A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve thorns. (Rev 12:1 NRSV)
Many modern Catholic apologists (e.g., Tim Staples) argue that the "woman" (γυνη) in Rev 12:1 is Mary, and such is evidence of her bodily assumption into heaven, a belief dogmatised by Pius XII in 1950. However, as I discussed in a previous post, the early patristic commentaries on Rev 12:1 did not understand the woman to be Mary. Furthermore, the vast majority (both Catholic and non-Catholic) interpreters of the book of Revelation rejects the Marian interpretation of this verse. Consider the following representative examples:
Woman. In Revelation “woman” or “women” occurs nineteen ties: 12:1, 4, 6, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17:3, 4, 6, 7, 9 f., 18 and elsewhere in 9:8, 14:4, 19:7, 21:9. It might be said therefore, that the woman symbol is almost as important as the Lamb. This woman and the new Jerusalem are the antithesis of the harlot . . . [such is a symbol] of the faithful community. (J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation [AB 38; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975], 188)
Who is the cosmic woman? Some connect her with figures in Israel’s or the church’s past or future. Eve, the mother whose seed would bruise the head of the dragon/serpent (Gen 3:1-6); Mary, the mother of Jesus; or the heavenly Jerusalem as bride of the Lamb (19:7-8; 21:9-10). Others suppose a pagan or astrological connection: a queen of heaven like the Egyptian Isis, or the constellation Virgo. Still others hypothesize a corporate representation of God’s people: Israel, who escapes the dragon/Pharaoh into the wilderness on the wings of eagles (Exod 19:4; c. Ps 74:12-15); or Zion, the mother of the persecuted people of God (Isa 66:7-9; 4 Ezra 13.32-38). It is unlikely that John has in mind an individual woman, historical or otherwise. Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not give birth to the entire people of God as this woman will (Rev 12:17). Eve gives birth to all humans, not specifically the believing community. Though the “sign” language clearly intends to guide hearers and readers to look to the heavens in the way that they seek our constellations, John cannot have had Virgo exclusively in mind since she is the sixth sign of the zodiac and this woman (12:1) is connected integrally with the number “twelve” . . . We can gain a better sense of what John intends by his “woman” representation when we look at the way he puts it to narrative use. He deploys the word gyne (woman) nineteen times. He is preoccupied with several primary roles for women in first-century society: wife (19:7), mother (12:4, 13, 17), and sexual threat (Jezebel’s false teachings conveyed through symbolism of fornication, 2:20; sexual intimacy that defiles holy warriors, 14:4; harlotry of Rome, 17:3, 4, 6-7, 9, 18). A more comprehensive study reveals that John has oriented his use of gyne around the competing images. Most notable, though the images do not come into play directly in chapter 12, is the thematic opposition between the wife and the harlot. This woman is as directly associated with her children (12:17) as the harlot later is with Rome (17:18). The most intriguing opposition is the one between the competing signs of the woman in 12:1 and the dragon in v. 3. To be sure, war breaks out in heaven between Michael the dragon (v. 7), but that later conflict is based upon the enmity that already exists between the dragon and the woman. God’s intentions, as they operate through the characterization of the woman, are already being opposed by the dragon, according to vv. 1, 3. It is not an outright hot war, it is certainly a hypertense cold one . . . The woman’s attire reveals much about her identity. He is, first of all, clothed with the sun. Clothing in Revelation is more than mere outer wear; its type and color illustrate important qualities or character traits of the person wearing it. Sackcloth indicates mourning and judgment. A purple and scarlet dress symbolizes Rome’s harlotry and opposition to God (17:4; 18:16). Christ’s bloody robe indicates the slaughter he and his followers have endured for their witness (19:13). Yet John then declares the followers’ robes are dazzling (19:14); that is precisely because they have washed them in Lamb’s blood (7:14). The dazzling robe takes on a quality o particular significance; it signals a successfully established eschatological relationship to God. The mighty angel of 10:1 is robed in a dazzling white cloud. Dazzling robes are worn by those who witness victoriously to the lordship of Christ (3:5, 18; 4:4; 7:9, 13). The bride’s (i.e., the church’s) intimate relationship with the Lamb is indicated partially through her dazzling attire (19:8). Even more dazzling would be the brightness of the sun. Though John uses “sun” most often in reference to the physical star around which the earth orbits (even if he did not himself understand it in this way). In two other places besides 12:1 he connects the quality of the sun’s color or shining with a character who populates his prophecy. At 1:16 the child of humanity has a face that shines like the sun. The face of the mighty angel clothed in a cloud at 10:1 shines similarly. In both those cases, their sunshine indicates that they are representatives of God. According to the psalmist, it is God who is apparently so adorned (Ps 104:1-2). This woman’s relationship with God and her identity as a representative for God are highlighted by the fact that she, too, is cloaked with the sun. All of her shines like the sun! Clearly, she must represent something extremely important about how God expresses God’s self in the life of God’s people. I have already argued and will maintain subsequently that she represents Go’s procreative ability to birth a people of faith.
The “moon under her feet” signals elevated status; as a cosmic being she stands far above the human followers who trace their faith existence through her. But it is the stephanos (crown) of stars o her head that best complements that sun-cloak that robes her. Like the dazzling robe, the crown is an accoutrement awarded the believer who conquers by witnessing faithfully to the lordship of Christ (2:10-11; 3:11-12). The twenty-four heavenly elders whose perpetual worship is highlighted in the hymnic sections are outfitted with crowns (4:4, 10), as is the one like a child of humanity himself (14:14). Interestingly, the child of humanity also holds a symbolically complete 7 stars in his hand (1:16, 20 2:1; 3:1). This woman’s crown possesses stars in another symbolically complete number: 12. Though the number of the stars no doubt operates from the cosmological understanding that there were 12 stars of the zodiac, John integrates its use into his narrative as a number of representing completeness in terms of rapport with God (7:5-8; 21:12, 14, 16, 21; 22:2). Beale argues that the number represents both the 12 tribes (7:4-8) and the 12 apostles, who formed the leadership of the nascent church. This interpretation gains strength from the fact that earlier in his prophecy John equates stars with angels, who in turn represent churches (1:16, 20). The 12 stars, then, represent the completeness of the church that finds its foundation and indeed its genesis in this woman. (Brian K. Blount, Revelation: A Commentary [New Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009], 225, 226-27)
In the Middle Ages devotion to Mary saw the other of Jesus in Virgo, and from these the picture of the queen of heaven became a central motif of ecclesiastical painting and sculpture.
Yet the context rules out this interpretation of a specific historical future. The heavenly woman, rather, is an image of the end-time salvation community, a symbol of the church. She is the heir of the promises of the Old Testament a people of God; pointing to this is the reference to the twelve stars (cf. Gen. 37:9), which symbolize the holy twelve tribes in their end-time fullness and perfection (cf. 7:4-8; 14:1). Against the possibility that the heavenly woman refers to the people of God of the old covenant, out of which the Messiah was born, is both the continuation of the story (vv. 13-17) and quite generally the fact that nowhere in Revelation is the question of the relationship of Israel to the church treated as a theological theme. The certainty that the church has her roots in Israel and that ow she has entered into the claims of Israel to the church treated as a theological theme. The certainty that the church has her roots in Israel (cf. 7:4-8). Also, considerations of whether the heavenly woman may be understood as a heavenly prototype of the church, as a community of the consummation, find no support in the text, which clearly speaks in what follows of the earthly fate of this woman and localizes her place on earth. That the woman appears “in heaven” does not indicate a serious contradiction when one recognizes that here heaven is introduced not as the place of God and his heavenly assembly but as the firmament on which an appearance of symbolic significance becomes visible. That the woman is clothed by the sun and stands above the moon—no different than the crown of stars—signifies the promises to the church; to her is promised the future consummation and triumph over the powers of darkness. (Jürgen Roloff, Revelation [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993], 145)
woman: This woman is surely the bride, the heavenly Jerusalem (19:7–8; 21:9–10), antithesis of the harlot (Rome) (17:14; 18:16). . . . The woman, though first seen in a setting of splendor, is with child and close to delivery. Her birth-pangs may be those of Eve (Gen 3:16); they are, more immediately, the birth-pangs of travailing Israel. See Mic 4:10, “Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail.” In rabbinical literature “the birth-pangs of the Messiah” is a familiar phrase. Verses 5–6 identify the woman more closely. Whatever his background, and whatever the later use of the text (in Mariology), for John this woman is the heavenly Israel, depicted in terms of the woman of Gen 3. She is faced by Satan, the ancient serpent (Gen 3:1); she brings forth in anguish (3:16); her child will suffer attack by Satan (3:15). She is, all the while, the people of God who gives birth to the Messiah and the messianic age.
In stark contrast to the woman stands another sign: a great red dragon. Much earlier than the Python image is that of dragon or sea-serpent as a mythic symbol of chaos. Babylonian and Canaanite texts mention a serpentine monster with seven heads. In his text, John links the “dragon” with the “serpent” of Gen 3. Already, in a retelling of the Genesis story, the nāḥāš (“snake”) had become “the devil” (Wis 2:24). In his reference to the sweeping down of “a third of the stars” John seeks to depict the colossal reach and vast strength of the monster. In Dan 8:10, which he surely has in mind, the “stars” are angelic representatives of pagan powers. John’s text has nothing to do with a legendary “fall” of angels. It is worth observing that a reading of Gen 6:1–4 in the sense of angelic “fall” is not biblical. It goes back to 1 Enoch 6–13.
The dragon seeks to destroy the child of the woman. Her “male child” is the Messiah, explicitly identified as such by the invocation of Psalm 2. The reference is significant. The anointed king of the Psalm is addressed by God not at his birth but at his enthronement: “You are my son, today I have begotten you” (Ps 2:7). See Acts 13:33, “This he has fulfilled … by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘Thou are my son, today I have begotten thee’ ”; the text is applied to the resurrection (see Rom 1:4). By the “birth” of the Messiah John does not mean the nativity but the Cross—the enthronement of Jesus. Interestingly, the idea behind this passage of Revelation is thoroughly Johannine: the death of Jesus, which is his glorification, is also the moment of the assault of Satan and of his defeat. Precisely by dying on the cross, Jesus defeated the dragon and was exalted to God’s right hand. The Fourth Gospel has no temptation story at the beginning of the ministry: Satan makes his bid at its close. It is he who instigated Judas’ betrayal (John 13:2, 27; see Luke 22:3). In his final discourse Jesus declared: “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me” (John 14:30). Luke, who has many contacts with the Johannine tradition, reflects the same viewpoint. After the temptation story he adds, “And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13); the moment indicated by the “opportune time” is the moment of the passion (22:3, 53).
Meanwhile the woman—the people of God of the Old Testament who, having given Christ to the world, thereby became the Christian Church—found refuge in the desert where God cared for her for 1,260 days. This is the equivalent of forty-two months or three and one-half years—the earthly duration of the Church. By “desert” John seems to have in mind more than an unspecified traditional place of refuge; v. 14 surely has the Exodus in view. Wilderness suggests the Sinai wandering: the desert was the place of freedom and safety after Egyptian bondage, the oppression of the dragon/Pharaoh. Besides, God’s care, described as sustainment, or nourishing, recalls the manna.
To John the Church appears as a woman, pregnant with the Messiah, a woman who will become bride of the Lamb. In the here and now she is protected from the malignant design of the dragon. Jesus had spoken to Peter of “my Church,” promising that the “gates of Hades” would not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). We share that assurance. But we must also expect that the Church will ever be an ecclesia pressa, a Church under fire. The dragon will be around until the end. (Wilfrid J. Harrington, Revelation [Sacra Pagina Series vol. 16; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2008], 128, 129-31)
