The Holy Desert Quake North appears to have had an epicentral region in or near the Sea of Galilee but was felt at considerable distances. One particularly useful distant observation comes from Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre, a contemporaneous source who describes a tremor experienced at Mabbug (Manbij) during the night. Pseudo-Dionysius states that during the tremor "something like the noise of a roaring bull was heard from a great distance." The following morning, the inhabitants assembled for prayers in a church outside the city. A second, much stronger earthquake then occurred and collapsed the Church of the Mother of God, killing the people gathered inside along with their bishop. This second destructive event at Mabbug is interpreted as a separate earthquake, the Talking Mule Quake, whereas the weaker nighttime tremor is interpreted as the distant effects of the Holy Desert Quake North (Williams, 2024).

The nighttime tremor at Mabbug is consistent with approximately Intensity IV–V shaking: sufficiently strong to awaken or alarm inhabitants and to be clearly perceived, but without reported structural damage. Although Mabbug lies approximately 450 km from the proposed Sea of Galilee epicentral region, the report of a distant roaring sound does not preclude such a source. As discussed by Williams (2024), earthquake-generated sound can be perceived at substantial distances and its propagation depends on earthquake magnitude, ground motion, local geology, topography, and atmospheric conditions. Using the empirical earthquake-perceptibility relationship of Tosi et al. (2012), Williams (2024: footnote 29) estimated that approximately 21% of the population at Mabbug might perceive an earthquake of magnitude ~7 at a distance of ~450 km, while noting that this relationship, which was derived from substantially smaller earthquakes, probably underestimates perceptibility for an earthquake of M ≥ 7. Thus, Pseudo-Dionysius' description of a nighttime tremor accompanied by a distant roaring sound is physically plausible for a large earthquake originating near the Sea of Galilee.

The distinction between the two earthquakes described by Pseudo-Dionysius is particularly important for unraveling the chronology of the Sabbatical Year earthquake sequence. Pseudo-Dionysius preserves a clear relative sequence of events: first, a comparatively weak tremor was felt at Mabbug during the night; then, after daylight arrived and the inhabitants had gathered for prayer in response to that earthquake, a second and much stronger earthquake struck and collapsed the church. The two events therefore cannot represent different descriptions of the same earthquake. They were separate shocks, with the first occurring at night and the destructive Mabbug earthquake occurring the following morning.

Williams (2024) used this night-to-morning sequence as an important chronological constraint. The first, nighttime earthquake is interpreted as the Holy Desert Quake North, whose strongest known effects were concentrated around the Sea of Galilee, while the following morning earthquake is interpreted as the Talking Mule Quake, whose reported destructive effects extend through northern Syria and Mesopotamia. The much weaker shaking at Mabbug during the nighttime event is consistent with a distant Sea of Galilee source, whereas the catastrophic collapse at Mabbug the following morning is consistent with the source of the Talking Mule Quake being substantially closer to northern Syria.

This relative chronology creates a problem with the dates preserved in the Byzantine chronographic tradition. Byzantine authors such as Theophanes place the earthquake in Palestine, the Jordan Valley, and Syria on 18 January and associate it with the fourth hour (of daylight - i.e. about 10 am). Other Byzantine accounts place the destructive Syrian earthquake associated with the Talking Mule tradition in a different regnal year of Constantine V (r. 741-775 CE). These dates have commonly encouraged the various reports to be separated by considerably longer intervals (years) or, alternatively, combined into a single geographically enormous earthquake. Pseudo-Dionysius' account provides a rare independent constraint showing instead that two major earthquakes were separated by only a matter of hours: one during the night and another the following morning.

Williams (2024) therefore proposed that the absolute chronology preserved in the Byzantine accounts became corrupted during transmission and that the dates or chronological associations of the two earthquakes were effectively transposed. In this interpretation, the Byzantine tradition retained genuine information about both earthquakes but attached some of the chronological information to the wrong event. The Holy Desert Quake North would be the earthquake experienced at Mabbug during the night, while the Talking Mule Quake would be the destructive earthquake that struck Mabbug the following morning. This reconstruction preserves the relative chronology supplied by Pseudo-Dionysius.