"... While we have solidly made the case that the rejection of the Jewish leaders and Gentile inclusion are foundational to the parable of the Shut Door and the East / West Saying, we must dwell for a moment on the concept of Eschatological Pilgrimage or Feast which is so essential to the East / West saying. This is necessary because some have argued that Matthew’s “many will come from the east and the west” and Luke’s “people will come from east and west and north and south” do not refer to Gentiles at all, but instead refer to the return of Jewish exiles to Israel ... There are a number of OT and Apocryphal texts which Allison uses to support his position such as Psalm 107:3; Isaiah 43:5; Zechariah 8:7; Baruch 4:37; Psalms of Solomon 11:2; etc. In response to Allison and others who argue emphatically that the East / West saying refers to Jews returning from exile, we note that there is obviously a great similarity between the image of the return of Jewish exiles to Jerusalem and the Eschatological Pilgrimage of the Nations since both movements have the same origin (i.e., the nations), destination (Jerusalem), and timeframe (eschatological). It is easy to see how one of these motifs could be equated with the other. Whether the original Sitz im leben Jesu referred to Jewish exiles or not, for the purposes of our analysis we are interested only in how the East / West saying was used in the early Christian movement. Above we have argued that even in the pre-Matthean and pre-Lukan layer (Q), the sojourners in the East / West saying were considered Gentiles. The East / West saying appears in a modified form within 4 Ezra 1:24-40 ..."