The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: The Great Sign...
The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter
Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
1 And a great sign was seen [ophthe] in the heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown [stephanos] of twelve stars, 2 and holding in womb, and she cried out having birth pangs and being put to the test to bring forth. 3 and there was seen another sign in the heaven, and behold a great fire-colored dragon having seven heads and ten horns and upon its heads seven diadems, 4 and its tail dragged by force [syrei] the third of the stars of the heaven and cast out them unto the earth, and the dragon took his stand in the presence of the woman the one about to bear, so that when she bore it might devour the thing born of her [to teknon autës]. 5 and she bore a son virile [yion arsen], who was about to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod. and snatched away was the thing born of her to the God and to his throne. 6 and the woman fled unto the wilderness, where she has therein a place prepared by the God, so that therein they may nourish her [trephosin auten] for days one thousand two hundred sixty.
A long time ago, in a mind far, far away, there sprang an opinion. Since then, many hundreds of millions of people have propagated that opinion and perpetuated it into an inveterate tradition throughout the Church, to wit, that the "woman clothed with the sun" is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I would gladly agree with the many hundreds of millions who assert that 12:1 describes Mary, if I could with impunity take that verse out of its context. But, John warned rue not to add one word to the prophecy and not to subtract one word from it, as stated in 22:18-19; and, surely, what applies to one word in the prophecy must apply to a whole verse.
Let the reader please note the little comma after the noun "stars" at the end of verse 1; that comma is followed by the connective kai at the beginning of verse 2; and the "period," which ends the sentence composed of verses 1 & 2, comes after the infinitive "to bear" or "to bring forth" [tekein]. This all means that the contents of verse 2 are connected to and simultaneous with the contents of verse 1. Hence, according to the many hundreds of millions, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has already died and been assumed, body and soul, into the glorified state and has been crowned Queen of Heaven, is again pregnant--in heaven above, no less!--where, according to Christ, there is no marriage.
Perhaps, the many millions are tacitly asserting that Mary became Queen of Heaven before Jesus was born, and that, therefore, either Mary or Saint Dominic confused the order of the glorious mysteries in the Rosary, so that the Coronation should precede the Assumption. Frankly, I find it a mystery that such an opinion about 12:1 has become the first reading in the Mass celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption. In Apocalypse 1:19, Christ told John,
"Now write the things that you saw and the things that are and the things about to come into existence after these things."
In 4:1, John is told,
"Come up hither, and I will show you the things that must come into existence after these things."
In 1:19, the term, "after these things" [meta tauta], refers to "the things that you saw and the things that are..." in 4:1; the term, "after these things," refers to the seven letters, i.e., 'the things that are." Hence, the term, 'the things that are about to come into existence," or, 'the things that must come into existence,' unmistakably refers to future things, things that would happen after the Apocalypse was copied and circulated by the year, say, 100 AD. Chapter 12 belongs to those future things, and, therefore, it has absolutely nothing to do with describing the birth and death and ascension of Jesus, the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, etc. So, the argument up to this point, alone, suffices to refute the opinion that the woman is Mary.
Now I will reason from the given information in the text to the woman's real identity, keeping alert to John's practice of using physical things as symbols of spiritual things, and paying attention to context, the context that does not extend merely to the whole Apocalypse, but to the whole Bible. After all, the Apocalypse is the culmination of Biblical prophecy. John could have begun Chapter 12, typically, thus,
"And I saw a woman clothed with the sun, ..."
Instead, he wrote,
"And a great sign was seen in the heaven, ..."
With this introduction, John immediately gave the reader general instruction concerning the particulars that would follow. To call the reader's attention to this instruction, he repeated it in verse 3,
"and another sign was seen in the heaven, ..." [I trust the reader has learned that John did not employ idle repetition.]
Now, the prophetic term "sign" was mentioned often in the New Testament:
(1) The Apostles asked Jesus about the "sign" of his coming. [Mt. 24:3] (2) The Pharisees demanded that Christ prove his divinity by a 'sign from heaven." [Mt. 16:1] (3) Saint Paul warned about 'signs and false wonders" worked by evil powers. [2 Thes. 2:9] (4) Saint John mentioned signs performed by the False Prophet. [Apoc. 13:13, 16:14] (5) Simeon in the Temple prophesied of the infant Jesus: "This child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed... so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare." [Lk. 2:34-35]
From the aforegiven instances may be drawn the idea that "a sign is someone or something VISIBLE to the naked human eye." Therefore, according to John's instruction, the woman in Chapter 12 will be an entity that people CAN SEE; thus, the phrase, "in the heaven," must signify 'in the Church as VISIBLE organization."
Many a "sign" is prophetic. In Chapter 12, the woman, as 'sign," is also prophetic, for she is herself and points to something else: she is the 'GREAT sign" that alludes forward to THE GREAT DAY OF ALMIGHTY GOD. But this 'great sign" is not just the woman. Understand that this "sign" includes the son she will bring forth, and, thus, also the activity he will initiate in the Church.
