israelites; and just as God wrought redemption from the hand of the Egyptians through Moses his servant, so also at that time he worked mercy for them and redeemed them from these through Gideon. And they were freed from the slavery of the sons of Ishmael. For Gideon struck down their encampments, and pursuing them he drove them out of the land into the uninhabited wilderness of Ethrib, from which they had come forth. And those who survived made covenants of peace with the sons of Israel and went out into the outer desert of the nine tribes.
But in the future they will come forth once more and will lay waste the land and will gain possession of the whole world and its regions, at the coming of peace, from the land of Egypt to Ethiopia, and from the Euphrates to India, and from the Tigris to the entrance of Naod, the kingdom of Ionitus the son of Noah, and from the north to Rome and Illyricum and Gigitum and Thessalonica and Albania, and as far as the sea that flows into Pontus.
And their yoke will be double upon the necks of all nations, and there will be no nation or kingdom under heaven that can defeat them until the number of the seven weeks of time is fulfilled. And after these things they will be overcome by the heavenly kingdom, and also by the Romans, and will be subjected to it. For this kingdom—that is, the kingdom of the Romans—will be magnified above all the kingdoms of the nations, and it will never be destroyed by any of them forever. For they have an invincible weapon, by which all their adversaries are cast down.
6. From this point, therefore, consider the cycles of the times and the reigns that turn about; and this is the truth of the matter, which shows itself more clearly than anything, without any error, obscurity, or deception. For from Nebroth, who was a giant, down to Perusdec, the kingdoms of the giants held the land of Babylonia. And from Perusdec down to Ses the Elder, who was of Idrohigam, the Persians reigned; and from Ses down to Perusdech those of Lec ruled. And from Phun and from Perusdec down to Sennacherib and Babylonia they reigned. And Sennacherib took as his wife Jecnad of Ararat, and she bore him Ardemelech and Tzaratzar; and these killed their father and fled into the land of Ararat. And Saradon reigned there in Babylon in place of his father Sennacherib.
And Nebuchadnezzar, who was from his father Luzia and from his mother, the queen of Saba—when Sennacherib had gone forth to fight with the king of India and as far as Saba, and had laid waste many regions—Nebuchadnezzar went out with him, he being brought forth and taken with him; and he appointed him commander of his army. And because of the wisdom that was in him, and his strength, the kingdom of Babylonia was given to him. And he took for himself a wife from the Medes, named Erusdem. And after the death of Nebuchadnezzar and of Belshazzar his son, Darius the Mede reigned, the grandson of Erusdem. And Darius took as his wife Dorun, a Persian by race, from whom was born Cyrus the Persian.
7. Now hear, therefore, how these kings became mingled with one another: the Babylonians with the Medes, and the Persians likewise with the Medes. And the kingdom of Babylon became stronger and more powerful than Ethiopia and Saba and all the kingdoms of the nations from the sea as far as the river Euphrates. Moreover, even the kingdom of David was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, as also the kingdoms of the Arabs and of the Egyptians. Darius the Mede surpassed the kingdom of the Indians and of the Ethiopians. But Cyrus the Persian gained possession of Taracia and redeemed the sons of Israel, and he sent them into the land of promise, commanding them to build the temple of God, which had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar; and thus the second temple was built by the command of King Cyrus.
8. Therefore now hear with full certainty how these four kingdoms came together with one another: the Ethiopians with the Macedonians, and the Romans with the Greeks. These are the four winds that stir up the great sea. For Philip, the father of Alexander the Macedonian, indeed saw that the peoples of the East were abominable—dogs, mice, serpents, eaters of carrion, malformed abortions, and those things which in the womb are not yet coagulated by any softening, nor have any part of their members formed so as to complete a shape or express a face; likewise the offspring of beasts and every kind of unclean wild animal. And they do not bury their dead, but often eat them. Seeing all these things done by them in such unclean and wicked ways, Alexander feared lest at some time they should go forth and burst out into the Holy Land and defile it with their most polluted and wicked practices. Therefore he prayed earnestly to God. And giving command, he gathered them all together—their women, their sons, and all their encampments—and he led them out from the land of the East and shut them in, threatening them, until they entered the boundaries of the North. And there is no entrance nor exit from East to West by which anyone could pass to them or enter.
Immediately Alexander prayed to God, and God heard his supplication. And the Lord God commanded two mountains, whose name is “the breasts of the North,” and they drew near to one another until only twelve cubits remained between them. And he built gates of bronze and overlaid them with asincitum, so that, even if they wished to open them with iron, they could not, nor dissolve them with fire, nor accomplish either; for immediately every fire is extinguished. Such is the nature of asincitum, for it is neither broken by the blow of iron nor dissolved by fire. For all the inventions of demons and deadly or vain devices these most shameful and deformed and filthy nations practice, abusing all the wicked arts of magic in unclean ways. Their filthy and inhuman, indeed—more fittingly said—God‑hated sorceries were destroyed, so that they could not by iron nor by fire nor by any other cunning device open or unfasten those gates and escape.
But in the last times, according to the prophecy of Ezekiel, which says: “In the last day, at the consummation of the world, Gog and Magog shall go forth in the land of Israel”—these are the nations and kings whom Alexander shut up in the northern boundaries: Gog and Magog, and Anog and Ageg, and Achennaz and Dephar, and Potinei and Libii and Euni, and Pharizei and Declemis and Zarmatae and Theblei and Zamartiani and Chachonii and Amazarthe and Agrimardii and Anuphagii, who are called Cynocephali, and Tharbei and Alanes and Phisolonicii and Arcnei and Asalturii. These twenty‑two kings remain shut up within the gates which Alexander fastened.
9. When Alexander died, the first king of the Greeks, four of his youths reigned in his place; for he had never joined himself to any wife in marriage. But Chuseth, his mother, returned to her own homeland, Ethiopia. Now Byzas, who founded Byzantium, sent by sea to Phol, king of Ethiopia, a commander of his army named Germanicus, and made peace with him, writing to him concerning Chuseth, the mother of Alexander—how he should take her to himself as wife and make her queen. Phol the king, receiving the letter from Germanicus and seeing the very great gifts he had brought, rejoiced exceedingly. Therefore he himself arose, and gathering from every part of Ethiopia, he took also his daughter Chuseth and set out for Byzantium, having with him thirty thousand Ethiopians in his retinue. And he was received at once by Byzas across the sea at Chalcedon with great and eager joy. He also gave rich gifts to those who had come with him. Phol entered Byzantium and gave great gifts and the greatest royal presents; and King Byzas took Chuseth, the daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, as his wife. From her a daughter was born to him, whom he named after the city Byzantia. She was married to Romyllus, also called Armaleus, king of Rome. Because of her extraordinary beauty he loved her greatly. He himself was exceedingly simple and magnanimous, and therefore, as part of her marriage‑portion, he gave her Rome. But when his nobles heard this, they were indignant against him. Byzantia bore him three sons, whom he named as follows: the firstborn, according to the name of his father, Armaleus; the second, Urbanus; the third he named Claudius.
Thus each of them reigned: Armaleus in Rome in place of his father Armaleus; Urbanus in Byzantium, the city of his mother; and Claudius in Alexandria. Thus the seed of Chuseth, daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, gained dominion—both among the Macedonians and the Romans—from the seed of the Ethiopians. This is the hand that shall go before God on the last day, according to the prophetic interpretation.
For blessed David, foreseeing with spiritual eyes and knowing beforehand how Chuseth, daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, would begin to raise up the kingdom of the Romans, spoke beforehand, saying: “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God.” Some have thought that David said this because of the kingdom of the Ethiopians, but they are mistaken who think so; for indeed, since this great and venerable kingdom was established from the seed of the Ethiopians, the holy and life‑giving cross—honorable and glorious—was fixed in the midst of the earth. From this, perhaps, as is fitting, the ancient father David uttered the saying: “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God.” For there is no nation or kingdom under heaven that can prevail to overcome the kingdom of the Christians. As we have already said above, the life‑giving cross is fixed and established in the midst of the earth, from which the boundaries of the world are wisely defined according to breadth and length and height and depth. Who could ever overcome the power of the holy cross or grasp its might? Thus the dignity of the Roman Empire holds its honor through him who hung upon it—our Lord Jesus Christ.
10. Let us therefore hear what Paul, the preacher of divine things, taught when he signified the matter of the last day and the kingdom of the Romans. For in a certain place, in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, he says thus: “We beseech you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him, that you be not quickly shaken from your mind nor terrified—neither by spirit nor by word nor by a letter as though sent by us—as if the day of the Lord were at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way, for unless the rebellion comes first and the man of iniquity is revealed, the son of perdition, who is the adversary and who exalts himself above everything that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself as though he were God… And now you know what restrains him, that he may be revealed in his time. Only he who restrains now will restrain, until he is taken out of the midst; and then the lawless one will be revealed.”
Who, therefore, is “the one taken out of the midst” except the empire of the Romans? For all principalities and powers of this world will be destroyed except this one; for this alone is attacked and will not be overcome. And all the nations that fight against it will be crushed or consumed by it, and it will prevail until the final hour arrives. And this is the hand that shall go before God, according to the Apostle who says: “When every principality and all power has been destroyed, then the Son himself will hand over the kingdom to God the Father.”
What kingdom? Clearly, the kingdom of the Christians. For where has there ever been, or is there now, or will there ever be, any kingdom or power that surpasses this one? If you wish me to examine what is certain, consider, I beg you, the people of Moses and the wonders and signs wrought for them, and how even the Egyptians were shaken in the depths of the sea. Consider also Joshua, under whom the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Jericho, and many other stupendous miracles of God. And, to make my point clearer, consider all the strength of the Hebrews—how under the Roman Empire they were destroyed and crushed. Titus and Vespasian cut them down entirely. Did not Hadrian plow the very site of the Temple with a plow? What kingdom, therefore, was or will be like this one? We find none.
Let us therefore hold to the truth. Did not the Hebrews reign for a thousand years? And their kingdom was cut off. The Egyptians reigned for three thousand years, and they likewise perished. The Babylonians reigned for four thousand years, and they too were cut down. The Macedonians and the Egyptians fought with arms against the kingdom of the Romans, and the barbarian kingdoms—the Turks and the Abares—were all swallowed up by it. And after the kingdom of the Persians has been swallowed up, the sons of Ishmael, the sons of Hagar—whom Scripture calls “the southern arm,” as Daniel also foretold—will rise up against the empire of the Romans. And they will oppose the Roman kingdom in the cycle of the turning times, in the seventh period itself—that is, in the seven‑thousandth year of the world—because the consummation of the age has drawn near, and the length of the times will be no more.
11. For in the last mile, or the seventh, then in the seventh mile, the seed of Ishmael will begin to come out of the wilderness of Ethribun; and when they come out, they will gather together in one accord in the great Gibeah, and there will be fulfilled what was said by the prophet Ezekiel: “Son of man, call to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the air, and exhort them, saying: Gather together and come, for I am sacrificing a great sacrifice for you; eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the high ones.” Therefore in this Gibeah they will fall by the edge of the sword from the seed of Ishmael, who is called the wild ass, because they are sent in anger and fury upon the face of the whole earth, upon men also and cattle and beasts of the forest, and upon every forest and plant and upon every tree, and upon every species of fruit; and their coming will be a chastisement without mercy, and they will bring upon them upon the earth these four plagues, that is, destruction and ruin, also corruption and desolation. For God says to Israel through Moses: Not because the Lord God loves you does He bring you into the land of promise, that you may inherit it, but because of the sins of those who dwell therein. So also the sons of Ishmael, not because the Lord God loves them, will He give them this power, that they may obtain the land of the Christians, but because of the sin and iniquity which they commit.
Similar things have not happened to them, nor will they happen in all generations, for then men will put on the clothes of adulterers and harlots, and just as the harlots adorned themselves, standing in the streets and at the gates of the cities, openly to all, and they changed their natural use into that which is contrary to nature, as did the blessed and most holy apostle, and likewise these women, who were acting in the same way as the men. So the father and his son and his brother and all who seem to be related by blood came together to one woman. For they were ignorant of harlots, because of what the wisest Paul, perhaps exclaiming before the series of times, said: “For this cause, he says, God gave them over to shameful passions, for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature, and in like manner also their men, leaving the natural use of the woman, were inflamed with lust for one another, men with men, working shamelessness, and receiving the recompense of their error into themselves.” For this cause therefore they shall be delivered by God into the hands of the barbarians, from whom they shall fall into all uncleanness and the stench of pollution, and their women shall be defiled by the defiled barbarians, and they shall cast the lots of the sons of Ishmael upon their sons and daughters, and the land of the Persians shall be delivered over to corruption and destruction, and the inhabitants thereof shall be led away into captivity and slaughter.
Armenia also and those who dwell therein Captivity and the sword shall fall. Cappadocia shall be laid waste and desolated, and its inhabitants shall be consumed with the sword. Sicily shall be laid waste and those who dwell in it shall be led away into slaughter and captivity. The land of Syria shall be desolate and ruined, and those who dwell in it shall perish by the sword. Cilicia shall be laid waste and those who dwell in it shall be led away into slaughter and captivity. Greece shall be laid waste and destroyed, and those who dwell in it shall be led away into captivity. Romania shall be laid waste and destroyed, and the islands of the sea shall be turned into a fugitive. And those who dwell in them shall perish by the sword and in captivity. Egypt also and the East shall be under the yoke and shall be brought into great tribulations; For they will be oppressed without mercy, and the weight of gold or silver will be desired above the strength of their souls, and the inhabitants of Egypt or Syria will be in distress and affliction seven times as much as those in captivity, and the land of promise will be filled with people from the four winds under heaven.
And they shall be like locusts in multitude, which shall be gathered by the wind, and there shall be among them pestilence and famine, and their heart shall be exalted and of the bounders, and pride shall slip away and they shall speak lofty things until the time appointed for them, and they shall obtain the entrance and the exit of the north and the east, the west and from the sea and all things shall be under their yoke, men also and beasts flying or fish swimming in the sea, even and the waters of the sea obeying them. And the destitute cities, which were widowed by them of the inhabitants, will be theirs and they will write their boundaries through the wilderness and the wood of the forests and the dust of the land and the stones and the fertility of the sea and the fish of the rivers will be theirs entrance, and the labors or sweat of the farmers of the land and the abundance of the rich and what is brought to the saints, whether gold or silver or precious stones or brass or iron, all will be theirs. Also the sacred or splendid garments and the food all things, and everything that is precious will be theirs. And their heart will be exalted to the point that they will desire the dead according to the equality of the living.
Likewise, they will demand from the orphans and widows and the sick and will not spare the needy and the poor, for they will dishonor every elder and afflict the needy, and they will have no compassion on the weak and the weak. But they will mock and ridicule all who shine in wisdom and those who are magnified in matters of the republic and all will be silent or afraid, unable to argue or speak this or that, and all who inhabit the earth will be astonished for fear. And their wisdom and learning will be coming from themselves them not growing nor needing to be added or added to it and there will be no one who can change or quibble their words and their journey will be from sea to sea, and from the rising of the sun to the setting, and from the north to the desert of Ethiopia and their journey will be called the way of narrowness, and old men and elders walk in it, and the poor and the rich hungry and thirsty are hindered and they bless those who are already dead.
For indeed, this discipline—or rather, this falling‑away—was foretold by the Apostle, who says: “Unless the rebellion comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition.” For indeed, this “falling‑away” is a form of discipline or correction, and all the inhabitants of the earth are being chastised. And because God called Ishmael their father a wild ass, for this reason the wild asses and the goats in the wilderness and all kinds of wild and tame beasts will be crushed by them and will become few under them and will pursue men and the beasts of the forest will perish with hunger, because they are destitute of the land and will cut down all the trees of the forest and the appearance of the mountains will perish, and the cities will be desolate and the regions will be without a way, because humanity is diminished and the land will be polluted with blood, and it will contain its fruits. For they are not men who rule in a tyrannical manner over a barbaric nation, but are sons exiled in the wilderness and therefore they go forth into desolation, they are corrupt and in corruption they are hateful and abominable and therefore they embrace hatred and at the beginning of their departure they will pierce with the sword those who have the wilderness in the womb and stab the fetus together with their mothers, and they will snatch infants from the shoulders of their nurses and strike them, and they will be food for wild beasts.
The priests, however, will defile the holy places within and kill and lie with women in venerable or sacred places in which the mystical and uncontaminated sacrifice is performed and celebrated, and their women will put on sacred robes and put them on their sons and their daughters. And on their horses and on their beds they spread out and gather their animals to the tombs of the saints as if to a manger. And there will be murderers and corrupt people and a fire of trial among the Christian race.
12. For the most holy Apostle says: “Not all who are from Israel are Israel.” Thus, not all who are called Christians are themselves Christians. For seven thousand men, as Scripture says, were saved—sons of Israel who did not bend their knees before Baal—and through them all the people of Israel were saved. So also in the time itself of the falling‑away and the chastisement brought by the sons of Ishmael, only a few Christian men will be found, just as our Savior himself says in the holy Gospels: “When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth?” In that time the spirit of the perfect will indeed grow faint, and many will deny the true, life‑giving faith, the true cross of Christ, and the holy mysteries—even without any force or torture or scourging they will deny Christ and follow the transgressors. For the Apostle, filled with divine inspiration, foretold beforehand, saying that in those times some will indeed fall away from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons, in unbelief and deceit, speaking lying words, their consciences seared. And immediately he adds, saying: “In the last days perilous times will arise. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unclean, without affection, without covenant, slanderers, incontinent, immoderate, lovers of evil, traitors, whisperers, puffed‑up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having indeed a form of piety but denying its power.”
And all the weak and the faithless will be made manifest in that chastisement, and they will separate themselves from the churches of the saints by their own will. For that time itself summons them into error. But the humble, the gentle, the quiet, the mild, the truly free, the wise, the elect, and the useful will not be sought in that time; rather, those will be sought who are lovers of themselves, greedy for money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, plunderers, greatly possessed of wealth, deceivers, drunkards, merciless, transgressors, without affection, without the bond of charity, harsh, unclean, condemners, incontinent, unmeek, furious, traitors, whisperers, insolent, puffed‑up, luxurious, lovers of lust rather than lovers of God, fornicators, adulterers, thieves, perjurers, liars, kidnappers—having indeed the appearance of piety, but denying its power. Such as these will be the ministers of those gods of theirs, and whatever is commanded by them they will easily accomplish. But those who fear God will be counted as nothing in their sight; rather, they will be for reproach, just as dung is trampled underfoot.
13. For in that chastisement of the sons of Ishmael, men will be brought into such necessities that they will despair even of their own lives. Honor will be taken away from the priests, and the ministry of God will be suppressed, and every sacrifice will cease in the churches. The priests will be as the people, and this will be in that same time, that is, in the seventh week of years. And when the number of years of their dominion—by which they gained possession of the land—has been completed, tribulation will increase upon human beings and upon livestock. There will be famine, pestilences, and men will be corrupted, and human beings will be scattered over the face of the earth like dust. And each day in that time another plague will be added upon mankind. Even if a man lies down to sleep in the evening, he will rise in the morning and find at the threshold of his door a collector demanding a weight of gold or silver; and being compelled, he will pay, and all his gold and silver will be spent. A man will sell all his household goods, his tools for work, and even his garments for burial. And in that same week of years men will even sell their own children.
For what reason, then, does God look upon the faithful and permit them to endure these tribulations? It is so that those who are most faithful may be revealed, and the unfaithful also; and so that the tares may be separated from the pure wheat, for that time is a fire of testing. And God patiently bears the tribulations of the just and the faithful, so that the elect may appear openly. For God has foretold to us, saying: “Blessed are you when they reproach you and persecute you and speak every evil word against you falsely for my sake; rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” And he who endures to the end, he shall be saved.
And after the tribulation brought by the sons of Ishmael, when men have been endangered and afflicted by tribulation, having no hope of salvation or any redemption from their hands, and having suffered hunger and thirst and nakedness, the barbarian nations will be eating and drinking and rejoicing, glorying in their victories and in the desolations with which they have laid waste Persia and Romania, Cilicia and Syria, Cappadocia and Isauria, Africa and Sicily, and those who dwell near Rome and the islands around it, arrayed like bridegrooms, and blaspheming, saying: “The Christians will never have deliverance from our hands.” Then suddenly tribulation and distress will rise upon them, and the king of the Greeks—that is, of the Romans—will come forth against them in great fury, and he will awaken like a man from the stupor of wine, whom men had thought to be as one dead and of no use. He will go out against them from the sea of Ethiopia and will send sword and desolation into Ethrib, which is their homeland, and he will take captive their women and their children, and those who dwell in the land of promise. The sons of the king will descend with the sword and cut them off from the land, and fear and trembling will fall upon them from every side—upon the king himself and his wife and their children. They will lament their infants, weeping over them. And all their encampments, which are in the land of their fathers, will be delivered into the hands of the king of the Romans—to the sword, to captivity, to death, and to destruction.
And the king of the Romans will lay his yoke upon them seven times heavier than the yoke they had laid upon the land. Great distress will seize them—famine, thirst, and tribulation—and they themselves, their wives, and their children will become servants, and they will serve those whom they themselves once enslaved. Their servitude will be exceedingly bitter and harsh, a hundredfold. Then the land which had been laid waste by them will be pacified, and each one will return to his own land and to the inheritance of his fathers—Armenia, Cilicia, Isauria, Africa, Greece, Sicily—and all who remain from captivity will return to their own places and to their paternal homes. And men will multiply upon the land which had been desolated, like locusts in number. But Egypt will be desolated; Arabia will be burned with fire; the land of Ausania will be consumed; and the coastal regions will be pacified. And all the indignation and wrath of the king of the Romans will burn against those who denied the Lord Jesus Christ. And the land will sit in peace, and there will be great peace and tranquility upon the earth such as has never yet been, nor will there ever be another like it, for it is the last and at the end of the ages.
There will be joy upon the earth, and men will dwell in peace; they will rebuild the cities; the priests will be freed from their necessities; and men will rest from their tribulations in that time. And this is the peace which the blessed Apostle explained, saying: “When they say, ‘Peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them.” And the Lord likewise says in the Gospel: “As in the days of Noah, men were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, so it will be in the last day.”
In this peace, therefore, men will sit upon the earth with joy and gladness, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, rejoicing and exulting, building houses, and there will be no fear or anxiety in their hearts. Then the gates of the North will be opened, and the forces of those nations whom Alexander shut within will go forth. And the whole earth will be shaken at their presence, and men will be terrified and flee in fear, hiding themselves in mountains and caves and tombs; and many will die of fear, and many will perish from dread, and there will be no one to bury the bodies. For the nations that come forth from the North will eat the flesh of men and drink the blood of beasts like water, and they will devour unclean serpents and scorpions and every filthy and abominable kind of beast and creeping thing that crawls upon the earth. They will also eat the carcasses of livestock and the bodies of the dead and the miscarried offspring of women; they will kill little children and give them to their mothers, and they will eat them, and they will corrupt the land and defile it, and no one will be able to stand before them.
But after a week of time, when they have already taken the city of Joppa, the Lord God will send one of the princes of his army, and he will strike them down in a single moment of time. And after these things the king of the Romans will descend and will dwell in Jerusalem for a week and a half of time—that is, for a year and a half. And when the year and a half has been completed, the son of perdition will appear.
14. He will be born in Chorazin, and he will be brought up in Bethsaida, and he will reign in Capernaum; and he will rejoice over Chorazin because he was born in it, and over Bethsaida because he was raised in it, and over Capernaum because he will have reigned in it. For this reason the Lord in the Gospel pronounced a threefold sentence, saying: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! And you, Capernaum, if you have been exalted even to heaven, you shall be brought down even to hell.”
And when the son of perdition appears, the king of the Romans will ascend to Golgotha, where the wood of the holy cross was fixed, the place where the Lord endured death for us. And the king will take the crown from his own head and place it upon the cross, and he will stretch out his hands to heaven and will hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father. And the cross will be taken up into heaven together with the king’s crown. For because the cross on which our Lord Jesus Christ hung for the common salvation of all will begin to appear before him at his coming, to convict the unbelief of the faithless, the prophecy of David will be fulfilled, which says: “In the last days Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God,” because from the seed of the sons of Chuseth, daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, they will in the last times stretch out their hand to God. And when the cross is lifted up into heaven, the king of the Romans will immediately give up his spirit. Then every principality and power will be destroyed, so that the son of perdition may appear openly.
Now this one is from the tribe of Dan, according to the prophecy of the patriarch Jacob, who says: “Dan is a serpent in the way, lying in wait on the path, biting the horse’s heel, and the rider will fall backward.” The horse is the salvation of the Lord, and the truth and piety of the righteous. The heel is the last day, and those holy ones who in that time ride upon the horse—that is, upon the true faith—will be pursued by the serpent, that is, by the son of perdition, at the heel; they will be bitten, that is, in the last day, by his illusions and lying signs which he performs. For he will work signs and many wonders upon the earth—vain and deceitful. The blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear, and the possessed will be healed. For he will turn the sun into darkness and the moon into blood; and by these lying signs and wonders of deception he will seduce, if it were possible, even the elect, as the Lord explained.
For the patriarch Jacob, looking with the eyes of the heart, foresaw what tribulation and distress would be wrought upon mankind by the venomous serpent, the son of perdition, and he uttered the voice of the human race, saying: “I will wait for your salvation, O Lord.” And the Lord immediately added, saying that if it were possible he would even lead the elect into error. For this son of perdition will enter into Jerusalem and will sit in the temple of God as though he were God, though he is a man of flesh, born from the seed of a man and from the womb of a woman, descending from the tribe of Dan. For even Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of the Lord, was from the tribe of Dan.
And when the tribulation of those days has been multiplied by the son of perdition, the Divinity, seeing the destruction of the human race which he redeemed by his own blood, will immediately send his servants—those most pure and beloved ones, Enoch and Elijah—to rebuke the enemy. And before all the nations they will denounce his deception and show him to be a liar before all men, and that he is nothing, and that he has come forth for the ruin and destruction of many. And the nations, seeing him confounded and his deception exposed by the servants of God, will abandon him and flee from him and will cling to those righteous ones. But the deceiver, seeing himself rebuked most bitterly and despised by all, will be enraged with furious wrath and will kill those holy ones.
Then the sign of the coming of the Son of Man will appear, and he will come upon the clouds of heaven with heavenly glory, and the Lord will slay him with the breath of his mouth, according to the exposition of the Apostle. Then the righteous will shine like the stars in the world, holding the word of life within themselves. But the impious will be cast into hell—from which may we be delivered by the grace and loving‑kindness of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, with whom, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is all honor and glory, power, greatness, and dominion of the world, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Here ends the discourse of Saint Methodius the bishop on the end of the world. Thanks be to God.
Love is charity and the friend of peace, which often inflames our hearts' discord about you. No one doubts that this is the least true love, which fulfills that Decalogue effect: "You shall love," he says, "your neighbor as yourself." This is a verse of the divine song that we meditate on, and we wish to call each of us a companion of that holy charity. Hence, compelled by love by the love of your brotherhood, not as if we were more learned, but as men who are very inferior in the path of virtue and much more inexperienced in the divine law, but, as I have said before, love commands, what is loved insists that it remain; but the lover, in obedience, submits his neck, and the obedient, for the sake of subjection, makes a better sacrifice. Therefore, want urges us, for humility, to intimate to you some tips from the holy scriptures, requested because of the desire of your soul; which we, out of obedience of charity, answer that we will be able to fulfill if our life is still in God's will. Now, however, not to be rash in inferring anything from some of us, because there are not lacking those who insult the carnally wise, even if the hearing of the truth benefits their ears and others, and especially in these times, which we see, and with the vices committed, which are being constrained in the present ears, especially to those who despise the better or more competently insinuated into the senses of past teachers or ancient fathers who have long since fallen asleep in Christ, I have therefore taken care to translate the doctrine of the blessed martyr Methodius from Greek into Latin, and since it has been prophesied more aptly for our times, in the last centuries, as the apostles did, so that we may now believe that what was predicted by our fathers was true through the very things that we see with our eyes. For this reason, I have thought it more appropriate to translate this little book from Greek into Latin.
Here begins the Sermon of Saint Methodius, Bishop of Patara, on the Kingdom of the Cantii and a Sure Demonstration concerning the End Times.
1. One must know, then, how Adam and Eve, when they went out of Paradise, were still virgins. In the thirtieth year after their expulsion from Paradise they begot Cain, the firstborn, and his sister Calmana; and after another thirty years they bore Abel with his sister Debbora. In the one‑hundred‑and‑thirtieth year of Adam’s life Cain killed his brother Abel, and Adam and Eve made lamentation over him. In the two‑hundred‑and‑thirtieth year, in the first millennium—that is, the first age—Seth was born, a giant‑like man in the likeness of Adam. But in the five‑hundredth year of that same first chiliad, the sons of Cain began to abuse the wives of their brothers with excessive fornications. And in the six‑hundredth year of that first millennium, through the frenzy of their lust and fornication, the women collapsed and were poured out, and were turned into madness; for they behaved toward their own husbands as if toward women, having overstepped all bounds.
They became—if I may speak more plainly—a spectacle of confusion to those who saw them, and in their shameless fornication they appeared openly without shame. In the eight‑hundredth year of Adam’s life the uncleanness of fornication was spread over the earth by the sons of Cain, the fratricide. Adam died in the nine‑hundred‑and‑thirtieth year of his life, in the first millennium. And then the descendants of Seth were separated from the kin of Cain; and Seth took his own lineage upward to a certain mountain near Paradise, where they dwelt. But Cain and his kin lived in the plain where the abominable murder of his brother had been committed. In the fortieth year of the time of Jared the first millennium, that is, the first generation, came to an end.
2. In the three‑hundred‑and‑fortieth year of Jared, in the second millennium, there arose men skilled in evil arts—wicked inventors, filled with every abomination—from among the sons of Cain, namely Jobeth and Tholucel, the sons of Lamech, who was blind and who killed Cain. The devil took dominion over them and turned them toward composing every kind of musical art. In the five‑hundredth year of the second millennium, all the men in the encampments of Cain burned still more fiercely in the most shameful fornication, becoming worse than the former generation; for they came together after the manner of animals, rising up one against another, both in the male and in the female sex. Likewise, those who were of the lineage of Cain practiced these same disgraceful and incestuous acts. But in the seven‑hundredth year of Jared’s life—which is in the second chiliad—the malicious and hostile devil added the warfare of fornication against the sons of Seth, so that they began to desire the daughters of Cain. And when they fell, giants appeared upon the earth from among the sons of Seth, who, having collapsed into the pit of sin, became exceedingly savage; and the Lord God grew angry. At the completion of the second millennium the flood of waters came to pass, and every creature of the first formation was destroyed or swallowed up. The generation of the first‑formed human perished, in the six‑hundred‑and‑twelfth year of the life of Noah.
3. Now, in the three‑thousandth year, after Noah came out of the ark, the sons of Noah built a new settlement in the outer regions of the earth, and they called the name of that region Tham, not according to the numbering of those who came forth from the ark. A son was born to Noah, in his own likeness, and he called his name Ionitus. In the three‑hundredth year of the three‑thousandth period, Noah gave gifts to his son Ionitus and sent him into the land of the East. And after the death of Noah, in the six‑hundred‑and‑ninetieth year of that same three‑thousandth period, the sons of Noah came up from the land of the East and built for themselves a tower in the land of Sennahar; and there the languages were divided, and they were scattered over the face of the whole earth. But Ionitus, the son of Noah, went into the East as far as the sea which is called hiliu chora, that is, “the region of the sun,” where the rising of the sun takes place, and he dwelt there. Ionitus received from God the gift of wisdom—not only this, but every branch of astronomy—and he became its inventor. To him came down Nebroth, who was a giant, and being instructed by him, he received counsel from him concerning the places in which they should begin to reign. Now this Nebroth descended from the sons of the heroes; he was the son of Shem, and he was the first to reign over the earth. In the seven‑hundred‑and‑ninetieth year of the third chiliad, which belonged to the three‑thousandth period, great Babylon was built, and Nebroth reigned in it.
And after these things the sons of Ham made for themselves a king from among their own people, whose name was Pontipus. And now, in the seven‑hundred‑and‑ninety‑ninth year of the three‑thousandth period, in the third year of the reign of Nebroth, they sent mighty men from the sons of Japheth—wise men and craftsmen skilled in the art of building—and they went down into the eastern land to Ionitus, the son of Noah, and built for him a city, which they named Ionitum according to his name. And there was great peace in the kingdom of Ionitus and of Nebroth down to the present day. But in the reign of Nebroth, the sons of Shem and the Pontipus of the sons of Ham and the sons of Japheth rebelled against one another. Therefore Ionitus wrote a letter to Nebroth, saying that the kingdom of the sons of Japheth would begin here to destroy the kingdom of the sons of Ham. These kingdoms first appeared upon the earth, and after these all the nations learned to establish for themselves kingdom after kingdom.
4. Therefore Nebrim, when the third chiliad of years had already been completed, in the eighth year of the fourth chiliad, the two kingdoms were continually fighting against one another; and the kingdom of the Egyptians was defeated by the kingdom of Nebroth, and the dominion of the kingdom of Babylon remained in the seed of Nebroth down to Chuzimisdem. This Chuzimisdem took for himself a wife from the daughters of Ham. But when Chuzimisdem died, Ezdem, his grandson, took his mother as his wife and begot Eresdem by her. This Eresdem gathered many forces for himself and rose up against the kingdom of Ham, and he captured and burned with fire all the regions that lay to the West. In the second year of the reign of Chosdri, the son of Eresdem, the sons of Ham assembled and went down into the land of the East to wage war against King Chosdron. They were three hundred and thirty thousand foot‑soldiers, armed only with staffs in their hands. But when Chosdron heard of this, he laughed and let them come on until they had crossed the river Tigris; and there he sent his army against them, mounted upon elephants, and he killed them all, and not one of them was left. And thereafter the sons of Ham no longer dared to fight against them, and from that time the kingdoms ceased from rebelling against one another.
5. And at the end of the four‑thousandth year, that is, in the twenty‑fifth year of the time of the chiliads, Samsishaibus went down into the East. He was of the lineage of Ionitus, the son of Noah. And he laid waste the land from the Euphrates as far as Edroigan—that is, sixty‑seven cities and their regions. He passed through the three kingdoms of the Indians, and he burned and desolated them, and he went out into the desert of Saba and struck down the encampments of the sons of Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah, the wife of Abraham.
And all the people of Jathrib were driven out, and they fled into the wilderness of Eththrib and entered the land of Ja‑Medina, uninhabited. And they fought with the kingdoms of the nations, and they plundered, and they took captives, and they ruled over the kingdoms of the nations that were in the land of promise; and they exhausted it, and the encampments of those nations as well. They were like locusts, and they went about naked, and they ate the flesh of camels packed in skins, and they drank the blood of beasts mixed with milk.
When, therefore, the sons of Ishmael had gained possession of the whole land and had desolated its cities and regions, and had given themselves mastery over all the islands, then in that time they built ships, and using them like birds they flew over the waters of the sea. They went up into the regions of the West as far as great Rome, and Illyricum, and Gigitum, and Thessalonica, and great Sardinia, which lies beyond Rome; and they held dominion over the land for sixty years and did whatever they wished in it. But after sixty years, when their power had been subdued for eight and a half years—during which they had gained the kingdom of all the nations—their hearts were exalted when they saw that they had conquered and ruled all kingdoms.
In that time there arose for them four tyrant‑commanders of the army, who were the sons of Umee, as they called her. Their names were these: Oreb, Zeb, Zeber, and Salmana. These fought against the Israelites; and just as God wrought redemption from the hand of the Egyptians through Moses his servant, so also at that time he worked mercy for them and redeemed them from these through Gideon. And they were freed from the slavery of the sons of Ishmael. For Gideon struck down their encampments, and pursuing them he drove them out of the land into the uninhabited wilderness of Ethrib, from which they had come forth. And those who survived made covenants of peace with the sons of Israel and went out into the outer desert of the nine tribes.
But in the future they will come forth once more and will lay waste the land and will gain possession of the whole world and its regions, at the coming of peace, from the land of Egypt to Ethiopia, and from the Euphrates to India, and from the Tigris to the entrance of Naod, the kingdom of Ionitus the son of Noah, and from the north to Rome and Illyricum and Gigitum and Thessalonica and Albania, and as far as the sea that flows into Pontus.
And their yoke will be double upon the necks of all nations, and there will be no nation or kingdom under heaven that can defeat them until the number of the seven weeks of time is fulfilled. And after these things they will be overcome by the heavenly kingdom, and also by the Romans, and will be subjected to it. For this kingdom—that is, the kingdom of the Romans—will be magnified above all the kingdoms of the nations, and it will never be destroyed by any of them forever. For they have an invincible weapon, by which all their adversaries are cast down.
6. From this point, therefore, consider the cycles of the times and the reigns that turn about; and this is the truth of the matter, which shows itself more clearly than anything, without any error, obscurity, or deception. For from Nebroth, who was a giant, down to Perusdec, the kingdoms of the giants held the land of Babylonia. And from Perusdec down to Ses the Elder, who was of Idrohigam, the Persians reigned; and from Ses down to Perusdech those of Lec ruled. And from Phun and from Perusdec down to Sennacherib and Babylonia they reigned. And Sennacherib took as his wife Jecnad of Ararat, and she bore him Ardemelech and Tzaratzar; and these killed their father and fled into the land of Ararat. And Saradon reigned there in Babylon in place of his father Sennacherib.
And Nebuchadnezzar, who was from his father Luzia and from his mother, the queen of Saba—when Sennacherib had gone forth to fight with the king of India and as far as Saba, and had laid waste many regions—Nebuchadnezzar went out with him, he being brought forth and taken with him; and he appointed him commander of his army. And because of the wisdom that was in him, and his strength, the kingdom of Babylonia was given to him. And he took for himself a wife from the Medes, named Erusdem. And after the death of Nebuchadnezzar and of Belshazzar his son, Darius the Mede reigned, the grandson of Erusdem. And Darius took as his wife Dorun, a Persian by race, from whom was born Cyrus the Persian.
7. Now hear, therefore, how these kings became mingled with one another: the Babylonians with the Medes, and the Persians likewise with the Medes. And the kingdom of Babylon became stronger and more powerful than Ethiopia and Saba and all the kingdoms of the nations from the sea as far as the river Euphrates. Moreover, even the kingdom of David was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, as also the kingdoms of the Arabs and of the Egyptians. Darius the Mede surpassed the kingdom of the Indians and of the Ethiopians. But Cyrus the Persian gained possession of Taracia and redeemed the sons of Israel, and he sent them into the land of promise, commanding them to build the temple of God, which had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar; and thus the second temple was built by the command of King Cyrus.
8. Therefore now hear with full certainty how these four kingdoms came together with one another: the Ethiopians with the Macedonians, and the Romans with the Greeks. These are the four winds that stir up the great sea. For Philip, the father of Alexander the Macedonian, indeed saw that the peoples of the East were abominable—dogs, mice, serpents, eaters of carrion, malformed abortions, and those things which in the womb are not yet coagulated by any softening, nor have any part of their members formed so as to complete a shape or express a face; likewise the offspring of beasts and every kind of unclean wild animal. And they do not bury their dead, but often eat them. Seeing all these things done by them in such unclean and wicked ways, Alexander feared lest at some time they should go forth and burst out into the Holy Land and defile it with their most polluted and wicked practices. Therefore he prayed earnestly to God. And giving command, he gathered them all together—their women, their sons, and all their encampments—and he led them out from the land of the East and shut them in, threatening them, until they entered the boundaries of the North. And there is no entrance nor exit from East to West by which anyone could pass to them or enter.
Immediately Alexander prayed to God, and God heard his supplication. And the Lord God commanded two mountains, whose name is “the breasts of the North,” and they drew near to one another until only twelve cubits remained between them. And he built gates of bronze and overlaid them with asincitum, so that, even if they wished to open them with iron, they could not, nor dissolve them with fire, nor accomplish either; for immediately every fire is extinguished. Such is the nature of asincitum, for it is neither broken by the blow of iron nor dissolved by fire. For all the inventions of demons and deadly or vain devices these most shameful and deformed and filthy nations practice, abusing all the wicked arts of magic in unclean ways. Their filthy and inhuman, indeed—more fittingly said—God‑hated sorceries were destroyed, so that they could not by iron nor by fire nor by any other cunning device open or unfasten those gates and escape.
But in the last times, according to the prophecy of Ezekiel, which says: “In the last day, at the consummation of the world, Gog and Magog shall go forth in the land of Israel”—these are the nations and kings whom Alexander shut up in the northern boundaries: Gog and Magog, and Anog and Ageg, and Achennaz and Dephar, and Potinei and Libii and Euni, and Pharizei and Declemis and Zarmatae and Theblei and Zamartiani and Chachonii and Amazarthe and Agrimardii and Anuphagii, who are called Cynocephali, and Tharbei and Alanes and Phisolonicii and Arcnei and Asalturii. These twenty‑two kings remain shut up within the gates which Alexander fastened.
9. When Alexander died, the first king of the Greeks, four of his youths reigned in his place; for he had never joined himself to any wife in marriage. But Chuseth, his mother, returned to her own homeland, Ethiopia. Now Byzas, who founded Byzantium, sent by sea to Phol, king of Ethiopia, a commander of his army named Germanicus, and made peace with him, writing to him concerning Chuseth, the mother of Alexander—how he should take her to himself as wife and make her queen. Phol the king, receiving the letter from Germanicus and seeing the very great gifts he had brought, rejoiced exceedingly. Therefore he himself arose, and gathering from every part of Ethiopia, he took also his daughter Chuseth and set out for Byzantium, having with him thirty thousand Ethiopians in his retinue. And he was received at once by Byzas across the sea at Chalcedon with great and eager joy. He also gave rich gifts to those who had come with him. Phol entered Byzantium and gave great gifts and the greatest royal presents; and King Byzas took Chuseth, the daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, as his wife. From her a daughter was born to him, whom he named after the city Byzantia. She was married to Romyllus, also called Armaleus, king of Rome. Because of her extraordinary beauty he loved her greatly. He himself was exceedingly simple and magnanimous, and therefore, as part of her marriage‑portion, he gave her Rome. But when his nobles heard this, they were indignant against him. Byzantia bore him three sons, whom he named as follows: the firstborn, according to the name of his father, Armaleus; the second, Urbanus; the third he named Claudius.
Thus each of them reigned: Armaleus in Rome in place of his father Armaleus; Urbanus in Byzantium, the city of his mother; and Claudius in Alexandria. Thus the seed of Chuseth, daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, gained dominion—both among the Macedonians and the Romans—from the seed of the Ethiopians. This is the hand that shall go before God on the last day, according to the prophetic interpretation.
For blessed David, foreseeing with spiritual eyes and knowing beforehand how Chuseth, daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, would begin to raise up the kingdom of the Romans, spoke beforehand, saying: “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God.” Some have thought that David said this because of the kingdom of the Ethiopians, but they are mistaken who think so; for indeed, since this great and venerable kingdom was established from the seed of the Ethiopians, the holy and life‑giving cross—honorable and glorious—was fixed in the midst of the earth. From this, perhaps, as is fitting, the ancient father David uttered the saying: “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God.” For there is no nation or kingdom under heaven that can prevail to overcome the kingdom of the Christians. As we have already said above, the life‑giving cross is fixed and established in the midst of the earth, from which the boundaries of the world are wisely defined according to breadth and length and height and depth. Who could ever overcome the power of the holy cross or grasp its might? Thus the dignity of the Roman Empire holds its honor through him who hung upon it—our Lord Jesus Christ.
10. Let us therefore hear what Paul, the preacher of divine things, taught when he signified the matter of the last day and the kingdom of the Romans. For in a certain place, in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, he says thus: “We beseech you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him, that you be not quickly shaken from your mind nor terrified—neither by spirit nor by word nor by a letter as though sent by us—as if the day of the Lord were at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way, for unless the rebellion comes first and the man of iniquity is revealed, the son of perdition, who is the adversary and who exalts himself above everything that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself as though he were God… And now you know what restrains him, that he may be revealed in his time. Only he who restrains now will restrain, until he is taken out of the midst; and then the lawless one will be revealed.”
Who, therefore, is “the one taken out of the midst” except the empire of the Romans? For all principalities and powers of this world will be destroyed except this one; for this alone is attacked and will not be overcome. And all the nations that fight against it will be crushed or consumed by it, and it will prevail until the final hour arrives. And this is the hand that shall go before God, according to the Apostle who says: “When every principality and all power has been destroyed, then the Son himself will hand over the kingdom to God the Father.”
What kingdom? Clearly, the kingdom of the Christians. For where has there ever been, or is there now, or will there ever be, any kingdom or power that surpasses this one? If you wish me to examine what is certain, consider, I beg you, the people of Moses and the wonders and signs wrought for them, and how even the Egyptians were shaken in the depths of the sea. Consider also Joshua, under whom the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Jericho, and many other stupendous miracles of God. And, to make my point clearer, consider all the strength of the Hebrews—how under the Roman Empire they were destroyed and crushed. Titus and Vespasian cut them down entirely. Did not Hadrian plow the very site of the Temple with a plow? What kingdom, therefore, was or will be like this one? We find none.
Let us therefore hold to the truth. Did not the Hebrews reign for a thousand years? And their kingdom was cut off. The Egyptians reigned for three thousand years, and they likewise perished. The Babylonians reigned for four thousand years, and they too were cut down. The Macedonians and the Egyptians fought with arms against the kingdom of the Romans, and the barbarian kingdoms—the Turks and the Abares—were all swallowed up by it. And after the kingdom of the Persians has been swallowed up, the sons of Ishmael, the sons of Hagar—whom Scripture calls “the southern arm,” as Daniel also foretold—will rise up against the empire of the Romans. And they will oppose the Roman kingdom in the cycle of the turning times, in the seventh period itself—that is, in the seven‑thousandth year of the world—because the consummation of the age has drawn near, and the length of the times will be no more.
11. For in the last mile, or the seventh, then in the seventh mile, the seed of Ishmael will begin to come out of the wilderness of Ethribun; and when they come out, they will gather together in one accord in the great Gibeah, and there will be fulfilled what was said by the prophet Ezekiel: “Son of man, call to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the air, and exhort them, saying: Gather together and come, for I am sacrificing a great sacrifice for you; eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the high ones.” Therefore in this Gibeah they will fall by the edge of the sword from the seed of Ishmael, who is called the wild ass, because they are sent in anger and fury upon the face of the whole earth, upon men also and cattle and beasts of the forest, and upon every forest and plant and upon every tree, and upon every species of fruit; and their coming will be a chastisement without mercy, and they will bring upon them upon the earth these four plagues, that is, destruction and ruin, also corruption and desolation. For God says to Israel through Moses: Not because the Lord God loves you does He bring you into the land of promise, that you may inherit it, but because of the sins of those who dwell therein. So also the sons of Ishmael, not because the Lord God loves them, will He give them this power, that they may obtain the land of the Christians, but because of the sin and iniquity which they commit.
Similar things have not happened to them, nor will they happen in all generations, for then men will put on the clothes of adulterers and harlots, and just as the harlots adorned themselves, standing in the streets and at the gates of the cities, openly to all, and they changed their natural use into that which is contrary to nature, as did the blessed and most holy apostle, and likewise these women, who were acting in the same way as the men. So the father and his son and his brother and all who seem to be related by blood came together to one woman. For they were ignorant of harlots, because of what the wisest Paul, perhaps exclaiming before the series of times, said: “For this cause, he says, God gave them over to shameful passions, for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature, and in like manner also their men, leaving the natural use of the woman, were inflamed with lust for one another, men with men, working shamelessness, and receiving the recompense of their error into themselves.” For this cause therefore they shall be delivered by God into the hands of the barbarians, from whom they shall fall into all uncleanness and the stench of pollution, and their women shall be defiled by the defiled barbarians, and they shall cast the lots of the sons of Ishmael upon their sons and daughters, and the land of the Persians shall be delivered over to corruption and destruction, and the inhabitants thereof shall be led away into captivity and slaughter.
Armenia also and those who dwell therein Captivity and the sword shall fall. Cappadocia shall be laid waste and desolated, and its inhabitants shall be consumed with the sword. Sicily shall be laid waste and those who dwell in it shall be led away into slaughter and captivity. The land of Syria shall be desolate and ruined, and those who dwell in it shall perish by the sword. Cilicia shall be laid waste and those who dwell in it shall be led away into slaughter and captivity. Greece shall be laid waste and destroyed, and those who dwell in it shall be led away into captivity. Romania shall be laid waste and destroyed, and the islands of the sea shall be turned into a fugitive. And those who dwell in them shall perish by the sword and in captivity. Egypt also and the East shall be under the yoke and shall be brought into great tribulations; For they will be oppressed without mercy, and the weight of gold or silver will be desired above the strength of their souls, and the inhabitants of Egypt or Syria will be in distress and affliction seven times as much as those in captivity, and the land of promise will be filled with people from the four winds under heaven.
And they shall be like locusts in multitude, which shall be gathered by the wind, and there shall be among them pestilence and famine, and their heart shall be exalted and of the bounders, and pride shall slip away and they shall speak lofty things until the time appointed for them, and they shall obtain the entrance and the exit of the north and the east, the west and from the sea and all things shall be under their yoke, men also and beasts flying or fish swimming in the sea, even and the waters of the sea obeying them. And the destitute cities, which were widowed by them of the inhabitants, will be theirs and they will write their boundaries through the wilderness and the wood of the forests and the dust of the land and the stones and the fertility of the sea and the fish of the rivers will be theirs entrance, and the labors or sweat of the farmers of the land and the abundance of the rich and what is brought to the saints, whether gold or silver or precious stones or brass or iron, all will be theirs. Also the sacred or splendid garments and the food all things, and everything that is precious will be theirs. And their heart will be exalted to the point that they will desire the dead according to the equality of the living.
Likewise, they will demand from the orphans and widows and the sick and will not spare the needy and the poor, for they will dishonor every elder and afflict the needy, and they will have no compassion on the weak and the weak. But they will mock and ridicule all who shine in wisdom and those who are magnified in matters of the republic and all will be silent or afraid, unable to argue or speak this or that, and all who inhabit the earth will be astonished for fear. And their wisdom and learning will be coming from themselves them not growing nor needing to be added or added to it and there will be no one who can change or quibble their words and their journey will be from sea to sea, and from the rising of the sun to the setting, and from the north to the desert of Ethiopia and their journey will be called the way of narrowness, and old men and elders walk in it, and the poor and the rich hungry and thirsty are hindered and they bless those who are already dead.
For indeed, this discipline—or rather, this falling‑away—was foretold by the Apostle, who says: “Unless the rebellion comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition.” For indeed, this “falling‑away” is a form of discipline or correction, and all the inhabitants of the earth are being chastised. And because God called Ishmael their father a wild ass, for this reason the wild asses and the goats in the wilderness and all kinds of wild and tame beasts will be crushed by them and will become few under them and will pursue men and the beasts of the forest will perish with hunger, because they are destitute of the land and will cut down all the trees of the forest and the appearance of the mountains will perish, and the cities will be desolate and the regions will be without a way, because humanity is diminished and the land will be polluted with blood, and it will contain its fruits. For they are not men who rule in a tyrannical manner over a barbaric nation, but are sons exiled in the wilderness and therefore they go forth into desolation, they are corrupt and in corruption they are hateful and abominable and therefore they embrace hatred and at the beginning of their departure they will pierce with the sword those who have the wilderness in the womb and stab the fetus together with their mothers, and they will snatch infants from the shoulders of their nurses and strike them, and they will be food for wild beasts.
The priests, however, will defile the holy places within and kill and lie with women in venerable or sacred places in which the mystical and uncontaminated sacrifice is performed and celebrated, and their women will put on sacred robes and put them on their sons and their daughters. And on their horses and on their beds they spread out and gather their animals to the tombs of the saints as if to a manger. And there will be murderers and corrupt people and a fire of trial among the Christian race.
12. For the most holy Apostle says: “Not all who are from Israel are Israel.” Thus, not all who are called Christians are themselves Christians. For seven thousand men, as Scripture says, were saved—sons of Israel who did not bend their knees before Baal—and through them all the people of Israel were saved. So also in the time itself of the falling‑away and the chastisement brought by the sons of Ishmael, only a few Christian men will be found, just as our Savior himself says in the holy Gospels: “When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth?” In that time the spirit of the perfect will indeed grow faint, and many will deny the true, life‑giving faith, the true cross of Christ, and the holy mysteries—even without any force or torture or scourging they will deny Christ and follow the transgressors. For the Apostle, filled with divine inspiration, foretold beforehand, saying that in those times some will indeed fall away from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons, in unbelief and deceit, speaking lying words, their consciences seared. And immediately he adds, saying: “In the last days perilous times will arise. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unclean, without affection, without covenant, slanderers, incontinent, immoderate, lovers of evil, traitors, whisperers, puffed‑up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having indeed a form of piety but denying its power.”
And all the weak and the faithless will be made manifest in that chastisement, and they will separate themselves from the churches of the saints by their own will. For that time itself summons them into error. But the humble, the gentle, the quiet, the mild, the truly free, the wise, the elect, and the useful will not be sought in that time; rather, those will be sought who are lovers of themselves, greedy for money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, plunderers, greatly possessed of wealth, deceivers, drunkards, merciless, transgressors, without affection, without the bond of charity, harsh, unclean, condemners, incontinent, unmeek, furious, traitors, whisperers, insolent, puffed‑up, luxurious, lovers of lust rather than lovers of God, fornicators, adulterers, thieves, perjurers, liars, kidnappers—having indeed the appearance of piety, but denying its power. Such as these will be the ministers of those gods of theirs, and whatever is commanded by them they will easily accomplish. But those who fear God will be counted as nothing in their sight; rather, they will be for reproach, just as dung is trampled underfoot.
13. For in that chastisement of the sons of Ishmael, men will be brought into such necessities that they will despair even of their own lives. Honor will be taken away from the priests, and the ministry of God will be suppressed, and every sacrifice will cease in the churches. The priests will be as the people, and this will be in that same time, that is, in the seventh week of years. And when the number of years of their dominion—by which they gained possession of the land—has been completed, tribulation will increase upon human beings and upon livestock. There will be famine, pestilences, and men will be corrupted, and human beings will be scattered over the face of the earth like dust. And each day in that time another plague will be added upon mankind. Even if a man lies down to sleep in the evening, he will rise in the morning and find at the threshold of his door a collector demanding a weight of gold or silver; and being compelled, he will pay, and all his gold and silver will be spent. A man will sell all his household goods, his tools for work, and even his garments for burial. And in that same week of years men will even sell their own children.
For what reason, then, does God look upon the faithful and permit them to endure these tribulations? It is so that those who are most faithful may be revealed, and the unfaithful also; and so that the tares may be separated from the pure wheat, for that time is a fire of testing. And God patiently bears the tribulations of the just and the faithful, so that the elect may appear openly. For God has foretold to us, saying: “Blessed are you when they reproach you and persecute you and speak every evil word against you falsely for my sake; rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” And he who endures to the end, he shall be saved.
And after the tribulation brought by the sons of Ishmael, when men have been endangered and afflicted by tribulation, having no hope of salvation or any redemption from their hands, and having suffered hunger and thirst and nakedness, the barbarian nations will be eating and drinking and rejoicing, glorying in their victories and in the desolations with which they have laid waste Persia and Romania, Cilicia and Syria, Cappadocia and Isauria, Africa and Sicily, and those who dwell near Rome and the islands around it, arrayed like bridegrooms, and blaspheming, saying: “The Christians will never have deliverance from our hands.” Then suddenly tribulation and distress will rise upon them, and the king of the Greeks—that is, of the Romans—will come forth against them in great fury, and he will awaken like a man from the stupor of wine, whom men had thought to be as one dead and of no use. He will go out against them from the sea of Ethiopia and will send sword and desolation into Ethrib, which is their homeland, and he will take captive their women and their children, and those who dwell in the land of promise. The sons of the king will descend with the sword and cut them off from the land, and fear and trembling will fall upon them from every side—upon the king himself and his wife and their children. They will lament their infants, weeping over them. And all their encampments, which are in the land of their fathers, will be delivered into the hands of the king of the Romans—to the sword, to captivity, to death, and to destruction.
And the king of the Romans will lay his yoke upon them seven times heavier than the yoke they had laid upon the land. Great distress will seize them—famine, thirst, and tribulation—and they themselves, their wives, and their children will become servants, and they will serve those whom they themselves once enslaved. Their servitude will be exceedingly bitter and harsh, a hundredfold. Then the land which had been laid waste by them will be pacified, and each one will return to his own land and to the inheritance of his fathers—Armenia, Cilicia, Isauria, Africa, Greece, Sicily—and all who remain from captivity will return to their own places and to their paternal homes. And men will multiply upon the land which had been desolated, like locusts in number. But Egypt will be desolated; Arabia will be burned with fire; the land of Ausania will be consumed; and the coastal regions will be pacified. And all the indignation and wrath of the king of the Romans will burn against those who denied the Lord Jesus Christ. And the land will sit in peace, and there will be great peace and tranquility upon the earth such as has never yet been, nor will there ever be another like it, for it is the last and at the end of the ages.
There will be joy upon the earth, and men will dwell in peace; they will rebuild the cities; the priests will be freed from their necessities; and men will rest from their tribulations in that time. And this is the peace which the blessed Apostle explained, saying: “When they say, ‘Peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them.” And the Lord likewise says in the Gospel: “As in the days of Noah, men were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, so it will be in the last day.”
In this peace, therefore, men will sit upon the earth with joy and gladness, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, rejoicing and exulting, building houses, and there will be no fear or anxiety in their hearts. Then the gates of the North will be opened, and the forces of those nations whom Alexander shut within will go forth. And the whole earth will be shaken at their presence, and men will be terrified and flee in fear, hiding themselves in mountains and caves and tombs; and many will die of fear, and many will perish from dread, and there will be no one to bury the bodies. For the nations that come forth from the North will eat the flesh of men and drink the blood of beasts like water, and they will devour unclean serpents and scorpions and every filthy and abominable kind of beast and creeping thing that crawls upon the earth. They will also eat the carcasses of livestock and the bodies of the dead and the miscarried offspring of women; they will kill little children and give them to their mothers, and they will eat them, and they will corrupt the land and defile it, and no one will be able to stand before them.
But after a week of time, when they have already taken the city of Joppa, the Lord God will send one of the princes of his army, and he will strike them down in a single moment of time. And after these things the king of the Romans will descend and will dwell in Jerusalem for a week and a half of time—that is, for a year and a half. And when the year and a half has been completed, the son of perdition will appear.
14. He will be born in Chorazin, and he will be brought up in Bethsaida, and he will reign in Capernaum; and he will rejoice over Chorazin because he was born in it, and over Bethsaida because he was raised in it, and over Capernaum because he will have reigned in it. For this reason the Lord in the Gospel pronounced a threefold sentence, saying: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! And you, Capernaum, if you have been exalted even to heaven, you shall be brought down even to hell.”
And when the son of perdition appears, the king of the Romans will ascend to Golgotha, where the wood of the holy cross was fixed, the place where the Lord endured death for us. And the king will take the crown from his own head and place it upon the cross, and he will stretch out his hands to heaven and will hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father. And the cross will be taken up into heaven together with the king’s crown. For because the cross on which our Lord Jesus Christ hung for the common salvation of all will begin to appear before him at his coming, to convict the unbelief of the faithless, the prophecy of David will be fulfilled, which says: “In the last days Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God,” because from the seed of the sons of Chuseth, daughter of Phol king of Ethiopia, they will in the last times stretch out their hand to God. And when the cross is lifted up into heaven, the king of the Romans will immediately give up his spirit. Then every principality and power will be destroyed, so that the son of perdition may appear openly.
Now this one is from the tribe of Dan, according to the prophecy of the patriarch Jacob, who says: “Dan is a serpent in the way, lying in wait on the path, biting the horse’s heel, and the rider will fall backward.” The horse is the salvation of the Lord, and the truth and piety of the righteous. The heel is the last day, and those holy ones who in that time ride upon the horse—that is, upon the true faith—will be pursued by the serpent, that is, by the son of perdition, at the heel; they will be bitten, that is, in the last day, by his illusions and lying signs which he performs. For he will work signs and many wonders upon the earth—vain and deceitful. The blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear, and the possessed will be healed. For he will turn the sun into darkness and the moon into blood; and by these lying signs and wonders of deception he will seduce, if it were possible, even the elect, as the Lord explained.
For the patriarch Jacob, looking with the eyes of the heart, foresaw what tribulation and distress would be wrought upon mankind by the venomous serpent, the son of perdition, and he uttered the voice of the human race, saying: “I will wait for your salvation, O Lord.” And the Lord immediately added, saying that if it were possible he would even lead the elect into error. For this son of perdition will enter into Jerusalem and will sit in the temple of God as though he were God, though he is a man of flesh, born from the seed of a man and from the womb of a woman, descending from the tribe of Dan. For even Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of the Lord, was from the tribe of Dan.
And when the tribulation of those days has been multiplied by the son of perdition, the Divinity, seeing the destruction of the human race which he redeemed by his own blood, will immediately send his servants—those most pure and beloved ones, Enoch and Elijah—to rebuke the enemy. And before all the nations they will denounce his deception and show him to be a liar before all men, and that he is nothing, and that he has come forth for the ruin and destruction of many. And the nations, seeing him confounded and his deception exposed by the servants of God, will abandon him and flee from him and will cling to those righteous ones. But the deceiver, seeing himself rebuked most bitterly and despised by all, will be enraged with furious wrath and will kill those holy ones.
Then the sign of the coming of the Son of Man will appear, and he will come upon the clouds of heaven with heavenly glory, and the Lord will slay him with the breath of his mouth, according to the exposition of the Apostle. Then the righteous will shine like the stars in the world, holding the word of life within themselves. But the impious will be cast into hell—from which may we be delivered by the grace and loving‑kindness of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, with whom, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is all honor and glory, power, greatness, and dominion of the world, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Here ends the discourse of Saint Methodius the bishop on the end of the world. Thanks be to God.
THE SYRIAC VERSION
AN EARLY SYRIAC FRAGMENT
1. ... because of the transgression and the evils of the sons of Hagar, the East shall be ravaged by the devastations of numerous wars; one people shall rise against another people, and one empire against another empire; their own sword shall fall upon them. Armenia shall be ravaged, and it shall ravage many cities in the land of the Romans. And when, of the years we have allotted to the sons of Hagar, only a week and a half remains—that is to say, ten and a half years—their transgression shall increase, and they shall seize everything: gold, silver, bronze, iron, (all) their garments, and their entire land of habitation.
To such an extent that the living shall pass by the dead and say: "Blessed are you, for you did not live in this era." And seven women shall take hold of one man and speak to him, just as it is written in the preaching of the Gospel (4). The man shall flee from his wife and children, and the woman from her husband, because of oppression, suffering, and famine. The rains shall diminish; the waters of the springs and the fruits of the trees shall fail; everything good upon the earth shall dwindle in that time, because of the apostasy of the sons of Ishmael.
2. And when those years of which we have spoken—one and a half weeks—have passed, at the end of the 694 years, then shall emerge the King of the Greeks, who bears a sign among the Romans. The nails that were in the hands of Our Lord Christ, and those in the hands of the thief, were mingled together, such that one could not distinguish Our Lord's nails from the others. So they cast them into the fire together and fashioned from them a fegūda—that is to say, a bridle—and they hung it within the church. And when a horse appears—one that has never been ridden and has never in its life worn a bridle—and of its own accord places its head into this bridle, then the Romans shall know that the kingdom of the Christians is drawing near, and that they are about to seize the dominion over the entire earth from the sons of Hagar and all the rest; and thereafter, (the King) of the Greeks shall surrender the dominion unto God, just as it is written. And that bridle remains to this very day.
3. Then the King of the Greeks shall emerge from the West, and his son from the South; whereupon the sons of Ishmael shall flee and gather together at Babel. The King of the Greeks shall overtake them at Babel, and from there they shall flee to the city of Mecca, where their dominion shall come to an end. And the King of the Greeks shall reign over the entire earth; goodness shall return to the land, the yield of the trees shall increase, the rains and waters shall rise, and the fish within the seas and rivers shall multiply. And there shall be peace and tranquility throughout all creation, and among all peoples and all nations. Then the living man shall pass once again over the dead and say: "How blessed would you be, had you lived under this empire!"
4. And the empire of the Greeks shall endure for two hundred and eight years; after which, sin shall once again increase in the world, and impurity shall be displayed publicly—like cattle, unveiled—in the public squares and amidst the crowds, just as before; and the earth shall be defiled by sin. Then the mountains of Armenia shall open up, and the peoples of Gog and Magog shall emerge from them; and they comprised twenty-four races, speaking twenty-four different languages. When King Alexander saw that they devoured the reptiles of the earth and every unclean thing—even human flesh—and that they consumed the dead and all manner of filth, and that they practiced sorcery and every evil deed, he gathered them together and drove them deep within those mountains, where he confined them. He then besought God to cause the mountains to draw close to one another, and so it came to pass; yet there remained between the mountains a gateway twenty cubits wide. This gate he sealed with stones known as "magnet stones" (magnetis)—stones that adhere to iron, that extinguish fire when brought near it, and against which no incantation can prevail.
5. At the end of time, these gates shall open, and (these men) shall emerge and defile the earth; they shall snatch the son from his mother's arms and slay him, and they shall give him to his mother to cook; and if she refuses to eat him, they shall kill her. And they shall eat rats and all manner of unclean reptiles. And God's mercy shall withdraw from the children of the earth; and men, throughout those days, shall witness every manner of evil: hunger, thirst, cold, frost, and great injustice. Men shall bury themselves alive within the earth. Had God not shortened those days, no flesh would have been saved. Some say that they shall hold dominion for two years and eight months—from the moment of their emergence (from the mountains) until the moment of their destruction. After they have spread across all of creation and reigned over the entire world, God shall take pity on His creatures; He shall gather the (invaders) in that land where the sons of Ishmael perished—namely, Mecca—and there God shall command the angels to stone them with hailstones until not a single one remains; and they shall all perish.
6. During their days, there shall be neither measure nor weight; their appearance is fearsome, and whoever beholds them shall dread and fear them; the stature of each one of them measures but a single cubit.
At that time, the Son of Perdition shall emerge—he who is called the Deceitful Christ—and he shall captivate the world through cunning and falsehood, without the use of the sword; and his sin shall be greater than that of Satan. This is what Jacob Israel foretold to his sons when he said to them: "Gather yourselves together, and I will show you what shall befall you in the latter days"; he was indicating this very time to them. (Then) shall be fulfilled what our Lord indicated: Satan will unite himself with this deceptive Christ and will perform wonders, manifestations, and vain deeds—just as the Divinity united itself with humanity and performed wonders and miracles—and he will spread deceptive and far-reaching rumors; he will raise the dead through trickery and magic, and (he will heal) the paralyzed and the blind. He will be born in Tyre and Sidon, and he will dwell in Capernaum. It is for this reason that Our Lord (said): "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! And you, Capernaum—who have exalted yourself so high—you shall be brought down to Sheol". He will reign over the whole world without war, and he will claim to be the Christ; he will travel from place to place with his retinue, accompanied by many thousands of demons—indeed, by countless myriads—and he will put an end to sacrifices and altars. The first to be deceived and to follow him will be the multitudes of the Jews, and they will declare that he is the Christ; wives will abandon their husbands to follow him, and he will reign over the entire earth. However, he will not enter the city of Edessa, for God has blessed and protected it; nor will he enter these four monasteries. The former shall rise up in the world, and in the end, he shall enter Jerusalem and the sanctuary, as it is written in the Gospel: "When you see the unclean dominion in the holy place"—a sign of impiety, of sin, and of impurity; this unclean sign is the deceptive Christ—and when he enters Jerusalem, then Enoch and Elijah shall emerge from the Land of the Living; they shall rise up against him, they shall resist him, and they shall curse him. When he sees them, he shall melt away like salt in the presence of water, and he shall be the first to be punished—before all men—along with the demons that had entered into him.
7. Next, the King of the Greeks shall come to Jerusalem and ascend Golgotha—where our Savior was sacrificed—bearing in his hand the Cross of the Lord. This Greek king shall be of the lineage of Kushit, daughter of Kushit, (and granddaughter) of the King of Kush; and these people are called the Noub (Nobades). He shall ascend with the Cross in his hand, and the tiara—which descended from heaven upon the head of Jovian (Iônînôs), the first king—shall pass to the very tip of the Lord's Cross; and (the king) shall lift both the Cross and the tiara toward the heavens. Then Gabriel the Archangel shall descend, take the Cross and the tiara, and carry them away to heaven. At that moment, the king shall die—as shall every human being upon the earth, along with the animals and beasts of burden—and nothing living shall remain. Furthermore, that light which God created for the sons of sinful Adam—for light was created for their sake, and God (whose honor is worthy of adoration!) has no need of light or of anything else—shall be extinguished; the stars shall fall like leaves; and the earth shall revert to its primordial state of Tohu and Bohu. And, after all these created things have ceased (to exist)—at that very hour, in the twinkling of an eye—there shall issue forth the sound of a horn and a trumpet; and the righteous and the wicked alike shall gather together, for there shall be but a single resurrection for all mankind and for all creatures. And pangs of agony shall strike the earth, just as they strike a mother when the hour of her childbirth draws near; and Adam shall emerge with all his children, such that not a single human being shall remain who does not rise again at that very same hour. Then a light shall burst forth in the East, brighter than the light of the Sun, and Our Lord Jesus Christ shall come like lightning; and all that the Prophet David foretold shall be fulfilled. A mighty voice shall issue from the East and be heard throughout the heavens. And when that light shines forth amidst the good and the wicked, they shall behold a radiance unlike any other—a light such as they have never before witnessed; for while there is but one resurrection for all, the recompense is not uniform. Indeed, for the wicked, there shall be no torment more grievous than being denied the sight of that light. Then shall arrive the hour of reckoning at the Judgment; and the Judgment consists in the separation of the good from the wicked. Tongues and languages shall vanish, and both the good and the wicked shall rise alike to face the Judgment. The good shall ascend to Heaven, while the wicked shall remain upon the earth—which, for the wicked, constitutes Gehenna. Such is the teaching of Mar Ephrem the Doctor: the fire shall subsist within man himself, burning like a scorching fever; their Gehenna shall reside within them. Thus shall the good ascend to Heaven; yet the reward they receive within the Kingdom shall not be identical for all, but rather, each shall be recompensed at that moment according to the deeds he has performed.
To such an extent that the living shall pass by the dead and say: "Blessed are you, for you did not live in this era." And seven women shall take hold of one man and speak to him, just as it is written in the preaching of the Gospel (4). The man shall flee from his wife and children, and the woman from her husband, because of oppression, suffering, and famine. The rains shall diminish; the waters of the springs and the fruits of the trees shall fail; everything good upon the earth shall dwindle in that time, because of the apostasy of the sons of Ishmael.
2. And when those years of which we have spoken—one and a half weeks—have passed, at the end of the 694 years, then shall emerge the King of the Greeks, who bears a sign among the Romans. The nails that were in the hands of Our Lord Christ, and those in the hands of the thief, were mingled together, such that one could not distinguish Our Lord's nails from the others. So they cast them into the fire together and fashioned from them a fegūda—that is to say, a bridle—and they hung it within the church. And when a horse appears—one that has never been ridden and has never in its life worn a bridle—and of its own accord places its head into this bridle, then the Romans shall know that the kingdom of the Christians is drawing near, and that they are about to seize the dominion over the entire earth from the sons of Hagar and all the rest; and thereafter, (the King) of the Greeks shall surrender the dominion unto God, just as it is written. And that bridle remains to this very day.
3. Then the King of the Greeks shall emerge from the West, and his son from the South; whereupon the sons of Ishmael shall flee and gather together at Babel. The King of the Greeks shall overtake them at Babel, and from there they shall flee to the city of Mecca, where their dominion shall come to an end. And the King of the Greeks shall reign over the entire earth; goodness shall return to the land, the yield of the trees shall increase, the rains and waters shall rise, and the fish within the seas and rivers shall multiply. And there shall be peace and tranquility throughout all creation, and among all peoples and all nations. Then the living man shall pass once again over the dead and say: "How blessed would you be, had you lived under this empire!"
4. And the empire of the Greeks shall endure for two hundred and eight years; after which, sin shall once again increase in the world, and impurity shall be displayed publicly—like cattle, unveiled—in the public squares and amidst the crowds, just as before; and the earth shall be defiled by sin. Then the mountains of Armenia shall open up, and the peoples of Gog and Magog shall emerge from them; and they comprised twenty-four races, speaking twenty-four different languages. When King Alexander saw that they devoured the reptiles of the earth and every unclean thing—even human flesh—and that they consumed the dead and all manner of filth, and that they practiced sorcery and every evil deed, he gathered them together and drove them deep within those mountains, where he confined them. He then besought God to cause the mountains to draw close to one another, and so it came to pass; yet there remained between the mountains a gateway twenty cubits wide. This gate he sealed with stones known as "magnet stones" (magnetis)—stones that adhere to iron, that extinguish fire when brought near it, and against which no incantation can prevail.
5. At the end of time, these gates shall open, and (these men) shall emerge and defile the earth; they shall snatch the son from his mother's arms and slay him, and they shall give him to his mother to cook; and if she refuses to eat him, they shall kill her. And they shall eat rats and all manner of unclean reptiles. And God's mercy shall withdraw from the children of the earth; and men, throughout those days, shall witness every manner of evil: hunger, thirst, cold, frost, and great injustice. Men shall bury themselves alive within the earth. Had God not shortened those days, no flesh would have been saved. Some say that they shall hold dominion for two years and eight months—from the moment of their emergence (from the mountains) until the moment of their destruction. After they have spread across all of creation and reigned over the entire world, God shall take pity on His creatures; He shall gather the (invaders) in that land where the sons of Ishmael perished—namely, Mecca—and there God shall command the angels to stone them with hailstones until not a single one remains; and they shall all perish.
6. During their days, there shall be neither measure nor weight; their appearance is fearsome, and whoever beholds them shall dread and fear them; the stature of each one of them measures but a single cubit.
At that time, the Son of Perdition shall emerge—he who is called the Deceitful Christ—and he shall captivate the world through cunning and falsehood, without the use of the sword; and his sin shall be greater than that of Satan. This is what Jacob Israel foretold to his sons when he said to them: "Gather yourselves together, and I will show you what shall befall you in the latter days"; he was indicating this very time to them. (Then) shall be fulfilled what our Lord indicated: Satan will unite himself with this deceptive Christ and will perform wonders, manifestations, and vain deeds—just as the Divinity united itself with humanity and performed wonders and miracles—and he will spread deceptive and far-reaching rumors; he will raise the dead through trickery and magic, and (he will heal) the paralyzed and the blind. He will be born in Tyre and Sidon, and he will dwell in Capernaum. It is for this reason that Our Lord (said): "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! And you, Capernaum—who have exalted yourself so high—you shall be brought down to Sheol". He will reign over the whole world without war, and he will claim to be the Christ; he will travel from place to place with his retinue, accompanied by many thousands of demons—indeed, by countless myriads—and he will put an end to sacrifices and altars. The first to be deceived and to follow him will be the multitudes of the Jews, and they will declare that he is the Christ; wives will abandon their husbands to follow him, and he will reign over the entire earth. However, he will not enter the city of Edessa, for God has blessed and protected it; nor will he enter these four monasteries. The former shall rise up in the world, and in the end, he shall enter Jerusalem and the sanctuary, as it is written in the Gospel: "When you see the unclean dominion in the holy place"—a sign of impiety, of sin, and of impurity; this unclean sign is the deceptive Christ—and when he enters Jerusalem, then Enoch and Elijah shall emerge from the Land of the Living; they shall rise up against him, they shall resist him, and they shall curse him. When he sees them, he shall melt away like salt in the presence of water, and he shall be the first to be punished—before all men—along with the demons that had entered into him.
7. Next, the King of the Greeks shall come to Jerusalem and ascend Golgotha—where our Savior was sacrificed—bearing in his hand the Cross of the Lord. This Greek king shall be of the lineage of Kushit, daughter of Kushit, (and granddaughter) of the King of Kush; and these people are called the Noub (Nobades). He shall ascend with the Cross in his hand, and the tiara—which descended from heaven upon the head of Jovian (Iônînôs), the first king—shall pass to the very tip of the Lord's Cross; and (the king) shall lift both the Cross and the tiara toward the heavens. Then Gabriel the Archangel shall descend, take the Cross and the tiara, and carry them away to heaven. At that moment, the king shall die—as shall every human being upon the earth, along with the animals and beasts of burden—and nothing living shall remain. Furthermore, that light which God created for the sons of sinful Adam—for light was created for their sake, and God (whose honor is worthy of adoration!) has no need of light or of anything else—shall be extinguished; the stars shall fall like leaves; and the earth shall revert to its primordial state of Tohu and Bohu. And, after all these created things have ceased (to exist)—at that very hour, in the twinkling of an eye—there shall issue forth the sound of a horn and a trumpet; and the righteous and the wicked alike shall gather together, for there shall be but a single resurrection for all mankind and for all creatures. And pangs of agony shall strike the earth, just as they strike a mother when the hour of her childbirth draws near; and Adam shall emerge with all his children, such that not a single human being shall remain who does not rise again at that very same hour. Then a light shall burst forth in the East, brighter than the light of the Sun, and Our Lord Jesus Christ shall come like lightning; and all that the Prophet David foretold shall be fulfilled. A mighty voice shall issue from the East and be heard throughout the heavens. And when that light shines forth amidst the good and the wicked, they shall behold a radiance unlike any other—a light such as they have never before witnessed; for while there is but one resurrection for all, the recompense is not uniform. Indeed, for the wicked, there shall be no torment more grievous than being denied the sight of that light. Then shall arrive the hour of reckoning at the Judgment; and the Judgment consists in the separation of the good from the wicked. Tongues and languages shall vanish, and both the good and the wicked shall rise alike to face the Judgment. The good shall ascend to Heaven, while the wicked shall remain upon the earth—which, for the wicked, constitutes Gehenna. Such is the teaching of Mar Ephrem the Doctor: the fire shall subsist within man himself, burning like a scorching fever; their Gehenna shall reside within them. Thus shall the good ascend to Heaven; yet the reward they receive within the Kingdom shall not be identical for all, but rather, each shall be recompensed at that moment according to the deeds he has performed.
SYRIAC EXCERPT COPIED IN THE BOOK OF THE BEE (ch. 53-55)
Solomon of Akhlat (1222 CE)
53. In this seventh and last millennium will the kingdom of the Persians be destroyed. In it will the children of Ishmael go forth from the wilderness of Yathrib (al-Medînah), and they will all come and be gathered together in Gibeah of Ramah, and there shall the fat ones of the kingdom of the Greeks, who destroyed the kingdoms of the Hebrews and the Persians, be destroyed by Ishmael, the wild ass of the desert; for in wrath shall he be sent against the whole earth, against man and beast and trees, and it shall be a merciless chastisement. It is not because God loves them that He has allowed them to enter into the kingdoms of the Christians, but by reason of the iniquity and sin which is wrought by the Christians, the like of which has never been wrought in any one of the former generations. They are mad with drunkenness and anger and shameless lasciviousness; they have intercourse with one another wickedly, a man and his son committing fornication with one woman, the brother with his brother’s wife, male with male, and female with female, contrary to the law of nature and of Scripture, as the blessed Paul has said, ‘Male with male did work shame, and likewise also the women did work lewdness, and, contrary to nature, had intercourse with one another.’ Therefore they have brought upon themselves the recompense of punishment which is meet for their error, women as well as men, and hence God will deliver them over to the impurity of the barbarians, that their wives may be polluted by the sons of pollution, and men may be subjected to the yoke of tribute; then shall men sell everything that they have and give it to them, but shall not be able to pay the debt of the tribute, until they give also their children to them into slavery. And the tyrant shall exalt himself until he demands tribute and poll-tax from the dead that lie in the dust, first oppressing the orphans and defrauding the widows. They will have no pity upon the poor, nor will they spare the miserable; they will not relieve the afflicted; they will smite the grey hairs of the aged, despise the wise, and honour fools; they will mock at those who frame laws, and the little shall be esteemed as the great, and the despised as the honourable; their words shall cut like swords, and there is none who shall be able to change the persuasive force of their words. The path of their chastisement shall be from sea to sea, and from east to west, and from north to south, and to the wilderness of Yathrib. In their latter days there shall be great tribulation, old men and old women hungering and thirsting, and tortured in bonds until they account the dead happy. They will rip up the pregnant woman, and tear infants away from their mothers’ bosoms and sell them like beasts, and those that are of no use to them will they dash against the stones. They will slay the priests and deacons in the sanctuary, and they will lie with their wives in the houses of God. They will make clothes for themselves and their wives out of the holy vestments, and they will spread them upon their horses, and work impurity upon them in their beds. They will bring their cattle into the churches and altars, and they will tie up their dogs by the shrines of the saints. In those days the spirit of the righteous and of them that are well versed in signs will be grieved. The feeble will deny the true faith, the holy Cross, and the life-giving mysteries; and without compulsion many will deny Christ, and become rebels and slanderers and boasters, denying the faith. With this chastisement shall the Christians be tried. For at that time the righteous, the humble, the peaceful and the gentle will not be sought after, but liars and slanderers and accusers and disturbers and the obscene and those who are destitute of mercy, and those who scoff at their parents and blaspheme the life-giving mysteries. And the true believers shall come into troubles and persecutions until they despair of their lives. Honour shall be taken away from the priests, and the pastors shall become as the people. When the measure of their (i.e. the Ishmaelites’) victory is full, tribulation will increase, and chastisement will be doubled upon man and beast. And there shall be a great famine, and the dead bodies of men shall lie in the streets and squares without any one to bury them, and (just) reckoning shall vanish and disappear from the earth, And men shall sell their brass and their iron and their clothes, and shall give their sons and their daughters willingly to the heathen. A man shall lie down in the evening and rise in the morning, and shall find at his do or two or three exactors and officers to carry off by force; and two or three women shall throw themselves upon one man and say, ‘We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel, only let us take refuge beneath thy skirts.’ When men are oppressed and beaten, and hunger and thirst, and are tormented by that bitter chastisement; while the tyrants shall live luxuriously and enjoy themselves, and eat and drink, and boast in the victory they have won, having destroyed nations and peoples, and shall adorn themselves like brides, saying, ‘The Christians have neither a God nor a deliverer;’ then all of a sudden there shall be raised up against them pains like those of a woman in childbirth; and the king of the Greeks shall go forth against them in great wrath, and he shall rouse himself like a man who has shaken off his wine. He shall go forth against them from the sea of the Cushites, and shall cast the sword and destruction into the wilderness of Yathrib and into the dwelling-place of their fathers. They shall carry off captive their wives and sons and daughters into the service of slavery, and fear of all those round about them shall fall upon them, and they shall all be delivered into the hand of the king of the Greeks, and shall be given over to the sword and to captivity and to slaughter, and their latter subjection shall be one hundred times more severe than their (former) yoke. They shall be in sore tribulation from hunger and thirst and anxiety; they shall be slaves unto those who served them, and bitter shall their slavery be. Then shall the earth which has become desolate of its inhabitants find peace, and the remnant that is left shall return every man to his own land and to the inheritance of his fathers; and men shall increase like locusts upon the earth which was laid waste. Egypt shall be ravaged, Arabia shall be burnt with fire, the land of Hebron shall be laid waste, and the tongue of the sea shall be at peace. All the wrath and anger of the king of the Greeks shall have full course upon those who have denied Christ. And there shall be great peace on earth, the like of which has not been from the creation of the world until its end; for it is the last peace. And there shall be great joy on earth, and men shall dwell in peace and quiet; convents and churches shall be restored, cities shall be built, the priests shall be freed from taxes, and men shall rest from labour and anxiety of heart. They shall eat and drink; there shall be neither pain nor care; and they shall marry wives and beget children during that true peace. Then shall the gates of the north be opened, and the nations shall go forth that were imprisoned there by Alexander the king.
54. When Alexander was king and had subdued countries and cities, and had arrived in the East, he saw on the confines of the East those men who are of the children of Japhet. They were more wicked and unclean than all (other) dwellers in the world; filthy peoples of hideous appearance, who ate mice and the creeping things of the earth and snakes and scorpions. They never buried the bodies of their dead, and they ate as dainties the children which women aborted and the after-birth. People ignorant of God, and unacquainted with the power of reason, but who lived in this world without understanding like ravening beasts. When Alexander saw their wickedness, he called God to his aid, and he gathered together and brought them and their wives and children, and made them go in, and shut them up within the confines of the North. This is the gate of the world on the north, and there is no other entrance or exit from the confines of the world from the east to the north. And Alexander prayed to God with tears, and God heard his prayer and commanded those two lofty mountains which are called ‘the children of the north,’ and they drew nigh to one another until there remained between them about twelve cubits. Then he built in front of them a strong building, and be made for it a door of brass, and anointed it within and without with oil of Thesnaktîs, so that if they should bring iron (implements) near it to force it open, they would be unable to move it; and if they wished to melt it with fire, it would quench it; and it feared neither the operations of devils nor of sorcerers, and was not to be overcome (by them). Now there were twenty-two kingdoms imprisoned within the northern gate, and tbeir names are these: Gôg, Mâgôg, Nâwâl, Eshkenâz, Denâphâr, Paktâyê, Welôtâyê, Humnâyê, Parzâyê, Daklâyê, Thaubelâyê, Darmetâyê, Kawkebâyê, Dog-men (Cynocephali), Emderâthâ, Garmîdô`, Cannibals, Therkâyê, Âlânâyê, Pîsîlôn, Denkâyê, Saltrâyê. At the end of the world and at the final consummation, when men are eating and drinking and marrying wives, and women are given to husbands; when they are planting vineyards and building buildings, and there is neither wicked man nor adversary, on account of the assured tranquillity and certain peace; suddenly the gates of the north shall be opened and the hosts of the nations that are imprisoned there shall go forth. The whole earth shall tremble before them, and men shall flee and take refuge in the mountains and in caves and in burial places and in clefts of the earth; and they shall die of hunger; and there will be none to bury them, by reason of the multitude of afflictions which they will make men suffer. They will eat the flesh of men and drink the blood of animals; they will devour the creeping things of the earth, and hunt for serpents and scorpions and reptiles that shoot out venom, and eat them. They will eat dead dogs and cats, and the abortions of women with the after-birth; they will give mothers the bodies of their children to cook, and they will eat them before them without shame. They will destroy the earth, and there will be none able to stand before them. After one week of that sore affliction, they will all be destroyed in the plain of Joppa, for thither will all those (people) be gathered together, with their wives and their sons and their daughters; and by the command of God one of the hosts of the angels will descend and will destroy them in one moment.
55. In a week and half a week after the destruction of these wretches shall the son of destruction appear. He shall be conceived in Chorazin, born in Bethsaida, and reared in Capernaum. Chorazin shall exult because he was conceived in her, Bethsaida because he was born in her, and Capernaum because he was brought up in her; for this reason our Lord proclaimed Woe to these three (cities) in the Gospel5. As soon as the son of perdition is revealed, the king of the Greeks will go up and stand upon Golgotha, where our Lord was crucified; and he will set the royal crown upon the top of the holy Cross, upon which our Lord was crucified; and he will stretch out his two hands to heaven; and will deliver over the kingdom to God the Father. The holy Cross will be taken up to heaven, and the royal crown with it; and the king will die immediately. The king who shall deliver over the kingdom to God will be descended from the seed of Kûshath the daughter of Pîl, the king of the Ethiopians; for Armelaus (Romulus) the king of the Greeks took Kûshath to wife, and the seed of the Ethiopians was mingled with that of the Greeks. From this seed shall a king arise who shall deliver the kingdom over to God, as the blessed David has said, ‘Cush will deliver the power to God.’ When the Cross is raised up to heaven, straightway shall every head and every ruler and all powers be brought to nought, and God will withdraw His providential care from the earth. The heavens will be prevented from letting fall rain, and the earth from producing germs and plants; and the earth shall remain like iron through drought, and the heavens like brass. Then will the son of perdition appear, of the seed and of the tribe of Dan; and he will shew deluding phantasms, and lead astray the world, for the simple will see the lepers cleansed, the blind with their eyes opened, the paralytic walking, the devils cast out, the sun when he looks upon it becoming black, the moon when he commands it becoming changed, the trees putting forth fruit from their branches, and the earth making roots to grow. He will shew deluding phantasms (of this kind), but he will not be able to raise the dead. He will go into Jerusalem and will sit upon a throne in the temple saying, ‘I am the Christ;’ and he will be borne aloft by legions of devils like a king and a lawgiver, naming himself God, and saying, ‘I am the fulfilment of the types and the parables.’ He will put an end to prayers and offerings, as if at his appearance prayers are to be abolished and men will not need sacrifices and offerings along with him. He becomes a man incarnate by a married woman of the tribe of Dan. When this son of destruction becomes a man, he will be made a dwelling-place for devils, and all Satanic workings will be perfected in him. There will be gathered together with him all the devils and all the hosts of the Indians; and before all the Indians and before all men will the mad Jewish nation believe in him, saying, ‘This is the Christ, the expectation of the world.’ The time of the error of the Antichrist will last two years and a half, but others say three years and six months. And when every one is standing in despair, then will Elijah (Elias) come from Paradise, and convict the deceiver, and turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers; and he will encourage and strengthen the hearts of the believers.
54. When Alexander was king and had subdued countries and cities, and had arrived in the East, he saw on the confines of the East those men who are of the children of Japhet. They were more wicked and unclean than all (other) dwellers in the world; filthy peoples of hideous appearance, who ate mice and the creeping things of the earth and snakes and scorpions. They never buried the bodies of their dead, and they ate as dainties the children which women aborted and the after-birth. People ignorant of God, and unacquainted with the power of reason, but who lived in this world without understanding like ravening beasts. When Alexander saw their wickedness, he called God to his aid, and he gathered together and brought them and their wives and children, and made them go in, and shut them up within the confines of the North. This is the gate of the world on the north, and there is no other entrance or exit from the confines of the world from the east to the north. And Alexander prayed to God with tears, and God heard his prayer and commanded those two lofty mountains which are called ‘the children of the north,’ and they drew nigh to one another until there remained between them about twelve cubits. Then he built in front of them a strong building, and be made for it a door of brass, and anointed it within and without with oil of Thesnaktîs, so that if they should bring iron (implements) near it to force it open, they would be unable to move it; and if they wished to melt it with fire, it would quench it; and it feared neither the operations of devils nor of sorcerers, and was not to be overcome (by them). Now there were twenty-two kingdoms imprisoned within the northern gate, and tbeir names are these: Gôg, Mâgôg, Nâwâl, Eshkenâz, Denâphâr, Paktâyê, Welôtâyê, Humnâyê, Parzâyê, Daklâyê, Thaubelâyê, Darmetâyê, Kawkebâyê, Dog-men (Cynocephali), Emderâthâ, Garmîdô`, Cannibals, Therkâyê, Âlânâyê, Pîsîlôn, Denkâyê, Saltrâyê. At the end of the world and at the final consummation, when men are eating and drinking and marrying wives, and women are given to husbands; when they are planting vineyards and building buildings, and there is neither wicked man nor adversary, on account of the assured tranquillity and certain peace; suddenly the gates of the north shall be opened and the hosts of the nations that are imprisoned there shall go forth. The whole earth shall tremble before them, and men shall flee and take refuge in the mountains and in caves and in burial places and in clefts of the earth; and they shall die of hunger; and there will be none to bury them, by reason of the multitude of afflictions which they will make men suffer. They will eat the flesh of men and drink the blood of animals; they will devour the creeping things of the earth, and hunt for serpents and scorpions and reptiles that shoot out venom, and eat them. They will eat dead dogs and cats, and the abortions of women with the after-birth; they will give mothers the bodies of their children to cook, and they will eat them before them without shame. They will destroy the earth, and there will be none able to stand before them. After one week of that sore affliction, they will all be destroyed in the plain of Joppa, for thither will all those (people) be gathered together, with their wives and their sons and their daughters; and by the command of God one of the hosts of the angels will descend and will destroy them in one moment.
55. In a week and half a week after the destruction of these wretches shall the son of destruction appear. He shall be conceived in Chorazin, born in Bethsaida, and reared in Capernaum. Chorazin shall exult because he was conceived in her, Bethsaida because he was born in her, and Capernaum because he was brought up in her; for this reason our Lord proclaimed Woe to these three (cities) in the Gospel5. As soon as the son of perdition is revealed, the king of the Greeks will go up and stand upon Golgotha, where our Lord was crucified; and he will set the royal crown upon the top of the holy Cross, upon which our Lord was crucified; and he will stretch out his two hands to heaven; and will deliver over the kingdom to God the Father. The holy Cross will be taken up to heaven, and the royal crown with it; and the king will die immediately. The king who shall deliver over the kingdom to God will be descended from the seed of Kûshath the daughter of Pîl, the king of the Ethiopians; for Armelaus (Romulus) the king of the Greeks took Kûshath to wife, and the seed of the Ethiopians was mingled with that of the Greeks. From this seed shall a king arise who shall deliver the kingdom over to God, as the blessed David has said, ‘Cush will deliver the power to God.’ When the Cross is raised up to heaven, straightway shall every head and every ruler and all powers be brought to nought, and God will withdraw His providential care from the earth. The heavens will be prevented from letting fall rain, and the earth from producing germs and plants; and the earth shall remain like iron through drought, and the heavens like brass. Then will the son of perdition appear, of the seed and of the tribe of Dan; and he will shew deluding phantasms, and lead astray the world, for the simple will see the lepers cleansed, the blind with their eyes opened, the paralytic walking, the devils cast out, the sun when he looks upon it becoming black, the moon when he commands it becoming changed, the trees putting forth fruit from their branches, and the earth making roots to grow. He will shew deluding phantasms (of this kind), but he will not be able to raise the dead. He will go into Jerusalem and will sit upon a throne in the temple saying, ‘I am the Christ;’ and he will be borne aloft by legions of devils like a king and a lawgiver, naming himself God, and saying, ‘I am the fulfilment of the types and the parables.’ He will put an end to prayers and offerings, as if at his appearance prayers are to be abolished and men will not need sacrifices and offerings along with him. He becomes a man incarnate by a married woman of the tribe of Dan. When this son of destruction becomes a man, he will be made a dwelling-place for devils, and all Satanic workings will be perfected in him. There will be gathered together with him all the devils and all the hosts of the Indians; and before all the Indians and before all men will the mad Jewish nation believe in him, saying, ‘This is the Christ, the expectation of the world.’ The time of the error of the Antichrist will last two years and a half, but others say three years and six months. And when every one is standing in despair, then will Elijah (Elias) come from Paradise, and convict the deceiver, and turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers; and he will encourage and strengthen the hearts of the believers.
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Sources: Ernst Sackur, Sibyllinische texte und forschungen (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1898), 59-96; F. Nau, Révélations et Légendes: Méthodius, Clément, Andronicus (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1917), 434-446; Ernest A. Wallis Budge (trans.), The Book of the Bee: The Syriac Text (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1886), 124-131.
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