The Portents Before the Fall is a groundwork note by Lee Sharks (4 November 2026) setting the relations between three accounts of the signs that preceded the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Apocalypse of John, and deferring the reading. Josephus (Jewish War 6.288–315) dates the signs by festival, from Passover to Pentecost before the revolt he places in Nero's twelfth year, the spring of 66 CE; Tacitus (Histories 5.13) gives the same signs without a date inside his narrative of the year 70; Suetonius (Vespasian 4.5) gives the oracle alone. In thirteen rows the note sets the historians' words beside the Apocalypse's, among them a star like a sword, a light at the altar for half an hour, a lamb born in the sanctuary, a gate opened of itself, chariots and armies in the clouds, a crash and a voice saying 'we are going from here', the cry against bridegroom and bride, and the sanctuary made four-square. For each row it records the chronological warrant, the older relative in the scriptures (2 Maccabees 5, Jeremiah 25:10, Ezekiel 10, Zechariah 6) and the operation joining the pair, and it reads Revelation 8:1–5 continuously against two of Josephus's signs. It records the archive's own dates for Revelation, early throughout the Revelation First thesis, with the conventional date of about 95 entering only as uncorrected convention in work not about dating, and holds 66 CE as the working date of composition, proposed and subject to argument.