Commenting on Epiphanius' Mariology in Panarion 79, Stephen J. Shoemaker wrote that:
As he abandons the issue of women’s
liturgical leadership to rebut the Kollyridian veneration of Mary, Epiphanius
begins, as already noted, by placing his objections to their practices within
the broader context of an attack on the veneration of saints more generally. In
a key passage quoted above, he compares Mary first with Elijah and then with
John and Thecla, explaining that Mary, like these revered figures from sacred
history, should not be venerated but only held in honor by orthodox Christians.
Epiphanius likens Mary to each of these saints in very specific ways, seemingly
to demonstrate that her most remarkable characteristics are shared by these
other mortals, and just as they do not merit veneration because of their
excellence, neither does Mary. Thecla’s inclusion here is a rather obvious
choice, since as Stephen Davis demonstrates in his monograph on the early cult
of Saint Thecla, Thecla was “a female saints whose popularity rivaled that of
Mary in the early church.” (S. J. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition
of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity [Oxford, 2001], 4) Indeed, prior to the
fourth century, it was generally Thecla who served as the main role model for
female virgins, a role that Mary began to usurp only at this time. (Ibid., 21)
Thus, Thecla was a perfect example for Epiphanius, enabling him to underscore
that Mary’s virginity and bodily purity afforded no grounds for her “worship”
any more than they could justify the veneration of Thecla. The reasons behind
Epiphanius’ other two choices, however, are a little less obvious: comparison
of Mary to an Old Testament prophet and one of the apostles is perhaps a little
unexpected in the wake of a diatribe against women’s liturgical leadership and
prophecy. Yet Epiphanius stresses these two comparisons the most, particularly
emphasizing Mary’s similarities with Elijah, whom he introduces first. Moreover,
through comparison with these two figures, the issue of Mary’s miraculous
departure from this world suddenly leaps to the fore again, in direct yet
unmistakable fashion.
John presumably appears to rival the
virgin mother’s intimacy with her son; John, also a virgin, was “the disciple
whom Jesus loved,” who leaned upon his breast at the Last Supper. While Epiphanius
does not make the point explicit, surely his implication is that Mary’s close relationship
with her son does not warrant veneration any more than John’s status as Christ’s
beloved disciple could justify his veneration. The comparison with Elijah is
perhaps the most surprising, and perhaps for this reason, it occasions the most
explanation. Mary is like Elijah, Epiphanius explains, because he was “a virgin
from his mother’s womb, he remained so perpetually, and as assumed [αναλαμβανομενος] and had not seen death.” The last point of course
deserves particular emphasis and attention. While Epiphanius does not formally
reintroduce the theme of Mary’s Dormition after its reappearance at the Letter
to Arabia’s conclusion, its sudden, unheralded intrusion here is surely
telling. Epiphanius does not prepare his readers for the reappearance of this
topic with any renewed consideration of the end of Mary’s life, perhaps
expecting the reader to understand Its continuity with his previous discussion
of the Kollyridians in the Letter to Arabia. (Stephen J. Shoemaker, “Epiphanius
of Salamis, the Kollyridians, and the Early Dormition Narratives: The Cult of
the Virgin in the Fourth Cenutry,” in The Dormition and Assumption Apocrypha
[Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 15; Leuven: Peeters, 2018], 217-18)
Notwithstanding a somewhat "low" Mariology with respect to her veneration in the above, Epiphanius, according to Shoemaker, affirms the assumption of Mary at the end of her life (as opposed to his agnosticism in Panarion 78):
In any case, this return to Mary’s
Dormition signals once again a connection between the Kollyridians and this
subject. Even if Epiphanius does not address the end of Mary’s life with the same
details as in the Letter to Arabia, he nonetheless finds it necessary to
return to the topic again in his arguments against the Kollyridian ritual practices.
More importantly, however, Epiphanius here tacitly departs from the agnosticism
of his Letter to Arabia in standing quite unambiguously that Mary, like
Elijah, was assumed in the body and did not die. Approximately seven years
after the Letter to Arabia, Epiphanius no longer insists that Mary’s
ultimate fate is a great mystery but informs his readers in an unguarded moment
that she was miraculously removed from this world and still remains alive. The
significance of this new position is not entirely clear. Did Epiphanius simply change
his mind by the time he came to write the final sections of the Panarion?
Perhaps in the intervening years traditions about the end of Mary’s life had
began to circulate more widely, making it increasingly difficult to insist on a
position of ignorance. Or perhaps the insistent agnosticism of the Letter to
Arabia is feigned, designed to suit his rhetoric against spiritual
marriage, as suggested above. It may be that lacking any controversy with
regard to Mary’s virginity in his conflict with the Kollyridians, he is able to
address the question more openly. Yet regardless of his inspiration, there can
be no mistake that Epiphanius here takes a different position regarding the end
of Mary’s life than in the Letter to Arabia. Without equivocation he
reports that Mary, like Elijah, escaped death and was assumed into heaven, and
his sudden clarify on this point certainly calls into question his earlier
protests of ignorance in the Letter to Arabia. (Ibid., 218-19)