Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre told a moralizing tale of an earthquake that collapsed a church in Mabbug, crushing and killing the congregants of a rival Chalcedonian faction. Before the earthquake struck, the roar of a distant tremor was felt and heard the previous night. It sounded something like the noise of a roaring bull and was heard from a great distance. This auditory detail provides the chronological key to understanding the Sabbatical Year Earthquake sequence.

The distant earthquake heard and felt at Mabbug the night before corresponds to the Holy Desert Quake, which struck the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan Valley. In Pseudo-Dionysius’s account, the following morning a bishop ordered his congregation to assemble and march to the church to pray. He declared that the previous tremor had occurred because of people’s sins — a moral interpretation common in Christian literature of this period. Once the congregation had entered the church and begun to pray, another earthquake struck, causing the building to collapse and killing everyone inside, including the bishop. They were all crushed, as if in a wine-press.

The time required to gather the congregation, march to the church, and begin an impromptu service suggests that this second earthquake at Mabbug occurred in mid-morning, coinciding with the fourth hour (~10 a.m.) mentioned by several Byzantine authors for the Holy Desert Quake. This indicates that the Talking Mule Quake struck at ~10 a.m., while the Holy Desert Quake occurred the night before. It appears that in the “eastern source” used by later Byzantine chroniclers, the timing of these two events was inadvertently transposed.