I'm sorry but Magog is Russia

I agree with Chris White on the timing of Ezekiel 38, and maybe also 39 or maybe 39 is Armageddon, but I certainly don’t believe either of these chapters can be Pre or Mid Trib.  So I’m not defending the identification of Magog (and/or some of it's allies) with the general region of Russia because I expect any Bible Prophecy using that name to be fulfilled in the near future.

I also agree with Chris White that Meshech and Tubal (and Rosh if it's a name) are in the area of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.  Tbilisi is the name of Georgia's Capital.  Actually it seems like Georgia alone (Iberia in antiquity) can account for both Meshech and Tubal.  (And Rosh is the one that's disputed whether it's a name at all.)  Attempts to make a Turkish identification for Tubal are entirely dependent on a nation called Tabal. Tabal might not even have been where most historians think it was, our documentation on it is sketchy, it could have always been the same place as the Georgian Tubal.  And this southern Anatolian location is essentially the same region that elsewhere is Biblicaly Tarshish.  Also clerically the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church's full title is Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, the Archbishop of Mtskheta-Tbilisi and Metropolitan Bishop of Bichvinta and Tskhum-Abkhazia.

But it’s amusing to me how much White thinks those identifications debunk associating this prophecy with Russia.  Because in fact that region has a long history of being under the hegemony of Russia, the Tsars captured lost and recaptured that region multiple times, it was part of the USSR (in fact Stalin was ethnically Georgian) and now Putin is asserting his power over that region in multiple ways, last I checked he was still only militarily in Georgia but it’s safe to say all former USSR nations are part of his ultimate ambitions.  But again I’m not gonna predict how successful he will be in that, I only mention Putin here because he adds to the precedent of that region being one Russia seeks to control.

Josephus identified Magog with the Scythians.  And there is no dispute the region that is pointing to is north of the Black Sea, all in parts of modern Russia and Ukraine, another country that has frequently been part of the Russian empire and could be again in the future if Russia has its way.

Chris White and others attempt to deconstruct the significance of that identification by pointing out how “Scythians” was a term the Greeks used for many nomadic tribes of this region who may not have been as closely related to each other as the Greeks often assumed.  But that really doesn’t matter.  

1. Magog is not the only Genesis 10 name to have multiple people groups descended from them, remember all the nations are supposed to go back to these names and there are way more then 70.
Even if not all the Scythians were Magogite by strict patrilineal descent, Josephus is still clearly telling us this is the area to look for Magog in.

2. The fact is there is no solid alternative to what Josephus told us.  And the arguments for putting Magog in modern Turkey are entirely based on past attempts to interpret Ezekiel 38-39 Preteristically by identifying Gog with Gyges of Lydia.

White also tries to argue Josephus was simply wrong about the Scythians because "Modern Historians" view their migration pattern differently, but that's because "Modern Historians" don't believe in The Table of Nations.  For those of us who do believe in The Table of Nations (and even most Local Flood proponents need to include all the Indo Europeans among descendants of Noah) it's not just the Scythians who have to get to wherever their Secular History starts from Turkey, they all do.  Josephus says nothing however to particularly associate Magog or the Scythians with anything south of the Caucus Mountains, that part of his description of the migration is about Japheth in general.  In Wars 7.7.4 Josephus further identifies a group of Scythians as living by Late Meotis/Maeotis aka the Sea of Azov.

Meanwhile the Caspian Gates tradition shows that throughout Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval period north of the Caucus Mountains was where Christians, Jews and Muslims believed the hordes of Gog and Magog lived.  One of the most popular proposed locations for the Gates is in the Russian province of Dagestan. Another is the Darial Pass in Ossetia-Alania  The third is the Wall of Gorgon which is roughly the barrier between Iran and the former USSR republics east of the Caspian Sea, but I consider that the least likely of the three candidates since north of the main Biblical Lands is the point.

I don't believe the Gates of Alexander legend really happened because I don't believe Wall building was in Alexander's character.  But I favor the Darial Pass being the inspiration for the legend for three reasons.  1. It best fits the between two mountains imagery.  2.  The others weren't fortified till Late-Parthian or Sassanian times deep into the AD era while this one had fortifications going back to 150 BC.  Meaning only it was already fortified when Josephus referred to the Caspian Gates (Antiquities 18.4.4 and Wars 7.7.4).  3.  While all three regions were part of greater Scythia, this region is where modern Scythians still survive today, still speaking a Scythian language and some even still practicing their ancient pre-Christian Scythian Paganism.

I also think it's possible the names of Gog and Magog could be etymologically related to the name of the Caucus mountains themselves.  Jerome specifically placed Magog beyond the Caucasus by the Caspian Sea.

Kaukas is the name of a mythical ancestor of the various North-Eastern Caucasian peoples like the Nakh and others who live in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia.  Now a lot of these traditions make him a son of Togarmah, but I think the name could simply be a form of Gog.  I think the Greeks included these people when they spoke of Scythians even though they didn't speak what modern scholars classify as a Scythian language.  Ancient Georgia/Iberia also had a region called Gogharena.

And no identifying Russia with Magog didn't begin during The Cold War, there is documentation for example that many Protestants in both Brittan and the United Stated identified Russia with Magog during the Crimean War of 1853-1856.

"In 1840, John Nelson Darby wrote that Gog, referred to in the book of Ezekiel6 , was the contemporary state of Russia, which was “extending her power over the nations who will be found under Gog” (quoted in Boyer, 1992, 154). While not the first to make this interpretation of the Bible, it was Darby’s preaching that influenced John Cumming, the man who popularized Russia’s hypothesized role in the Endtimes with his book, The End (1855), published during the Crimean War."

That's a quote taken from an article against the Russia theory, on page 13.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.566.1374&rep=rep1&type=pdf

One dispute often brought into this discussion is whether the uses of Genesis 10 names in Bible Prophecy should be interpreted strictly geographically or if they can be “bloodlines” them as people groups that may have moved around.  Though it’s primarily those taking the Geographical position who are very hardlined that it should always only be that method.  Feeling that movements of people groups though out history is so complicated and uncertain that it can be used to make anything work.

The problem is it’s absurd to me to suggest that it should be universally the same method every time.  The context of the reference needs to be considered in determining whether it’s about the land or the people.  And in the case of Ezekiel 38 within one chapter the context of how different names are mentioned changes.

Magog, Meshech and Tubal are definitely references to their lands geographically, the word "land" is used in that verse.  But with Gomer and Togarmah it’s the opposite, their “bands” are what are being referred to not their locations.  But even more specifically than that with Togarmah it says the “House of Togarmah”.  Every Biblical reference to the “House of David” is agreed to refer to the family of David wherever they may currently be, not the land David ruled.  It could be these "bands" refer to mercenary or volunteer troops and not the proper nations those names refer to at all.

Persia, Cush and Phut are a little less clear which method is most appropriate. Fortunately those three groups haven’t significantly moved.  Some of them have migrated and can indeed now be found on every continent.  But primarily the Persians are still in Iran, the Cushites are still in Sudan and the Berbers are still in North Africa west of Egypt.

So yes the original settlement of Togarmah was the Anatolian city of Tegarama who's exact location is disputed.  But as Bill Cooper documents in After The Flood they were conquered by the Assyrians who did to them the same thing they did to Israel.  Many traditions have identified many tribes in and around the Caucus mountains to be descendants of Togarmah.  But what’s most interesting to me is how the Khazzars who partly converted to Judaism identified their people as descendants of Togarmah.  The core of their land was entirely within modern Russia to the north of Georgia.  Christian of Stavelot in his Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam (860–870s) refers to the Khazzars as Gazari and says they lived in the lands of Gog and Magog.  However there are also traditions that associate Armenia with Togarmah.  Of course this opportunity to associate the Khazzars with Gog and Magog is sometimes abused by Anti-Semities, no the Ashkenazim aren't Khazzars.

Now because of what I believe about how to deal with the sons and grandsons of Noah’s sons I will not consider Ashkenaz or Riphath relevant to these chapters.  Gomer does clearly originally refer to the Cimmerians who were in Anatolia, but again the Cimmerians moved around.  The most solid argument for connecting them to Russia is Crimea.  But it’s also possible the Scandinavian tribes who eventually came to Russia in medieval times could be at least partially of Gomerite stock.  And according to Herodotus the original homeland of the Cimmerians was between the Thyras and Tanais rivers (Dinester and Don) much of the same location he associates with the Scythians, Ukraine and parts of Russia.

Russia is not the only place descendants of these two Genesis 10 names can be traced to.  But the point is I already made a strictly geographical argument for Russia being the Land of Magog, so evidence of Gomer and Togarmah both winding up also in Russia further backs that up.

On it’s own I would not consider the “uttermost parts of the north” to prove anything since it could just mean anywhere North of Israel.  But since we have other good reasons to place Magog in Russia that identification only further makes things fit.

You can find a few articles online arguing for Magog being Babylon, based on arguing Magog itself being a cipher for Babel similar to Sheshech in Jeremiah, and other thematic connections, like Babylon otherwise being missing from Ezekiel's prophecies of Judgments on the nations.  However in the context of Mystery Babylon I should point out how the Tsars claimed Moscow was the Third Rome and that like the original Rome it too was a city on Seven Hills.

Tarshish, Sheba and Dedan are mentioned in the prophecy not as allies of the invaders but as nations criticizing the invaders.  If anyone in this chapter is definitely Turkey it’s Tarshish which was Tarsus.  (Though it is amusing how multiple competing Tarshish theories can be brought together by just saying Tarshish represents NATO here.)  At least one of Sheba and Dedan would definitely be Saudi Arabia, maybe both are, or the other could be Jordan, Kuwait, Dubai or Yemen.

All that is if the borders of the Middle East resemble their modern borders when this prophecy happens, it’s very possible they won’t anymore.

Again I do NOT believe in an imminent Gog and Magog invasion, this is the conclusion I’m coming to about Magog with genuinely no dog in that fight.  Chris White tries to make himself seem just as unbiased by taking basically the same timing position I do.  But White I feel has a tendency I used to have towards wanting to be contrarian on issues like this, he wants to deconstruct the Russia identification because it’s popular and so often tied to other views he’s against.

Joel Richardson wants to deconstruct the Russia identification because he feels it better fits his Islamic Antichrist view to make it Turkey.  I am still undecided on exactly what I believe about the cultural/religious background of the "Antichrist".  But Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and it already has a very strong presence in parts of Russia, and even more in many former USSR nations.  Putin is devoutly Eastern Orthodox but a future leader could take them in a Muslim direction.  The identifications I have made here could fit seeing the invaders as the Shiiites (Iran and Azerbaijan are the two leading Shiite nations) and those criticizing them as the Sunnis.  Dagestan interestingly is a province of Russia that is already majority Muslim, as is neighboring Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Update October 2020 on if Rosh is a name or not.

It's interesting how complicated that debate is with there being Magog is not Russia supporters willing to say it is a name and Magog is Russia supporters willing to say it's not.  Since I originally made this post I have become the latter category.

The Septuagint/LXX witness is kind of the main smoking gun argument for saying it is a name since so many Traditionalist Christians trust it so much.  But on another Blog I've long expressed my reservations regarding the LXX.

The Latin Vulgate, Aramaic Targums and Aramaic Peshitta all support it not being a name but a word for Chief or Head.  Now I know many of my fellow Protestants love to go "the Vulgate must be wrong" but what's more important to me is having two Aramaic witnesses.  As a fellow Semitic language they had an inherent advantage in translating the Hebrew properly.  Jerome meanwhile studied Hebrew and talked to Rabbis and many Old Testament differences between Vulgate and LXX were him correcting LXX mistakes that were well known to the Hebrews even back then.

Now it is still possible The Holy Spirit was using prophetic word play.  The USSR was a Confederacy of nations each with it's own Nasi but the one called Russia was the chief among them.  Now today the USSR is gone and I believe this Prophecy happens after the Millennium.  But since I believe Jesus is a Communist, He may very well restore the USSR at the start of the Millennium, though I do suspect He's more of a Menshevik then a Leninist, or better yet a Left SR.

But regardless, the problem with the Rosh fixation is so many people think Russia as Magog is utterly dependent on that identification and so act like deconstructing that is all they need to do.  But I can make the argument without ever bringing that up, or making any Meshach=Moscow connection either.

Meanwhile in the context of my observations about defining the Genesis 10 nations by their Languages, the only surviving Scythian Language is spoken only in Ossetia a region that's partly in Russia and partly in the Russian occupied parts of Georgia.

Update June 14th 2021: So Christ White has changed his position on Rosh being a name in his new study on the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChZZjwFe3Q

But that's not all he's changed, he no longer talks about Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan when discussing Meshach and Tubal, instead he wants to place all the Japhetic names of Ezekiel 38 in "Eastern Turkey".  I can't help but assume this change happened because he realized what I argued above, Meshach and Tubal being in Georgia helps rather then hurts Magog being Russia.

Update March 29th 2022: Debunking Anatolian Tubal once and for all.

I've looked into the Basis for the Anatolian Tubal and it's even worse and more embarrassing then I thought it was.  The so called Anatolian Tubal is what was in classical antiquity known as Tyana but more anciently was Tuwana or Tuwanuwa, and there may have been a related tribe called Tuali.  

The second letter of this word appears to be one for U or W which you can then equate to the Hebrew Vav, but the Vav is also sometimes V and Beth is also sometimes V so maybe the Hebrew confused them?  Well no Vav being also V is a very late development in the languages history, one that is certainly not a factor in anything in the Pentateuch.  So the entire etymological basis for this identification is worthless.

The Georgian Tubal identification is far more credible, their Capital is called that to this day Tbilisi and is known to have been called that since very ancient times.  The variations are caused in part by the occasional L and R confusion (it's not something that only happens with English to Japanese, I have always heard the L in the middle of Colonel as an R).  And after that Iberes and Iberia/Iberian comes from the T being dropped for some reason.  

The argument for a Meshech in ancient Cappadocia is more valid, and here's the thing I think originally Meshech did settle there and their original post Flood Language was the language modern scholars call Hattian (not to be confused with the Indo-European language spoken by the Anatolian Hitties), but as that region was eventually conquered by various other Anatolian Empires their remnant moved to where their brother Tubal lived in Georgia and adopted their language(s) and that is why Eschatological references always pair those two together. Cappadocia and Tyana are not close enough to justify that consistent pairing.

I have a controversial new take on the Fall of Rome, it didn’t.

It only changed.  And no I don’t just mean by that the Eastern Empire’s continuation.

During what everyone agrees qualifies as Roman history it’s form of government changed multiple times, regimes were replaced by military force, it divided into separate smaller states, it’s religion changed, it’s capital moved (not just the big move to Constantinople, eventually Rome was no longer even the regional capital of Italy), in one half it’s language changed, and we also saw the overall ethnic makeup of the citizenry shift via the assimilating of conquered peoples and immigrants.

So with that understanding of how flexible and changeable what Rome is can be, there is no real reason to refuse to accept the Ottoman Empire’s claim to simply being a change in religion and administration of the Eastern Empire.  And the Tsar’s claim is just as valid since they replaced the Eastern Emperor’s role in the Eastern Orthodox Church, then WWI and it's aftermath saw those successor states’ forms of government change again back to being Republics, in name at least.

But even before the 1454 changes the Islamic states could already be viewed as Roman offshoots.  After all I’ve become convinced the original Mecca was really Petra and it was in the Roman Province of Palaestina Salutaris or Arabia Petrea.  And what we now think of as Islamic architecture clearly evolved out of Byzantine architecture.  Arabs were already becoming a fixture of the Eastern Roman Empire even before Muhammad, just look at the history involving Mavia.  And pre Constantine an Arab had become the actual first Christian Emperor, Philip the Arabian.  People who study coins are also aware that prior to Abd Al-Malik the Arabs were still minting Byzantine style coins in the former Roman provinces (and Sassanid coins in Persia) using the same mints.  So there is plenty of reason to view the Arab empire as also another Roman splinter state.  We've also now discovered that Trajan had conquered more of Arabia then we used to think, extending to include Madain Selah, Dumat and Tayma.

But it’s not just the Eastern Empire that didn’t actually fall.  Thersites The Historian has a video on how various elements of Feudalism basically evolved from the privatization of Roman Offices, Duke/Dux and Count/Comte both come from Roman titles. .The Senate continued to meet well after the Western Empire’s “Fall” into the 600s.  Liberius was a roman Prefect in Fifth Century Gaul.  The Pope and other Bishops had become Pontiffs so they carried on the Roman state religion clerically.  Latin remained the language of the ruling class right on through the Reformation and has influenced multiple younger languages.  Right on the Wikipedia Page for Sardinia it says "Early medieval Sardinian political institutions evolved from the millennium-old Roman imperial structures with relatively little Germanic influence.".

And Justinian’s reforms of the Roman law code are the foundation of Europe's legal system to this day.  Certain history YouTubers have made a point out of how Rome's sense of Law and Justice was what they viewed as their defining characteristic over any other features of their culture.  So how much the Laws of Europe are still Roman can be viewed as the strongest argument that Rome never fell.

In 800 AD Charlemagne was crowned the new Western Emperor by The Pope.  The Holy Roman Emperors were the successors to his Principate, as later were the Habsburgs, Napoleons and Kaisers.  WWI caused the end of four different Principates, but also a rise of new Republics.

And now the European Union is seeking to bring these disparate provinces back together.

Update 9/5/2020: here's a fun YouTube Video from Jack Rackman with the same premise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcxMiQhLITY

Update May 2022:  I made about how according to Genesis 10-11 The Bible defined Nations largely by their languages.  Well the Language of Rome being Latin is in it's ancient from still the Liturgical Language of the Roman Catholic Church.  But more importantly the languages as commonly spoken continued to change and evolve and split up into the modern Romance Languages, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan in the west as well as Romanian in Eastern Europe.  And then while English is classified as a Germanic Language half our vocabulary comes from Latin.

My Ancestry of Charlemagne post among other things documents how Charlemagne descended from a lot of Ancient Romans, including specifically Gallo-Roman Aristocracy.

Update Ocotber 2022: Here's another Video on the Subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqoHvTMNCsY

Mystery Babylon as an Adulteress

The more technical arguments for making Mystery Babylon Jerusalem don't hold up at all.  What does hold up are the more thematic connections to themes in the Hebrew Bible about her as a wife of YHWH engaged in Harlotry with The World.

The problem is a lot of Christians are uncomfortable with accepting that that could be us, we think The Church is supposed to the one people of God who won't fall into the same pitfalls that Samaria and Jerusalem fell into.  Even when more fringe elements are criticizing the mainstream Church it's usually in the context of wanting to deny that they actually count as The Church, as legitimately part of the Body and Bride of Christ.

So Protestants and Evangelicals and Torah Keepers point out the ways in which Mystery Babylon can apply to the Catholic Church, but are unwilling to see how we've been guilty of the same basic sins in our own way.

I'm not an Historicist in remotely the traditional sense.  But I do think it's fascinating how the clues in Revelation about Mystery Babylon both point to Rome and to her being either The or A Church.  Meaning on some level however indirectly this book that even the most skeptical critics can't date to later then the mid second century predicted Rome becoming Christian.

The Revelation is drawing on Old Testament imagery, but it's directed at The Church, at Seven Churches in Asia Minor.  And the Jezebel of Thyatira is associated with a lot of the same imagery as the Harlot of Revelation 17.

However the time when Rome became Christian is also the time when OG Rome on the Tiber River ceases to be the only candidate for who Rome is, because that is when Constantinople was founded.

In my view the only cities eligible to be considered candidates for the Seven Hilled city of Revelation are ones that define themselves that way as a positive because they want to be seen as an heir to Rome.  The main three candidates are modern Rome, Constantinople/Istanbul and Moscow.

God's judgments are for correction, this Harlot no matter who she is should not be seen as being permanently rejected, this all goes back to Ezekiel 16.

I have to admit I've spent much of the last year or two trying to be convinced of a form of Post-Millennialism, The Revivalist form however is the only form I'd accept.  I don't want to be a Prophet of Doom predicting this world has to get a lot worse before it can get better.

And I understand the Post-Mil and Partial Preterist arguments about Revelation 20.  But in my look at Church History I see the Church as fitting the Revivalist Post-Mill interpretation of that Chapter for a lot less then a Thousand years, not more.  We were a Camp set apart and separate from The World not even three hundred years.  Only the Ancient Church of the East (often misleadingly called Nestorians) even came close to being like that for a full thousand years.

What I have become more open to are elements of Historicism, but not the Day=Year theory, so if someone has a form of it that works without that nonsense, point me to it and I'll give it a shot.

A lot of passages are applied to The Millennium when they're actually about New Jerusalem

I know I did this post once already very early in this blog's history, but that post is strongly tied into things I've changed my mind on since.

Let's start with how Jesus promised The Twelve Disciples they would sit on Twelve Thrones ruling the Twelve Tribes of Israel at the Last Supper.  I've seen that applied to The Millennium multiple times, but The Twelve don't come up in Revelation 20.

Revelation 21:12-16 refers to Twelve Gates for the Tribes of Israel on which are named the Twelve Tribes and by them are Twelve "angels" and also Twelve Foundations in the Walls with the names of The Twelve Apostles.  I've already explained how "Angels" can refer to human believers but even without that detail I'd still conclude that this is where the promise of the Twelves' Thrones is fulfilled.  In the ancient Near East leaders of a city were often seated by the gate, this custom is alluded to in Ruth 4.

Outside Revelation allusions to The Millennium are much more rare.  But I definitely see it in 1 Corinthians 15:23-28 and probably also in Daniel 7:12.  When it comes to things like where Zechariah 14 ends or Isaiah 19 I'm far from decided.  But at least one other probable TNAK reference to the Millennium will come up later.

However the big passage I want to discus is Isaiah 65-66, chapter 65 verses 17 and 22 are what Revelation 21 verse 1 is practically directly quoting.  And verses 18-19 refer to New Jerusalem though without using the word "new" as explicitly, and Isaiah 66:1(as interpreted by Stephen in Acts 7:44-50) is possibly the reason New Jerusalem is said not to have a Temple.

But verse 20 is thrown around as proof this can't be The New Creation because people still die.  Isaiah is very poetic in style, and considering what I explained on my other blog about how to interpret Scripture Impressionistically rather then Lexically,  It feels to me like it should be blindingly obvious Isaiah 65:20 is actually saying the opposite, that this is his poetic way of saying people will not die and there will be no sin.

People abuse what Jesus said about people neither "Marrying or giving in marriage" in The Resurrection "Like the Angels in Heaven", to prove that there is no Biological Reproduction going on in the New Heaven and New Earth.  Jesus said that in the context of refuting the Sadducees trying to discredit The Resurrection by implying the Levirate marriages will create Polyandrous situations.  It's marriage as defined in Genesis 3 that will end, marriage as a hierarchy, not the Marriage of Genesis 2.  In New Jerusalem we will ALL be Married to Jesus and each other.  

But on the other hand the verse in Isaiah 65 taken to imply new people being born is the very same poetic passage taken to imply some people will die.  Still I believe The Resurrection is the restoration of The Pre-Fall conditions, and so I lean towards suspecting painless childbirth will be an option.

The Patristics often didn't distinguish between The Millennium and New Jerusalem at all.  And while today they are distinguished by all Pre-Millennialists, there is still a desire to make The Millennium far more Utopic then it actually is.  The New Heaven and New Earth will be a Communist Utopia, The Millennium is more complicated, in proper Marxist terminology it's perhaps more like the Dictatorship of the Proliteriate.

For one thing The Saints are NOT ruling the entire world, we have a Camp which is also called the Beloved City.  And based on Revelation 20 alone there is no proof that Camp is Jerusalem. 

You might express concern that this "downgrading" I appear to be doing of The Millennium could serve the interests of Post-Millenialists who argue it fits the current world just fine.  Well indeed I don't consider Post-Mills or Partial Preterists to be Heretics in the way I do Resurrection denying Full Preterists and Amillenials, but I do still disagree with them.

Number 1, my main reason for viewing The Millennium as still yet future is less anything about The Millennium itself but more what must happen before it starts and the absurdity of claiming those things have already happened.  Which is the Parousia and the literal physical Bodily Resurrection of at least all Church Age believers.

Number 2 is the post I made on Zion recently.

The Thousand years strictly speaking refers to the time Satan is bound not the Kingdom itself which will have no end.  The Kingdom begins on Mount Zion in Revelation 14 and then it conquers The beast after The beast destroys Babylon.  Since I do believe the Gog and Magog invasion of Revelation 20 is the same as Ezekiel 38, that gives me confirmation that Israel is the location of this Camp.

Since I don't view The Millennium as a pure perfect Utopia, but it is distinct from the world we know now, what will it be like?  Well if I had to pick an inevitably very flawed literary analogy I would say the Second Age of Middle Earth aka Arda.  At the end of the First Age Morgoth (the Satan analogue) is sealed away and it's not till a Thousand years into the Second Age that the Enemy begins taking direct action again via Sauron's founding of Barad-Dur.  But instead of an Atlantis analogue it's a land at the crossroads of the major continents being ruled by Resurrected Saints that the Enemy is planning war with.

[There is also a part of my Weeb Brain that sees traits of the Millennium in Crystal Tokyo from Sailor Moon lore, particularly in the Manga/Crystal continuity.]

I know I sometimes criticize views opposed to mine for treating The Bible like a fantasy novel, that's why I stressed it's not a perfect analogy.  First and foremost I reject the opinions of some that any future Messianic Kingdom will involve a rejecting of modern technology, in fact I believe we will be colonizing the Stars.

Now I have saved Ezekiel 40-48 for last because my thoughts on that are uniquely complicated.  In fact I'm saving it for after the jump break.

How much Patristic support is there for Preterism?

I ultimately don't actually care what the "Early Church Fathers" thought on anything.  I'm true Sola Sciprtura, and my exact views on Bible Prophecy are not 100% in agreement with any interpretation known to have been expressed in antiquity.  If aspects of what I believe genuinely didn't exist before a guy named Darby in the 1800s then so be it, all I care about is what conclusions the Scriptures lead me to.

But preterists both full and partial, amillenials and post-millennialism in all it's forms don't have that option even when they are nominally protestant.  If the history of The Church is the fulfillment of the Thousand Years refereed to in Revelation 20 and/or New Jerusalem, then we should have known that from the start.

I don't necessarily expect the reverse to be true though, the whole point of Pre-Millennialism is that we consider the age of Grace to be one where the follows of the true God are just as capable of getting things wrong as we were before, even at the earliest stage, The Apostles themselves kept misunderstanding Jesus while He was right there correcting them.

So I'm not even making this investigation because I think it could be the ultimate death nail to other views.  It's because I care about history being represented properly, and because I do respect the early Christians, even the ones I most disagree with, and so don't want to see their views misrepresented for the sake of an ideological argument by anyone on my side or agaisnt it.

First let's talk about what does not inherently make someone a Preterist in their view of Revelation.

1. Referring to what happened in 70 AD as being foretold by Jesus.

There seems to be some straw-manning of Futurism going around where some think any acknowledgment that Jesus "not one stone" comment refers to 70 AD is incompatible with Futurism.  When the truth is I've rarely seen that connection denied by even the most extreme futurists.

First of all I don't think we even need the three "Olivte Discourse" chapters to find Jesus foretelling it, in Luke especially he refers to it a lot.  I personally see 70 AD in more prophecies then most of my fellow Futurists.  Of the the three chapters in question I only have a definitively futurist stance on Matthew 24.  However there is also a position called Middleism which takes a Preterist view of Matthew 24 but a Futurist view of Revelation, these terms didn't exist in antiquity but it looks to me like that position was a common one in the Early Church.

2, Viewing the 70th Week of Daniel as already fulfilled.

Lots of Post-Trib Futurists and Historicists (who are generally Pre-Mill and so more akin to Futurism on what I think matters most then Preterism) also view the 70th Week as already fulfilled.  My own view is that the 70th week was 30-37 AD, so on that issue I'm more preterist then the people who obsess over 70 AD.

Basically those are the two most prominent examples of a more general fact that what someone says about other prophecies proves nothing about their view of Revelation.

Yes your view of Revelation will effect how you view other things because it's referencing older Prophets all the time.  But there is no consistency even within a basic view to what conclusions believers will make from those connections.  In my own view sometimes Revelation is claiming to be what that older Prophecy was actually about all along, but sometimes it's more like history repeating itself and/or making an analogy to help us understand what it's talking about.

3. Identifying The Church as now the true Israel in some capacity.

Like the 70th Week example it seems a lot of people opposing Futurism treat it as if Pre-Trib Dispensationalism is the only form Futurism comes in.  Post-Tribbers pretty much all take this view in some way, and I as a form of Mid-Trib hold a position between the extreme Dispensationalism of Chuck Missler and the extreme conflation of Post-Tribers.

There are multiple non Dispensational views on how The Church and Israel relate.  Two-House theology is predicated on specifically equating The Church or at least the "Gentile" Church with Ephraim.  Mormonism is actually based on a form of that view but it's also popular in the Hebrew Roots/Torah Observant movements.

Rob Skiba likes to call "Replacement Theology" a straw man, he says the Dispensationalists are the true Replacement theologists.  He stresses how even in The Torah citizenship in the Nation of Israel was not predicated solely on bloodlines, people not biologically descended from Jacob or even Abraham could be counted in as long as they got Circumcised and kept the Torah.  To him it's about us being the continuation of Israel.

But that's not a Strawman when applied to 70 AD Preterism.  I was recently watching a Partial Preterist's video on Revelation 11 and the Two Witnesses and he made it explicitly clear, God divorced one wife to replace her with another, there will be no redemption for the divorced wife.  This view is known as Supersessionism.  And make no mistake there are Post-Trib Futurists who also see it that way not Rob Skiba's way.  And the sad thing is that seems to be the way the "Early Church" talked about this issue and is the main reason I have no real desire to agree with them, Anti-Semitism creeped into the Greek Speaking Church very early on.

Even when someone is talking specifically about Revelation some things are simply not as inherently Preterist as Preterists looking for support will assume.

4. Identifying Mystery Babylon with Jerusalem isn't inherently Preterist either.

Chris White is a "Pre-Wrath" Futurist who wrote a book on Babylon being Jerusalem, and he was willing to do that even though he's just as much of a Dispensational Zionist as the Pre-Tribbers.  When he says he intends nothing Anti-Semitic by it I believe him, he's simply misguided.  Among the openly Anti-Semitic Conspiracy theorists there are people like Texe Marrs who was Post-Trib from what I've read.

This 4th example I kinda didn't need to include because I'm currently aware of no early Patristic support for it, though I certainly could have missed something.  In fact from what I've seen so far Babylon as Rome is the only Mystery Babylon view I've seen among them.  Instead the Anti-Semitism of the Early Church manifested in viewing the "Antichrist" as a Jewish Messiah claimant The Jews will accept.  So literally the polar opposite of the standard modern Preterist view on the bad guys of Revelation.

Now onto specific claims.

A website called Preteristarchive has pages devoted to a number of early fathers where they concede the Futurist stances of some but spend a lot of time engaging in the above distractions and other tactics to mislead people.  It does not have pages for Tertullian or Methodius and wrongly classified Ambrose of Milan and Eusebius as Ante-Nicene.

Froom is the name of a Historicist who wrote a book called The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers that you can find online.  He generally avoids trying to make anyone sound more in agreement with his views then they actually were, instead trying to speculate on why they were sometimes wrong in his view.  His one mistake in that area was claiming Tertullian made a connection he didn't actually make regarding The Temple of God as The Church and the Temple in II Thessalonians 2.  While I don't always agree with him his book was a key source in the research I did for this post.

An interesting thing about the most popular forms of Historicism is during the Pre-Nicene and even early post Nicene era their view on at least The Antichrist would have still been a pretty Futurist one.  None the less there were still things you could believe back then pretty incompatible with proper Historicism.

His book documents pretty well how Pre-Nicaea it was pretty much only the Alexandrians and maybe Victorinus of Potiou who entertained any position other then Pre-Mill on Revelation 20.

Justin Martyr is the oldest definitely known example of anyone referencing The Revelation at all.  Maybe The Didichae had Revelation 12's description of The Dragon in mind when it says "the world deceiver", if so that was a futurist application inserted into what seems like a futurist application of Matthew 24 (it's very possible Matthew was in fact the only NT writing the Didichae used at all).

The Preteristarchive has a page on Justin Martyr, and it takes a lot of things he said out of context to make it seem like he's explicitly rejecting Pre-Mill, but they exist in the context of him debating with a Jew about the Rabbinic Jewish Sabbath Millennium concept.  Today many Dispensationalists and Hebrew Roots types like identifying the Revelation 20 Millennium with that Rabbinic concept, but Justin clearly didn't.  I myself have come to not like defining the Millennium as a "Sabbath" Millennium because 1 Corinthians 15 defined it as a period that isn't a "rest" at all.

They failed however to quote the one and only time Justin explicitly refers to The Revelation.  I shall provide it here.

Dialogue with Trypho 81.4 "And further, there was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that thereafter the general, and, in short, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place."

Pretty clearly and unambiguously a Pre-Mill interpretation.

More then one website and blog trying to paint the Early Church as non Pre-Mil as possible will inevitably concede the Pre-Mill Futurism of Hippolytus of Rome and to some extent also his "mentor" Irenaeus.

The problem with conceding him and trying to paint him as the ONLY one is NOT their alleged connection to John which I feel is overstated and don't care about.  It's that only he actually wrote in depth on Bible Prophecy at all, it was really not a major priority of the surviving writings we have from the Early Church especially Pre-Nicaea.  It mostly comes up when refuting Gnostics and Origen on The Resurrection, in which context it frequently comes across that the "Proto-Orthodox" clearly seem Pre-Mil when stressing a literal Bodily Resurrection.  Only Hippolytus wrote an entire book on specifically the subject of The Antichrist.  And in so doing expressed many views on the matter I no longer and/or never did agree with, but his view on the matter was definitely a Futurist one.  And he was not speaking as if he was massively breaking with the norm, he spoke as if some of his specific details may be new but the gist was basically what everyone already agreed on..

And when the only unambiguous counter example(s) to pre-mill are Origen and some other Alexandrians linked to Origen, then your side is on the shakier ground since he was condemned as  a Heretic at a Synod in the 540s.  He's connected to a lot of Heresy, but none of his earliest critics like Methodius of Olympus ever objected to his Soterology, it was his Pre-Existence of Souls doctrine and how that effected his view of The Resurrection that was the core issue.

I'm not an Origen apologist the way most of my modern fellow Universal Salvation proponents often are, because I know that Soteorlogy was also supported by many others who shared none of Origen's issues, and a few condemned for going in the opposite direction on the literal/allegorical dichotomy.

I actually feel like 70 AD Preterism is far more incompatible with a God of Love who Saves ALL then Futurism, because as I stressed above they are adamant on YHWH's refusal to forgive Israel, they make YHWH's promises to never permanently cast Israel aside into bold faced LIES.

Origen's view of Revelation was probably more Idealist then 70 AD focused Preterism given his approach to Scripture in general.

On both Tertullian and Hippolytus one Amill blog admits they were Pre-Mill but says "not like modern Premillenialism", by which they mainly must mean not being Pre-Trib Dispensationalists.  Hippolytus was clearly Post-Trib on his timing of the Parusia, though he did support the gaps in Daniel 9 and 11 that are today usually typical of Dispensationalism.  I myself even in how I view The Millennium's nature am not like most modern pre-Millers, but my disagreement puts the Patristics I've looked at as closer to them then to me.

Tertullian was influenced by the Montanists and so occasionally viewed with suspicion by later generations of The Church, but still not as much suspicion as Origen.  Again Froom tried to paint him as the one Pre-Nicene father who seemed compatible with his Historicism, and indeed Tertulian is the earliest example I've seen of explicitly identifying Babylon with Rome.  But he also clearly identified The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah.

Eusebius of Caesarea was agaisnt the Millennium but because of that questioned the Canonocity of Revelation altogether. Thing is a lot of writers at this time saw the Diocletian Persecution and it's relief under Constantine as the fulfillment of the future Kingdom happening then not back when The Church was founded.  Constantinople was in turn viewed as the New Jerusalem as much as it was a New Rome.

 Athanasius, Ambrose, Hilary and Jerome all spoke about things like The Antichrist in ways that show a futurist understanding of that issue, even Gregory of Nysaa the one time he mentioned The Antichrist clearly viewed him as yet future.  Both versions of the Nicene Creed rule out at least Full Preterism by clearly defining the Parusia as having not happened yet..  

Aphrahat one of the oldest Syrian Fathers also definitely taught Premillenialism and a Literal Resurrection.  His Eschatology can be considered a from of Historicism, but does not have the Antichrist view typical of Protestant Historicism.

In 380 Ticonius published a Revelation commentary that became the foundation of Post Millenialism as we know it today, and was in turn the basis for Augustine of Hippo's eschatology.

Over the course of the next few centuries the leadership of the Church became increasingly either Post-Mill or not Prophecy concerned at all as now Jesus overthrowing the current world system became no longer desirable to them.  However the Popular literature of this era implies Futurism was still the preferred eschatology of the masses, like the Apocalypse of Pseudo Methodius and other texts related to The Last Roman Emperor tradition.  Meanwhile The Book of The Bee shows that understanding of Prophecy continued to thrive among the "Nestorians" into the 13th Century.

Also identifying The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah seemed pretty universal when they came up all.

Can every argument for applying The Olivite Discourse to 70 AD fit the Bar Kochkba Revolt even better?

My answer is not Luke 21 but definitely Mark 13 and Matthew 24 if they can be interpreted Preteristically at all.

First of all even the Preterist interpretation of "this generation", as I documented when arguing for my late date for Revelation there were indeed eyewitnesses to Jesus still around in the reign of Hadrian.

70 AD Preterists obsess over an argument that a Biblical Generation is 40 years because the wandering in the wilderness was to kill off a generation.  But not all of them actually died, that statement was hyperbole, it was mostly just about the 10 spies who gave the bad report.  Numbers 14:33-24 clarifies it was 40 years because the spy mission was 40 days.  Genesis 6 and the lifespan of Moses support making a Biblical generation up to 120 years.

Matthew 24 is the one I'm most strictly futurist on because of certain details completely unique to it, but rhetorically I shall  keep it in mind here.

With Luke 21 it's unique characteristics are what makes it most applicable to 70 AD.  Only Luke 21 actually uses the name of Jerusalem at all, when foretelling it's desolation which is language borrowed from Jeremiah about the fall to Nebuchadnezzar indicating what happened to Jerusalem then will happen again.

But Luke 21 does NOT contain a statement that this time of trouble is will never be surpassed.

The Bark Kochba revolt did not add anything to the destruction of Jerusalem since this time the Rebels never even had Jerusalem to begin with.  But for Judea as a whole that war was far more catastrophic and destructive then the 66-73 AD war and over a shorter period of time.   Many historians consider this the real beginning of the Diaspora.  It is only the fact that it doesn't have it's own Josephus that makes it less analyzed by historians and scholars and less romanticized by artists and poets.

Luke 21 is about things that happened before the "beginnings of sorrows", Matthew 24 about things that happen after, and Mark 13 about things that happen during.  Meanwhile the second time Matthew and Mark's discourses bring up the issue of False Christs has no parallel in Luke at all.

This is significant because contrary to popular opinion the era leading up to and during the 66-73 AD war was NOT filled with would be Messiahs.  Josephus only ever uses the word Christ when describing what Jesus was called. There were would be prophets, and secular revolutionaries, but no claimed Messiahs.  Jewish prophetic expectations of the time were generally that the Messiah can't come till after Rome has already fallen.

Bar Kochba was the first to ever claim to be the Messiah as a rebel leader, that was his innovation.  And he really was the second person after Jesus to ever truly claim that title at all.  Meanwhile since Preterists don't take literally the stuff involving the Sun, Moon and Stars, maybe Stars falling from heaven is also wordplay on the name of Bar Kochba?  Kukbe is the word used in the Peshita?

The Abomination of Desolation is a very specific phrase, that has connotations more specific then just the etymological meanings of the words used to construct it.  Of the two places where the phrase appears in Daniel the one in chapter 12 is probably what Jesus is revealing to still have at least one more yet future fulfillment.  But it's the context in Daniel 11 that defines it.

There are three or four different Hebrew words that get translated "Abomination" in the KJV, the one used in Daniel is not even related to the one used in Leviticus 18-20 and Ezekiel 40-48.  But more importantly to the topic at hand, the precise one used in Daniel is everywhere it appears a synonym for an Idol or False god, from Deuteronomy 29:17 to 1 Kings 11 to Jeremiah 32:34.

But what makes the Abomination of Desolation special is it's being placed inside The Temple (not near it) by a Pagan ruler who had outlawed their faith.  The history of the Hasmonean revolt was to first century Jews not just the reason behind Hanukkah, it was to them as the Revolutionary War or French Revolution is for modern America and France.  When Jesus used this phrase he knew exactly what imagery he was evoking and so did His audience.

Now I'm open to a more "creative" interpretation of what a Futurist fulfillment of this for Matthew 24 may look like, but that's about redefining what this would mean for the New Testament Church with the help of II Thessalonians 2 just as we redefine a number of Hebrew Bible concepts under the doctrine that now we are The Temple.  If you're going to insist this is about the Judea of that time, then you have to be specific to what that idea meant to those Judeans.

70 AD Preterists bend over backwards coming up with every excuse they can to apply that phrase to something that happened in 70 AD.  They take a passage from the Talmud claiming Titus had sex with a whore on a Torah scroll and sliced open the veil with his sword.  Leaving aside how I doubt Titus would have had the means, motive or opportunity to do that from what the actual eyewitness Historian tells us, even this Talmud passage doesn't call that an Abomination of Desolation or compare it to Antiochus Epiphanes in any way.

The timing is also wrong, by the time Titus was able to anything anywhere near The Temple it was already too late to run.  Jesus speaking of the Abomination of Desolation as an event that begins the time of trouble not occurring at the middle or end of it. That fit Hadrian who's said to have set up the initial Idol in 31 AD sparking the Rebellion even though the full Temple is built after.

Preterists aren't the only ones refusing to distinguish between the Olivet Discourses, there are also Futurists who want to use Luke 21 to say Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies again.

Yes the three discourses are "parallel" in a lot of ways, but the differences are there for a reason and ignoring them because you don't want to think Jesus was foretelling more then one thing is simply not respecting the text.  In the case of Luke it has to do with how this isn't even the only place that Gospel records Jesus talking about the fall of Jerusalem, that is a theme of the entire Gospel in a way it's not in the others.

So plenty of people want to argue that Luke 21:20 is about the same thing as The Abomination of Desolation because Jesus then advises basically the same reaction.  As if there can't be more then one good reason to get out of Dodge.

Remember the OG Abomination of Desolation preceded that Jewish revolt, and since they won that war the city was never surrounded by armies.

One of the oldest examples of Patristic support for viewing the Abomination of Desolation as already re-fulfilled is Jerome applying the term to the Statue of Hadrian set up where The Temple formally stood which was still standing when he wrote his commentary on Matthew.  Jerome may have been off on saying it was specifically over the Holy of Holies, in the Bordeaux Pilgrim the two Statues he saw were separate from the "stone" the Jews anointed which I think may have been where the Ark once rested.  Epiphanes' statue was on the Brazen Altar according to 1 Maccabees 1:54-59.

We even have a secular pagan gentile source on this happening, Cassius Dio.

[69.12.1] At Jerusalem, Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the [Jewish] god, he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, 

[69.12.2] for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there. So long, indeed, as Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposedly made of poor quality such weapons as they were called upon to furnish, in order that the Romans might reject them and they themselves might thus have the use of them. But when Hadrian went farther away, they openly revolted.

Meanwhile somewhat less reliable sources like the Historia Augusta say Hadrian also banned Circumcision and sacrificed Pigs to this Idol making it echo Antiochus Epiphanes even more.  And like then this caused the war rather then being caused by it.  It seem Pigs were depicted on Coins minted in Aelia Capitolina.

And like in 70 AD the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem did as Jesus advised and fled, becoming the Nazarenes of later generations, some may have went to Mesopotamia and also became among the ancestors of the "Nestorians" or other Syraic Rite sects.

There is a lot of Misinformation related to the Archaeological facts about The Temple Mount

I finally started to just read some stuff from those who defend the official mainstream position.  And the people wanting to remove The Temple from the Mount altogether are misrepresenting a lot of facts especially in regards to the Antonia Fortress.

Wherever Antonia was it certainly wasn't the entirety of the Temple Mount.  And it probably may not have been where Jesus was tried before Pilate, and there are etymological issues with identifying the Gabbatha of John 19 with a Rock like the Dome of The Rock's.

One thing I've been noticing for awhile in those supporting the Gihon Spring or Nea Church location flat out ignore Hadrian's Temple to Jupiter when discussing the history since they want to claim nothing else was ever built on the same site.  We know even from a secular pagan gentile source that Hadrain did that, Cassius Dio.  And Jerome says the Statue of Hadrian standing over the Holy of Holies was still there in his day. Jerome identifies it with the Abomination of Desolation of Matthew 24 but still clearly had a Futurist understanding of Revelation.  For that eschatologically influenced reason he might be off on it being exactly where the Holy of Holies was, many think Antiochus's AoD was in the Holy of Holies when in fact 1 Maccabees says it was on the Brazen Altar.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the Baalbek Temple built by the same architect so closely resembles the basic lay out of The Temple Mount, with the Hexagonal Court being what become the Dome of The Rock and the Temple proper being the Al Aqsa Mosque.  Though the Southern Conjecture/Al-Kas fountain view proponents of whom I have been one in the past are perhaps assuming too much about the location of the Equestrian Statue being the same.

I'd like to see the primary sources on Byzantine Jerusalem's Church of Holy Wisdom discussed by someone without an agenda.  How true is it that it stood where the Dome of the Rock is now and that it was identified with a location relating to the trial(s) of Jesus?

Those who believe the Temple was where the Dome currently is say that spot was identified as such by Muslims right from the time of Umar.  For one the oldest Muslin worship site on the Mount is the Al Aqsa Mosque, the current silver domed building is slightly younger then the Dome of the Rock but it was still where Muslims prayed first.  And even then many scholars now think even that oldest primitive Al Aqsa Mousge doesn't go back to Umar but was founded by Muawiyah.

There is no real detailed contemporary account of what Umar did in Jerusalem.  The account typically used by Gihon Spring proponents is a 14th Century account.  Given my personal theories about the early history of Islam(that it was really just an Ishmaelite form of Christianity originally), I suspect Umar never intended any Mosque to be built in Jerusalem as he wanted it to remain a city for the previous People of The Book and if he prayed anywhere it was only the location just a little east of the Holy Sepulcher.  He captured the city because of his alliance with the Jews and Miaphysite Christians who'd been persecuted by Heraclius.  The Qurran does teach that the Land of Israel belongs to the Children of Israel.

Likewise when the Crusaders controlled Jerusalem they called the Al Aqsa Mosque the Temple of Solomon and the Dome of The Rock the Temple of The Lord, The Lord in Christianity is Jesus meaning that name implies a New testament significance.

I'm going to Copy/Paste from The Bordeaus Pilgram (333 AD) via this website.
http://andrewjacobs.org/translations/bordeaux.html

There are in Jerusalem two big pools to the side of the Temple, that is, one to the right, another to the left, which Solomon made, but inside the cite there are two twin pools with five porches, which are called Bethsaida.

There those who have been sick for many years have been healed.

These pools have water which becomes scarlet when disturbed.

There is a crypt there where Solomon tortured demons.

There is the corner of the highest tower, where the Lord went up and he said to the one who was tempting him, and the Lord said to him: Do not tempt the Lord your God, but him only should you serve (Matt 4:7, 10).

There is the cornerstone about which it was said: stone, which the builders reproved, this has been made the head stone (Matt 21:42).

And under the pinnacle of the tower there are many chambers, where Solomon had his palace.

There is also the chamber in which he sat and wrote about wisdom; but the chamber itself has a single stone for its roof.

There are also very great pools of water underground and a great pool built with work.

And in that building where the Temple was, which Solomon built, in the marble before the altar is the blood of Zechariah which you would say was shed today; indeed, there appear to be traces of the soldier's boots, who killed him, throughout the area, such that you would think they had been pressed in wax.

There are two status of Hadrian; not far from the statues is a pierced stone to the Jews comes every year and they anoint it and they lament with a groan and they tear their garments and then they withdraw.

There is the house of Hezekiah, King of Judah.

I have come to believe all of this section is about stuff on The Temple Mount.  After this he heads south out of what was then the city proper where he observed the Pool of Siloam then goes to the Western hill which was considered to be Zion at that time.

The use of the name "Bethsadia" is confusing because the New Testament and Josephus use that of a place not anywhere near Jerusalem.

There are at least two probably three different stones refereed to here. However people confident The Dome is the site of The Temple seem to treat all three as the same and as being the titular Rock under that Dome.  I have my doubts any of them really match that Rock but the best bet is that the modern "Well of Souls" is what this Pilgrim identified as the chamber where Solomon wrote "the book of Wisdom" (whether that is the apocryphal text or they meant Proverbs I won't venture to guess).  This association could explain why a Church built there later was called Holy Wisdom, but again I need an unbiased way to analyze the more obscure primary sources on that Church.

When the Pilgrim says "and in that building where" he's clearly moved to a more specific location and so the stone that will be mentioned last can't be identified with the two prior stones.  Those two stones are explicitly not in The Temple proper.

Identifying the Dome of The Rock as the Temple's Location depends on the "pierced stone" the Jews came to anoint every year (we know elsewhere that day was the 9th of Av, not Yom Kippur as one article I read criticizing Cornuke assumed).  This stone was (believed to be) either a Cornerstone of The Temple or one which was supposed to be where The Ark rested and so probably only slightly larger then The Ark itself, something more like the Stone around which The Church of the Seat of Mary was constructed.  But on second thought this Stone is not actually likely to be where the Holy of Holies was since The Jews have always been adamant about not risking accidentally walking over it.

So yes, I still consider the Dome itself the least likely of spots on The Mount to place The Temple.  I have become more open to the Dome of The Tablets view because that places it directly due west of the Golden Gate.  However the narrative thrust of the Pilgrim's description could be seen as moving southward and thus placing The Temple south of the presumed Chamber that Solomon wrote the Book of Wisdom in.

I am far from making up my mind on this issue.  I'm still attracted to the Nea Church being the site of at least one of The Temples, or maybe David's Tabernacle.

Update: An article called The Byzantine Presence on The Temple Mount arguing for the Gihon Spring view is very misinformed and since fact checking it's claims I now doubt that Saint Sophia/Holy Wisdom was on the Temple Mount.

It once accuses a Wilson of wrongly conflating the Church of the Blessed Mary with the Nea Church of the Theotokos.  However it is in fact well known that both those names were used for the same Church.  Cyril of Scythoplis account of the Church's origin makes clear that Sabas's request was just of a Church for Saint Mary.  It was Justinian who took the prerogative of using the title Theotokos because of his agenda of trying to unify the Chalcedonian and Miaphysite churches while scapegoating the Nestorians.  Both this source and Procopius only refer to Justinian building one Marian Church, and none of this article's sources are aware of the Theotokos Church if they were indeed different.

The Saint Sophia Church is clearly near by and so I'm now thinking was maybe where the Armenian Church of the Archangels is with it's presumed trial location changing.  Carefully reading that article's own sources the "Stone" venerated here that Jesus stood on is clearly a smaller portable "stone" not something like what the Dome is built over.

I personally think the tradition of sealing off the East Gate began in the Byzantine era by Christians who felt it was time to fulfill Ezekiel 46:1 since Jesus had already entered at his Triumphal entry.