In a public facebook post, Robert Gagnon (author of the must-read book, The Bible and Homosexuality: Texts and Hermeneutics [Abingdon, 2001]) wrote the following:
Is Mary the Heavenly Woman of Revelation 12? (revised)
Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon
Most Catholics and Orthodox persons, in an attempt to expand Mary's place in the NT canon beyond the Lukan infancy narrative, assert that the "woman wrapped around with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet and on her head a crown of Twelve Stars, and having a child in her womb" of Rev 12 is Mary.
1. This does not represent the dominant view of NT scholarship. The consensus view, with which I agree, is that the woman represents the people of God, at first Israel, then the church consisting of Jews and Gentiles.
2. The key argument for viewing the woman as Mary is the fact that the woman "gave birth to a son ... who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron" who is "snatched away and taken to God" (12:5).
Yet had the heavenly woman been Mary, we would expect some indication of a virgin birth, which is such a prominent motif of the Matthean and Lukan infancy narratives. As it is, Rev 12 simply presents the woman as "having (a child) in womb" (v. 2).
3. The image of the woman in part echoes Joseph’s Dream in Gen 37:9-10, where the Sun = Jacob, the Moon = Joseph’s mother (Rachel or Leah) and 11 stars = Joseph’s brothers; implying 12 Tribes of Israel. For Zion portrayed as a mother see Isa 54:1; 66:7-10; Micah 5:3. Both of these elements from the OT Scriptures point to the initial identity of the woman as Israel or Zion, not Mary.
4. One thinks also of Rom 9:4, where Paul says that "from whom (the Israelites) is the Messiah." The fact that the text speaks of the woman giving birth to a son "who is to rule all the nations" does not require that the woman be identified with Mary, since Jesus can be spoken of as coming from Israelites.
5. In Rev 12, when the Devil is thrown down to earth after the Messiah ascends and is installed as king at God's right hand as one who conquers "by the (atoning) blood of the Lamb," the dragon (Satan) pursues into the wilderness or desert the woman who had given birth, where she is nourished (cp. the Exodus manna), where the dragon attempts to destroy the woman and “to make war on the rest of her children” (12:6, 13-17). The woman Israel now represents the church, "those who ... hold the testimony of Jesus" (12:17).
Mary is nowhere in view. We have no story in early Christianity about Mary being individually attacked by Satan after Jesus ascended into heaven.
6. Those who think that the heavenly woman is Mary have sometimes suggested that the motif of the dragon waiting for the child to be born so as to devour him refers to Herod the Great trying to find this "King of the Jews" to kill him; and that the motif of the woman fleeing into the wilderness alludes to Mary fleeing with Joseph to Egypt.
But there is no evidence that John of Patmos is familiar with these stories found only in the Gospel of Matthew. Moreover, the flight to Egypt suggestion is out of sync with Rev 12, where the fleeing occurs after the ascension of the woman's child.
7. Those view the heavenly woman of Rev 12 as Mary point to the introduction to Rev 12 in 11:19, when "God's temple in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant was seen in the temple; and there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail." They view Mary poetically as the ark of the covenant because Mary is thought to house God within her (a dubious claim based on alleged intertextual echoes in Luke 1:39-45 to David's bringing the ark to Jerusalem in 2 Sam 6).
This is a stretch, I think. The point of the introduction is not to say, "Be on the lookout for Mary in the following sign or portent of a woman." Rather the point is to alert readers that Yahweh, enthroned on the cherubim in the heavenly Holy of Holies, is arousing himself in theophany (lightning, thunder, earthquake, hail) to engineer the casting out of Satan from heaven "by the blood of the Lamb" (12:11).
8. Certainly "the wilderness" (12:6, 14) is symbolic of the exodus-wilderness typology operative in Israel's deliverance from Egypt and many centuries later in the return of Judeans from Babylonian exile. It refers to the church's period of testing and divine provision in the aftermath of Jesus' ascension when Satan and his minions are cast out of heaven to earth to bring a Danielic period of tribulation ("for one thousand two hundred sixty days" or "a time, and times, and half a time," 12:6, 14) that will culminate in the return of the Messiah.
The last verse of the chapter (17) refers to the fact that the dragon, after failing to destroy the woman and her child, "went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus." The "rest of her children" refers to believers in Jesus as contrasted with Jesus himself. Nowhere in the NT is Mary portrayed as the mother (or even representative) of all Christians, much less all Israel.
9. As a final desperation move, those wanting to see Mary in the heavenly woman suggest that the woman could be a symbol both of the people of God and of Mary, for symbols are polyvalent. Not in this chapter. The dragon is clearly identified as one figure, Satan (12:9). The child born to the woman who ascends to heaven and leads Michael and his angels to defeat the dragon "by the blood of the Lamb" is one figure, Jesus. There is no reason to believe that the woman is anything other than a symbol of the faithful people of God.
The attempt to see Mary in the portent of the heavenly woman in Rev 12 derives more from an ideology of excess devotion to Mary imposed on the text of Scripture than it does from evidence within the text of Rev 12.
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