“The big questions are, who are the major players in this apocalyptic drama, and how soon is all this going to happen?”
37
Saturday, September 13–11:02 p.m. — Jerusalem
Mordechai reached into a briefcase and removed a notebook.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Bennett.
Bennett took it. Then, at Mordechai’s request, he made a list of the bizarre-sounding names in the chapter’s first six verses.
• Gog
• Magog
• Rosh
• Meshech
• Tubal
• Persia
• Cush
• Put
• Gomer
• Beth-togarmah
Bennett stared at the list for a few moments. Were these names of people? cities? countries? Were they a code of some sort? They clearly described forces that would one day “come like a storm” against Israel to wipe her off the face of the planet. But he hadn’t a clue how one could break a code 2,500 years old.
“Let me see if I can make some sense of all that,” Mordechai offered. “The first thing we need to understand is that the first word on the list, Gog, is not a name. It is a title, like czar or pharaoh. In this case, Ezekiel tells us that Gog is a ‘prince’ who will arise in a land called Magog. Which begs the question, where is Magog? One clue comes from Voltaire.”
“The French philosopher? Hero of secular humanists?” Bennett asked.
“Exactement,” said Mordechai with a smile. “Voltaire was hardly a religious man. Indeed, he was a self-declared enemy of Christ. He once wrote a letter to Frederick the Great, the eighteenth-century king of Germany, arguing that ‘Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.’ ”
“Doesn’t sound like your kind of guy.”
“True,” Mordechai said. “But for some reason Voltaire was intrigued with solving the riddle of Gog and Magog. Here…”
Mordechai stood up and crossed to a tall bookshelf, covered with ornate carvings and filled with beautifully bound volumes. He ran a finger along a row of books, then selected one and pulled it out. He handed it to Bennett.
Bennett looked at the cover. It was a translation of The Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire.
Bennett opened to the page Mordechai specified, then scanned the short essay he found there. Within seconds he saw what Mordechai wanted him to see. Voltaire had written: “There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother.’ ”
Bennett looked up. “Voltaire thought Magog was Russia?” he asked in disbelief.
“He did, and remember, he was writing nearly one hundred fifty years before the rise of Russia as a major world power. Even more interesting, the genealogical tree to which he refers actually finds its origin in the very Bible for which he had such little regard.”
“What do you mean?”
“The first place the world ever heard of Magog was in the Bible. Genesis 10—Magog was a son of Japheth, who was a son of Noah. Three of his brothers were Meshech, Tubal, and Gomer. I will get to them shortly, but let us stay with Magog for the moment.
“The Bible lays out Noah’s entire family tree. It shows how Noah’s descendants migrated to Africa, Europe, and Asia, establishing the first civilizations on those continents. In trying to decode the Gog and Magog prophecy, Voltaire studied Noah’s genealogical tree, then compared it with the histories of these different continents in hopes of determining where each of Noah’s descendants ended up. Wait a moment; I have something else for you to read.”
Mordechai went back to the bookshelf and searched for several seconds before finding the book he wanted.
“Here it is. Ever hear of Josephus?”
“The Roman historian?”
“Yes.”
“Sure. Why?”
“Here,” Mordechai said, handing Bennett the large book. “This is a compilation of The Antiquities of the Jews, a twenty-volume classic written in the first century after Christ. Look in book 1, chapter 6.”
Bennett began reading and found the reference to Magog almost immediately. He read aloud: “‘Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians.’ ”
“OK,” Mordechai said. “Now the Scythians, we know from history, were absolute barbarians — expert horsemen but fierce, bloodthirsty killers. They actually used skulls as mugs to drink the blood of their victims. And genetically, they were Aryans.”
Surprised, Bennett looked up from his notes. “The same Aryans that Hitler called the ‘superior race’?”
“From the same gene pool, yes, but the Scythians did not live in Germany.”
“Where did they live?”
“Russia and Islamic Central Asia.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not,” said Mordechai. “Ever been to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Next time you go, check out the exhibit of Scythian artifacts found in southern Russia. And next time you are in Moscow, take the tour of the State Historical Museum on Red Square. I was just there last year, and I found case after case of Scythian artifacts, all dug up by Russian archeologists, and all on display in Russia’s official museum.”
Bennett knew he wasn’t likely to be back in Moscow anytime soon. But Mordechai now had his full attention. He glanced back at chapter 38 and asked, “All right, Ezekiel says this Gog character is ‘the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal.’ What does that mean?”
“The word Rosh in Hebrew can mean ‘head’ or ‘chief,’ leading some scholars to the conclusion that Gog is the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, not the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal. But both the Masoretic text and the Septuagint translate Rosh as the proper name of a geological place.”
“Hold on a minute,” Bennett said. “What’s the Septuagint and the Massa-something?”
“The Septuagint,” Mordechai explained, “is the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was translated in Alexandria, Egypt, a few hundred years before Christ. The Masoretic text, or Masora, is the full Hebrew text of the Tanakh or Old Testament, upon which most Jewish Bibles are based. Ironically, one of the oldest and best-preserved copies we have of the Masoretic text — the one giving us a complete version of Ezekiel’s vision of Gog and Magog — is called the Leningrad Codex. It is housed in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, Russia.”
“Why do you say that’s ironic?” Bennett asked.
“Because if you scour ancient history and languages,” Mordechai said, “you will find the name Rosh is linguistically related to the words Rhos, Rus, and Ros, all of which were ancient names for Russia.”
“That is ironic,” Bennett said, his curiosity growing.
“Take Wilhelm Gesenius, for example,” Mordechai continued. “Gesenius was a nineteenth-century German professor who died in 1842, but to this day he is considered the father of modern Hebrew lexicography. In his seminal work, Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, he concluded that the Rosh to which Ezekiel refers is ‘undoubtedly the Russians, who are mentioned by the Byzantine writers of the tenth century, under the name the Ros, dwelling to the north of the Taurus.’ ”