16 chapter two

CHAPTER TWO

ALEXANDER AND GOG AND MAGOG IN EASTERN

CHRISTIAN SOURCES

In the Eastern part of the Roman Empire Gog and Magog continued
to haunt the Christian communities. Eastern Christianity witnessed
so many upheavals that the apocalyptic figures of Gog and Magog
were continuously evocated in the minds of the people. The tendency
of associating actual events with alleged activities of barbarians
became concrete when the Huns in 395 and 396 passed through the
Darial defile and invaded Northern Mesopotamia and Syria. The
regions suffered much from the horse-riding attackers from the north
similar to the Biblical figures of Gog and Magog. A new element
came to be attached to the Gog and Magog tradition, namely that
of a superhuman protector of civilisation. It was found in the over-
powering figure of Alexander the Great. With God’s help he was to
build a barrier that should shut off the apocalyptic nations until the
time fixed by God Himself. Only at God’s signal could they get loose
and ravage the earth before they would be finally destroyed.
Apocalyptic expectations and the biblical motif merged into a new
concept in which Alexander occupies the central place. Already in
the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander had become
an almost mythical hero performing numerous deeds which brought
him to the farthest ends of the world. It is this portrayal of Alexander,
which is now grafting upon the apocalyptic ideas about Gog and
Magog. The historical figure of Alexander and the Gog and Magog
motif began probably to be combined in apocalyptic expectations of
Syrian Christians in Northern Mesopotamia in the late 4th or early
5th century.

1. The Syriac Alexander Romance

The famous Greek Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, an emi-

nent piece of classical popular fiction, was decisive in transforming
the historic conqueror into a superhuman being. The Romance is
of no historical value, but its exotic tales of Alexander’s exploits

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 eastern christian sources 17

which supplemented much the imagination made it a most popular

book in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages.
The Greek version of the Romance seems to have received its liter-
ary form in Alexandria at the end of the 3rd century.1 The text
became soon very popular and was rewritten and adapted to the
different readers’ cultural or national environment. The Romance was
spread in numerous versions and languages to the East and to the
West.2 The oldest testimonies of the Romance are the Latin (4th c.)
and Armenian version (5th c.). The Syriac tradition3 is one of the
most interesting versions of the many existing oriental redactions of
the Romance. It dates from the 7th century and goes back on a quite
similar Vorlage of the Greek recensio vetusta (α).4 The Syrian redactor,
probably an East Syrian Christian, added a certain number of until
then unknown episodes to the text. The episode of Alexander’s build-
ing a wall against Gog and Magog, however, is not found in the
oldest Greek, Latin, Armenian and Syriac versions of the Romance.
Though the Alexander Romance was decisive for the spreading of the
new and supernatural image of Alexander the king in East and West,
the barrier episode has not its origin in this text. The fusion of the
motif of Alexander’s barrier with the Biblical tradition of the apoca-
lyptic peoples Gog and Magog appears in fact for the first time in
the so called Syriac Alexander Legend. This text is a short appendix
attached to Syriac manuscripts5 of the Alexander Romance.
1
For the sources of the Greek Alexander Romance, cf. the fundamental mono-
graph of R. Merkelbach–J. Trumpff, Die Quellen des griechischen Alexanderromans,
(Zetemata. 9), München 21977.
2
For the more than 80 versions of the Romance in various languages cf.
D.J.A. Ross, Alexander Historiatus. A Guide to Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature,
(Athenäum Monographien Altertumswissenschaft. Beiträge zur Klassischen Philolo-
gie. 186), Frankfurt 21988.
3
Budge, History of Alexander the Great, p. 1-254 (ed.), p. 1-143 (transl.); V. Ryssel,
Die Syrische Übersetzung des Pseudo-Callisthenes ins Deutsche übertragen, in: Archiv für das
Studium der neuere Sprachen und Litteraturen, Braunschweig 90 (1893), p. 83-134, 269-288,
353-402.
4
The long-standing theory of Th. Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alexanderro-
mans, (Denkschriften d. Kaiserl. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Wien, Phil.-hist. Kl. 38,5), Wien
1890, p. 13-17, about a lost Pehlevi Vorlage of the Syriac version is definitely refuted
by Ciancaglini, Gli antecedenti, p. 62-68, 72-78, 85, 89-90, and id., Syriac Version,
p. 135-136. On philological and cultural-historical grounds Ciancaglini argues for a
Greek model. Similar arguments were propounded earlier by R.N. Frye, Two Iranian
Notes, in: Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, i, (Acta Iranica. 24), Leiden 1985,
p. 185-188.
5
For the quite late manuscript tradition of the Syriac version of the Alexander
Romance, cf. Ciancaglini, Syriac Version, p. 121.

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