Monthly Archives: June 2021

Woman Clothed With the Sun

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The woman clothed with the sun attacked by the seven-headed red dragon depicted in a 17th-century fresco in a Mt. Athos monastery.

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman robed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth …. Then a second sign appeared in heaven: a great red dragon with seven heads …. (Apocalypse 12:1-6)

The woman clothed with the sun is one of my favorite characters or episodes in the New Testament. In the earliest commentaries, she is understood to be the Church, the New Israel, and the baby she gives birth to is the new Christian–at this period, typically an adult–who emerges newborn from the baptismal font. The red dragon with seven heads is the Roman imperial system who attacks the Church and slays the martyrs. The woman and her baby–the Church and the newly baptized–escape to safety in the wilderness, which is where the early ascetics and first monastics fled to pray and fast.

One of my favorite patristic texts–one of the first I ever read in its totality, as a freshman in the Sterling Library at Yale–is The Banquet by St. Methodius of Olympus. The Banquet is the one of the first and is the most extensive of the early Christian discussions of the woman clothed with the sun.

In the third century, commentators begin to see the woman clothed with the sun as the ever-virgin Mother of God who gives birth to Christ. They are attacked by Herod and flee to safety in Egypt. The importance of this interpretation of the Mother of God grows in importance as she becomes a model for the ascetics and monastics in the desert-wilderness, usually in Egypt but also near the Jordan River.

The image of the woman clothed with the sun becomes associated with the “falling asleep” (the Dormition or Assumption) of the Mother of God. She is taken into eternal glory in the Kingdom of God because she is the Mother of God who gives her flesh to the Word. Everything human about the Word-made-flesh came from her; his DNA is her DNA. She is the first believer to be taken into glory as a pledge of what all members of the Body of Christ will experience.

The woman clothed with the sun is one of the most frequently depicted figures in the New Testament. If the Apocalypse is a multi-valent and many layered text, the woman clothed with the sun is one of the most multi-valent and many layered figures in the New Testament.

The woman clothed with the sun in an illumination from the Beatus manuscript of the Apocalypse.
Another medieval manuscript illumination depicting the woman clothed with the sun escaping from the great dragon.

Two Witnesses

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The two witnesses of Apocalypse 11, about to be attacked by the beast from the abyss. They are standing before the Temple, described earlier in chapter 11; the witnesses are identified by the names “Enoch” and “Moses” above their heads.

I will commission my two witnesses to prophesy for those 1,260 days, dressed in sackcloth. These are the two olive-trees and the two lamps that stand before the Lord of the earth…. But when they have completed their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will wage war on them and overcome them and kill them. (Apocalypse 11:3-4, 7)

The two witnesses–lit. martyrs–are spokesmen for God that are killed by the powers that oppose God. Their corpses will remain in the streets to be mocked and defiled but they will be raised from the dead and ascend into heaven. The murder of the two witnesses is the second of the “three woes” that are expected (Apoc. 9).

The witnesses are dressed as prophets, in sackcloth, and preach for more than a thousand days (the symbolic length of history). They are compared to the king Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua (Zech. 2 and 4). Some authors thought the two witnesses would be Moses and Elijah (who was taken into heaven without dying), come to proclaim the judgement of God; frequently others think the two witnesses will be Moses and Enoch (who was also taken into heaven without dying).

The beast from the abyss slays the witnesses after they have been preaching for 1,000+ days. Later in the Apocalypse, we read the same story from another perspective: “When the 1,000 years are ended, Satan will be let loose from his prison and he will come out to deceive the nations” (Apoc. 20:7-8). We also read the same story from another perspective in the next chapter of the Apocalypse when the dragon attacks the woman clothed with the sun–one of my favorite episodes in the New Testament!

Repeatedly in the Gospel and throughout the history of the Church, the devil and the powers of Death that rebel against God attack and seem to triumph but are finally overthrown and defeated. This is the most basic message of the Apocalypse: the Enemy will seem to triumph but–take heart!–can never win the final victory.