The Dormition of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) is supported by historical evidence including early Marian hymns from the 3rd century (such as the Subtuum papyrus fragment), oral traditions preserved by the Jerusalem community, and writings from early church fathers like Epiphanius of Salamis and John of Damascus, which together demonstrate that this event was not merely myth but a genuine tradition passed down through generations before being formally documented.
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Examining the Earliest Evidence of the Dormition of the Theotokos
Added:And we are live on YouTube. And if you're listening on the Ancient Faith Radio app, welcome to the Orthodox Apologetics podcast. Today I have a very special guest, Father Jonathan Ivanhoff.
Welcome to the show.
Cashion, thank you very much for having me on the show. I've I've watched your uh your work with great interest and and support over the the years and I'm really happy to see where you are now.
>> Well, it's a joy to have you on. I know we've been wanting to do this for a very long time. I should say before we go on, you are the pastor of St. John the Theologian Church and of course people I'm sure have seen you on YouTube on the uh Transfigured Life. How's everything going over there at the transfigured life and also in parish life?
>> Uh we we just had some some really nice videos come out. Uh one with Jay Dyer which I was really happy about. Uh we had one with Father Andrew Steven Damik talking about his master's degree thesis about some Vagante Orthodox jurisdiction. Um uh Justin just put out a really great interview with a Baptist pastor who who he and his family became Orthodox. Um it is some real good stuff coming out. Some real good stuff on its way and we're looking forward to the weeks ahead.
>> Awesome. Well, that's so wonderful to hear. Well, today if you're listening, we are going to be talking about the dorm mission of our holy Theotocos, the passing of Mary, you know, from this life into the next. And of course, it's a huge feast day in the church, one of the 12 great feast days where it kind of ends lurggical year. We have the ending of with her dorm mission and then the beginning of the year with her birth and nativity. So, it's a fun, beautiful topic. I mean, I love looking at icons of the dorm mission. They just kind of pull me in in a way that's really hard for me to describe. There's just great beauty there. And so, it's one of these it's one of these aspects where I it makes me sad when people, you know, maybe they want to discount that this event ever happened or they view it as a pure myth, pure legend. And so today we're going to talk about is the dorm mission just pure myth that has no roots you know historically or in the the life of the church. And so it's wonderful to have father Jonathan on today to talk about this topic.
So father Jonathan have you heard of this objection before? I know that you know Dr. Gavin Orland brought it up in his book you know what it means to be a Protestant. There's like a whole actually a whole chapter really trying to discount you know the dorm mission of our holy theotocos. And I think it's it's good to kind of give a response.
Not that we necessarily need to be, you know, obsessed about defending this event. We believe it's true, but really to share this beauty with the world. So, what what have you heard when it comes to objections over the over the years?
>> Well, I you know, Cashian, I think we may have to to to to say to Gavin, Gavin, you're right. She didn't die.
She's still alive someplace out there in the Middle East. So, you know, who knows? But to really address this, I think we have to kind of remember that there are things the the church always taught publicly which it called its charurrima and there are things that had always taught privately which it often referred to as its dogma. This is not the kind of thing that was proclaimed publicly that was preached publicly. It was something that was that was held piously by the by the church and and has been for a long time. But before we we we we begin, I'd like to let our viewers know um we have some things we have to consider. And um the the first thing when when Protestants bring this up is you Orthodox have no proof. Um I I kind of say, well, yeah, regarding that, there's kind of good news and bad news.
And and we have to understand as Orthodox Christians that um some of what we could possibly call the bad news is that number one, clearly there's no scriptural evidence directly related to her dorm mission. Of course, there isn't. We've read the Bible. We've never seen it there. There is no evidence from the early church fathers. Now, we like to point to the early church fathers for a lot of things, but they did not talk.
In fact, there's nothing up through pretty much the council of Ephesus. Now, after Ephesus, there's a lot of things that started to be seen and read and produced and things like that. That's that we'll get to that. Um, really one of the only pieces of evidence, we really have kind of two pieces of evidence from the late 4th century from a gentleman named Eponius. We also have a story that comes out of the council of Calcedon. John of Damascus refers to it where the Eastern Roman Emperor Marcian uh requested relics of the Virgin Mary only to be informed by the patriarch of Jerusalem that nobody existed because she had been assumed into heaven. Uh now we know the church did not make things up. It just did not. It excoriated those people who did make things up. So the fact that by 451 those stories about her assumption were already being circulated shows that probably there was an oral tradition out there at some point that the church later investigated and tapped into a little bit more fully. Now Cashian, would it be okay for me to u speak a little bit about issues regarding evidence and and the early Roman persecution? Can I mention that right now? I mean I think that would be a wonderful place to start. I mean you have to have a little bit of a historical you know context for how tradition is passed on particularly in the you know the context of persecution.
So I would love to hear >> and our Protestant friends when they say things to us like well there's no icons before Na you guys made all that stuff afterwards or or things like that. Um the fact of the matter is there are no Bibles before Nika. And what we have to remember is that historically persecuting the church uh taking the the divine implements taking all the writings and burning them and things like that. And that's why we don't have a lot before Nika. Um there there are there are no extent uh biblical manuscripts before Nika. There are no not not many things that survived in terms of church writings and things like that. I mean we have them just not as many as we may have had if not for Roman persecution. So but that doesn't mean things were invented later on. Just because there's a written document at at 451 for example AD doesn't mean it was invented at written in 451 AD. There's a lot of examples of writings that captured the the oral tradition that was being handed down at some point.
Somebody thought at one point, hey, we should write this down. Um, so I think it's really important to remember that the Roman persecution of the church for 300 years didn't leave a lot of evidence behind. So if someone had written about that, uh, we don't have it. But we also don't have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, you know, the epistles of Paul and things like that from that period either. So the lack of of some sort of evidence doesn't really mean that it never existed or the teaching never existed and so forth. But I want to bring one thing up and and and if I could ask the gentleman to bring up slide one from the slide deck, I'd like us to look at a possible witness regarding the Virgin Mary and the historical record. Um, and that connection involves St. Paul and his traveling companion Luke and St. John the theologian and the Virgin Mary. Now, the um the slide that I I hope is being brought up. I'm not seeing it yet, but the slide is a map of Ephesus located in the western Anatolian Peninsula.
And we see icons of those four personages surrounding that. Now why is this important to discuss for a moment?
St. Paul lived in Ephesus for 3 years and Luke was a companion with him during his missionary journeys. St. John the theologian also lived in Ephesus for a very long time except for the sojourn in Patmos where he was exiled uh during the persecution and and wrote the uh the apocalypse there in that famous cave. if you've been there, it's a really wonderful place to to uh pilgrim to. Um we have to remember that if John was there with Mary and wherever John went, Mary went until the day of her death, um it's it's extremely likely that Luke because of his traveling with Paul may have met the Virgin in Ephesus. Now, why is this a big deal? Luke is the only one who records infancy narratives and to the extent that he does. Who would he have heard them from? Luke is also the the the the person who painted four known icons of the Virgin. How would he have painted them if he didn't know what she looked like? So, I think it's highly likely to suggest that there were oral traditions and oral teachings that Mary herself gave that Luke himself recorded that later later made it into his gospel. Now I think this is also important to note that oral traditions have a very big place in our church. St. Paul mentions them as a legitimate source of authority. So if um you know if St. Paul gives such a high place to oral tradition and civilization back then society in general gave a high place to oral tradition. I think it's uh important to note that it's quite possible that her death may have also been part of an oral tradition passed down through generations that was known primarily only in Palestine at the time in Jerusalem and the surrounding communities.
Now, this is not hard to believe. We know of a lot of other um evidence in scripture themselves that testified other sources. The book the assumption of Moses mentioned in Jude, the book of Enoch mentioned in Jude. Um the very sermon given by Paul himself in Ephesus, the last one before he left, where he mentions a teaching of Jesus, not found in the gospels. Um the very historicity of Hanukkah, which is found only in the Mcabes and not in the Protestant Bible.
So the the lack of manuscript evidence doesn't necessarily mean the event did not exist or was made up later. I I think that's fair. Cash, would you agree?
>> Yes. It's, you know, I will say this is, this took me a long time to get around to this point, like embracing the stability of oral tradition. I used to be skeptical that uh that a culture could actually be reliably like passing on things that they're saying. But the more that I studied like historians and those who know world history, they say that oral tradition actually can be quite stable and in some cases even more stable than what's being written down because they cherish these stories around the campfire >> and the culture cherishes them as as not some kind of random stories that are, you know, we we we take in a lot of stories through TV and media and we're we're just not in oral culture. When you're in oral culture, you're going out to the campfire every night hearing the same stories year after year. I may have heard the story when I was 15 and then now now granddad's telling it to the three-year-old and they just hear it over and over and over again. So, I've become much more convinced that oral tradition can be quite uh historically reliable. I have friends too in the Amish community uh and other other kinds of communities that that actually pass things down orally for centuries and they say it's got a lot of stability. So I've had to come around on the point, but I've I've bought into it and and I think it's also important to note that there was early veneration and honor given to Mary, not worship.
You know, we don't worship Mary. We never have. Regardless of what the Protestants say, regardless of what Gavin Ortland says or anybody else, we've never worshiped the mother of God.
But if we could go to slide four, very famous papyrus fragment that was found um and it now resides in a library in England commonly referred to as the subtuum Latin or in English beneath your compassion which is the beginning of the hymn dated to about the mid3rd century to around 250 BC which is quite a remarkable remnant of the of one of the hymns of the early church especially since This is the hymn, beneath your compassion, we run, oh mother of God, accept us in our troubles and so forth.
This is the hymn that we still sing 1,800 years later at our vesper services. And what's even more interesting, and if you go to slide five, we can see the the text of it in English and in the original Greek, Mary is called in this hymn Theotocos.
And if this is around 250, this is almost 200 years before the council of Ephesus where she was formally given that title. The church was already calling her that. The church didn't have to wait for Ephesus to authorize it.
They were already calling her that. So, while a lot of evidence, as I said earlier, may have been destroyed. God has preserved this one fragment of a hymn that clearly shows the early church's love and veneration for our mother.
Quite remarkable.
>> Yeah, it's a very good point. I mean Dr. Steven Shoemaker um also dates it to around this time because some people will say oh this this fragment you know could be from this fifth century sixth century 7th century and some people go real late but there's a lot of evidence to show that this particular hymn became universal by the end of the 300s why because it shows up in the Jerusalem chant book which Dr. Shoemaker dates between 350 to 400 AD. And so this particular hymn, it actually shows up in this Jerusalem chantbook. So it's showing up in Egypt. It's showing up in Jerusalem. He's saying that these same hymns are showing up in Constantinople.
So it's just to show you that, you know, this ancient evidence is not just isolated one one location. It's spreading universally throughout the church. I I'm glad you mentioned Shoemaker because I'm going to I have some things from him later on that we can get into. He he he wrote a really good um uh uh uh thesis and I I I'm I'm going to quote from it in a little bit.
>> Wonderful. That's that's so great to hear. So, we've got this ancient prayer about Mary. We've been talking about, you know, oral tradition. What else comes to your mind, Father Jonathan, in regards to the dorm mission? Well, I I want to be before we talk about the actual dermission, there's something else we have to talk about. And for many of our viewers, this idea, this concept uh from the Old Testament is going to be something new, something a lot of people probably have never considered or heard about or anything like that. Um so, having issued a series of warnings, there's a place we need to go back to in order to understand the importance of the Theoccus in general terms before we continue. we need to go back to scripture and this is important. Uh it leads to a better understanding of the orthodox uh better understanding of of Mary and her death. Um if something special happened to the Theotocus when she died, it clearly would be tied to her role as the mother of God, the mother of our Lord, the mother of the king, Jesus Christ. And if he is our king, she is the king's mother. And scripture has something very special to say about the mother of the king. So let's take a look at that. It's clear from ancient times that the king's mother had a special place in societies throughout the Levant. This is very clear. People have researched this.
Adnauseium is is very easy to look.
Well, king could have several wives, many wives and concubines. Who is the queen? Who would be honored as queen?
Whose son of those many wives and concubines would succeed the king? Now, ancient societies had an answer. The woman honored as queen wife or any of his wives or any certainly none of his concubines, but his mother who was not only the wife of the former king and thus knew her way around the palace, but also the mother of the present king. As such, she could be greatly trusted by that present king rather than looking to the schemes and plots of his wives and concubines. Almost every king of Judah has the name of their mother given with their assession information in the book of Kings in First Kings 14:21. In first kings 15:1-2, for example, the accession of the king is listed with who his mother was. Now before we talk about how this applies to Mary, let's look at how it plays out in the scriptures. And this means introducing our viewers to something called the gaba. So if we could go to slide six, our our viewers could look up could could see something about this term. The gabira, I should pronounce it properly. The gaba is a biblical Hebrew title. It is translated a couple of ways. Great lady is common.
Uh but queen mother is also very common.
The root of the word is found in the Bible in several places. The the word gibeted itself is found 15 times, but it also has a root that's masculine like gabed, the mighty man or gibore, the mighty warrior. So it conotes strength and and and might and power. Every king of Israel had a gabir, the great lady, the queen mother, an office with real authority. The queen mother intervened in political disputes, advised the king and even acted as a mediator of the people and some as some reachers have shown and I can cite you one or two here. Solomon ruled with his mother Ba Sheba right there at his right hand in slide seven. So Ba Sheba went to King Solomon and get this and the king rose to meet her and bowed down to her and she sat on his right hand. Hm.
Solomon bowed down to a human being. Oh, isn't that worship? No, it's not worship. It's veneration. It's honor showed to her. Isaac bowed down to his brother. Other pe, you know, personages in the Old Testament bowed down to other personages. This is not an act of worship because the intent is not an act of worship. Now this was sign significant to note that a woman sat in the place of a trusted adviser. Notice that Solomon rose from his throne when his mother entered. People rose when the king entered. Even the king's wives were required to bow before him. And that's seen in first kings 11:16. First Kings 1:16. But Solomon arose when his mother entered. This makes the queen mother unique among royal subjects. Now, what does Solomon's actions tell us about his mother's status? First, he was not threatened by her. He bows, a sign of veneration. But he is still the king.
She sits at his right hand. Ooh, the queen sits at his right hand, araiding golden robes, all glorious, not vice versa. Clearly, in his love for her as his mother, he was in the habit of honoring her requests. When Adonijah first approaches Ba Sheeba to beg her intercession, he says, "Pray, ask King Solomon. He will not refuse you." Oh, by the way, Protestants, yes, we know, we read the scriptures. Solomon did refuse Bath Sheba in this one instance because he could not countenance what Adonijah was asking her to ask him. It was improper and he would not do it.
But secondly, he relied on her to be his chief counselor. Chapter 31 of the book of Proverbs provides an illustration of this introduced as the words of Lemule, king of Masa, which his mother taught him. The chapter goes on to give practical instruction in governance. The queen mother could be relied upon for good counsel as she certainly had an interest in seeing the successful reign of her family. Now, here's the question with all this backup we've just talked about. What does this have to do with Mary and the dormission?
All of this is important to note since the Davidic king is seen as fulfillment of the promises of God. When prophets foretold the restoration of the house of David, they always predicted a new gabir bearing the infant king. We see this in Isaiah in in slide 8. If we could bring that up. We see this in Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:2. These are the famous um prophecies that we're aware of. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.
Uh and in Micah, "And you, oh Bethlehem of Epha, the least of the the cities and so forth." Um we're familiar with these, but these talk about Agabira bringing forth the infant king. If we go to slide nine, we can make the connection just as David was the prototype of the Christ, so Mary is the prototype of the faithful servant who will receive her reward. a foretaste of the resurrection of all mankind at the second coming. She is the Old Testament Gabida, the great lady, a scriptural prototype fulfilled in the person of the ever virgin. Just as the queen mother sits at the right hand of the Davidic king to intercede for the people, Mary's title as queen of heaven and her role as a heavenly intercessor, I directly link to her position as the mother of Jesus, the ultimate Davidic king. And as David established a holy city in Jerusalem, so his ultimate successor would create a heavenly Jerusalem where his mother would reign at his right hand clothed with the son crowned with 12 stars signifying the 12 tribes of Israel and with the moon at her feet as revelation shows. As David's first successor reigned with his queen mother by his side, so would David's David's final and everlasting successor have his queen mother at his side. The Davidic monarchy which was the harbinger of so many things in life and ministry of our lord finds its perfect fulfillment in the reign of Jesus Christ. So this is the key to understanding the importance of the feast of the dormission. God planned this going all the way back to the Davidic monarchy and indeed we could say from the beginning of time.
So if we understand some of these things as as foundational as harbbringers as as prophecies as as things that were going to be fulfilled uh through Christ and Mary uh we we do see the prototypes established earlier that do then begin to to be fulfilled later on. So the understanding of the gaba is is really important for understanding Mary's role uh as the mother of the king because the commemoration of her as that began way back then in a in a one could say a timehonored way in the Davidic line itself. Not in not in Israel. Israel did not talk about this but Judah did.
>> Wow. I love hearing you kind of unpack that about the the prophecy of there not just being you know a coming Messiah and king but also a prophecy that there is to be a mother to bear this king and it fulfills it fulfills this prophecy by him by her sitting at his uh right hand.
It's a really beautiful uh image. It's also really christoologgical which I really like because sometimes people like to separate what when we talk about Mary as a you know a separation from how we talk about Christ. But in your uh proposal here essentially is is that her being there her own body the one who bore the king this is a christoologgical layer right >> that's right that's right and um the it's it's a prototype it's a scriptural prototype it's it one could almost call it a prophecy the gabida is mentioned in the prophecies of the coming Messiah and things like that so e but some people will say well okay even if we buy into all that when did the church begin to lurggically commemorate the dormission? I I said a little bit earlier that the first actually 400 years or thereabouts we hear nothing but that doesn't mean nothing was ever said. That doesn't mean that that there weren't stories shared. remember as as dear viewers as Cashion pointed out earlier the idea of oral tradition being the way in which things were heard and processed and kept I mean oral tradition itself in the in the scriptures as St. Paul talks about it he when when he says to St. Timothy, Timothy, my son, yes, Father Paul, what I have traditioned to you, tradition to other people, in other words, what you've received faithfully for me, most of it oral, faithfully pass on to others so that they can faithfully do the same. So, it's it's not a stretch to to think that these stories were oral and were prevalent, but we we don't hear anything. Um, and Cash had mentioned somebody named name named Dr. Steven Shoemaker who wrote a book called the earliest or mission traditions their nature and shape in in the year 2003 he wrote this we can go to slide number 10 um he does say this which I think is worth quoting already by the second century Christians have begun to circulate stories of the virgin's life before the enunciation but evidence of a similar concern with the details of her life after her son's ascension does not emerge for several more centuries. Okay, fair enough. They don't emerge. That doesn't mean they weren't there. But all that starts to change after the council of Ephesus in 4:31. Almost as if the church gave license to the church to be able to talk about this. And so Dr. Shoemaker notes that there are three rather similar in some ways diverse in other narratives that emerge. He mentions them. The palm of the tree of life, the Bethlehem narratives, and the Coptic narratives. They they they do they have similarities in some ways, they have differences in the other. If Cashian and I were to discuss those similarities and differences, I don't think we have enough time in the day left to us to do that. But suffice it to say that that the first person um to inquire and opine on the death of the Virgin was one Epipanius of Salamus who late in the 4th century thought Mary did not die as other human beings but somehow remained immortal although he makes clear his own uncertainty and refrains from advocating uh this view. But he says, if we can go to slide 11, he says, I am not saying that she remained immortal, but neither am I affirming that she died. And here's the reason. Although the early dorm mission traditions clearly imagine Mary's death to have been in some sense special, they are quite insistence on the reality of her death as important proof of her son's consubstantiality with humanity. So in other words, if her son died, she died. So, we're beginning to to see sort of the the the affirmation that yes, the virgin did die. Now, if we go to slide 12, we're going to jump ahead a few years, a few centuries actually. And we're doing this for a reason to show something. Between the end of the 4th century, roughly around 396, I think Epipanius wrote that to now we're we're we're at roughly the year 7:15, maybe maybe 7:30, something like that, when St. Major Manis of Constantinople. He who wrote the famous commentary on the divine liturgy published by SPS Press. Uh he said this, "As the mother of life, it was indeed impossible that Mary should die. Death will not boast of you because you have borne life in your womb." Likewise, Germanis argued this point from Mary's perpetual virginity, maintaining that because her body had been transformed by this into the highest life of incorruptibility, it was impossible that this body be subdued by the murderous confinement of the tomb.
So from roughly the year 400 to now about 300, a little over 300 years later, we're seeing a shift in the way the church is understanding this. Not thinking necessarily about it, but certainly understanding it. Mary had to die, but Mary's perpetual virginity preserved her in a way that meant her life was something special other than the fact that she gave birth to the son of God. So if we go to slide 13, we can talk a little bit more about that. um quote from St. Germanis because I think this is interesting to note. He says, "Your virginal body is utterly holy, utterly pure, truly the dwelling place of God and because of this it endures and does not know earthly dissolution, transformed even though it is human into the highest life of incorruptibility.
This body is intact and supremely glorious of a perfect life and sleepless because it was impossible that this body be subdued by murderous confinement of the tomb as it was the vessel that received God and a temple animated by the most holy divinity of the only begotten.
So now the church is understanding that this vessel of perfection, of purity, of holiness that bore God the word, okay, maybe it has to die because it has to die due to Jesus taking on our fallen corruptible humanity. And just like all life, all life here in this world will die. But it was not to see corruption.
It could not see corruption. How could it? Is what St. Germanis is really saying there. How could it? It couldn't.
It's impossible for the body of the mother of God to see corruption. Now, it it's certainly possible that a a kind of cult of the virgin's tomb existed orally and and especially among Jewish Palestinian Christians from her death for centuries passing down the stories faithfully from one generation to the next. I would pause and just mention here that the stories of the belt of the Theotokos and the robe of the Theotokos follow exactly that kind of narrative that they were handed down faithfully from one generation to the next until they finally made their way into the hands of the of an emperor or were given to the monasteries eventually on Mount Aos.
So let's remember that Jerusalem was only liberated from R Roman paganism in the early 4th century and the cult of the Virgin exalted only a century later.
So it's not inconceivable that this could have happened that in other words during the Roman occupation the faithful remnant preserved not only things like the location of the garden tomb but the location of the virgins as well. If we're going to believe that the people who lived in Jerusalem at the time Helena went there knew where the garden tomb was, why would they not have known where the tomb of the virgin was? As inextricably bound together as the mother of God, the mother of the king was with the king himself. So, Castion, I don't want to be going too fast here.
Am I is this all starting to make sense?
Well, I think you're bringing out a very important point when it comes to how the Jerusalem community is preserving this particular memory because this is what St. John of Damascus says in recounting, you know, the fourth ecumenical council.
And he it's he he recounts it's the bishop of Jerusalem who's informing the emperor, hey, we don't have her relics because she, you know, passed into eternal life, body and soul. And so there are no relics. So it's the Jerusalem community that's actually telling Constantinople what the tradition is. There's also Dr. Steven Shoemaker uh is saying the same thing that you're saying. He says when you read a lot of the the stories that are circulating, let's say in the in the 300s and 400s, you know, you got bits and pieces, they all um are giving you details about Bethlehem and Jerusalem and Palestine. Like you actually can hear geographical references. And so he thinks that the earliest stories are originating in the Jerusalem community.
So I think your point is very important.
If they can remember where the the tomb of Christ is and remember where all these important sites were in the life of Christ, they could also remember where uh our lady was uh buried but didn't stay there. Right. So that's a very good point, Father Jonathan. I'm glad that you brought that up.
>> Well, in all fairness to the good Dr. Shoemaker uh uh he's not saying what I'm saying. I'm saying what he's saying. He he's done some of the best research on this topic. I mean, there are others, but he has done some of the best research on this topic, and he site sources and things like that. It's a really good, if you can look up his dissertation, it's really pretty good.
Um, but here's where we're going with this because we have Ephesus in 4:31 and only about uh a hundred years later in in the 6th and 7th centuries, we start to see various documents and and stories appearing telling of the virgins dorm mission. If we could bring up slide 14, we we can go to one of these and talk about something called the Gospel of Bartholomew. Now, I know everybody's starting to throw things at the thing going, "Oh, oh, that that's gnostic.
That's this that that's not in the in the in the in the cannon of scripture. I know.
But the fact that the canon by now was well established didn't stop stuff from being written and from being read by people in the church and considered as possibly legitimate. So in this gospel of Bartholomew, if we can go to slide 14, um it says this. And he said to her and and by the way, the he is Jesus. And Jesus said to her, "Mary, when you have gone forth from the body, I will come to you myself with Michael and Gabriel. We will not allow you to have fear in the face of death, whom the whole world fears. I will bring you to the places of immortality, and you will be with me in my kingdom, and I will place your body under the tree of life, where a cherub with a sword of fire will watch over it until the day of my kingdom." So what Dr. Shoemaker says about this and I want to quote him fully because this is very good commentary. This is what Dr. Shoemaker says here. Christ promises his mother that at her death he will come to meet her sparing her from seeing the terrifying face of death when her soul goes forth from the body. In many of the earliest dormission narratives, Mary is very concerned about having to face the powers of death when leaving the body.
But she re reassures herself of her son's promise to meet her soul himself.
Later in these same narratives when Mary dies, Christ in fact comes with his angels to meet his mother so that the powers of death do not beset her soul as it leaves her body. And he takes her body to rest in paradise beneath the tree of life as the gospel of Bartholomew foretells. So the gospel of Bartholomew seems to be aware of certain early dormission traditions that survived into the present. Now, I'm going to I'm going to say we don't know the veracity of them. We don't know where they started. We don't know the source and things like that. But like I said earlier, we were loathed to invent things. So, this very well might capture an oral tradition finally in writing only 100 years after Ephesus.
But by now, we start also hearing from other people who are very reliable.
Let's go to slide 15. Here's St. John of Damascus who lived in the um early 7th century right around the the turn of the sixth to 7th century. He says this, "How shall the realm of death receive her?
How shall corruption dare to assault that body once filled with life? These things do not belong to her. They are foreign to both the soul and body of the one who bore God. Death saw her and was afraid." And again if we go to slide 16 now this is Dr. Shoemaker again um talking about the earliest Marian cults churches um that we knew about in Palestine that one called the Cathisma Church which by the early 5th century so we're talking the 400s had become a focus of Mary and piety one can imagine right after Ephesus when this kind of thing seemed to be given license to do not long thereafter the traditional site of Mary's tomb just outside the Jerusalem city walls emerged as the second important center of Mary's veneration. And in the early 6th century, so we're talking the early 500s, a third Marian shrine was added to the holy city, something called the Nia Church, the new church, completed during the emperor Justinian's reign. The earliest feast of Mary in Palestine was, get this, August 15th, which was initially a celebration of Mary's role in the nativity that eventually developed into a commemoration of her dorm mission. By the 7th century, this festival had expanded to encompass several days in mid August in a stational liturgy that linked together all three of Jerusalem's Marian shrines.
So this is really interesting information that that already in the late 5th century that the one might what what one might call the cult of Mary the devotion of Mary and by the way we don't use the word cult in a bad way. Some people think a cult is something bad. It's not.
It's a Latin word that the cult of Mary began to emerge finally. Uh the the faithful sensing of freedom flowing from the council of Ephesus that it's okay to to honor Mary. Maybe people thought it wasn't before and it probably wasn't in some way. But now they were. And now the shrines come up, the churches come up, the devotionals come up, and the services to her come up. The first one being August 15th. And of course, not long from there can one imagine the other devotionals showing up, the uh entrance to the temple, her nativity, uh the enunciation, uh and so forth. So, that's sort of the u the the quick tale in in 40 quick minutes, Cash. And we we went through exactly everything that our viewers would probably want to know about the origins of the feast of the mission of the mother of God.
>> Wonderful. Thank you, Father Jonathan. I I did want to add because only because I've been teaching a course on the first Christian himnil and uh Dr. Steven Shoemaker actually translated this work from from a Georgian translation. He actually in his up his most updated scholarship has really begun emphasizing because he wrote his big master thesis on the dorm mission in 2003. Then he translated the first Christian himnil >> in 2022.
So about 20 years later, >> he actually is really emphasizing that there are praises and hymns uh to the Theotocos all there uh in the late the late 300s before Ephesus. And it doesn't take away from the what you just said that there's a great flowering going all over the world after Ephesus, but he's really pushing the day farther and farther back the more translations he's doing. uh and this first Christian himnil has been uh influential in his thinking. He's admitted it in the in the introduction in this book. And so that's just that's just helpful information as we pull back pull back the veil on these circulating traditions about who she is that they were honoring her, magnifying her. I mean these these lines in the first Christian himnil are explicit. We magnify you save. um uh uh there's uh imagery about her being the burning bush that's not consumed. All the iconography that we see in our churches about the Theotocos, it's there uh between the 350s to 400s.
Uh so that's just little fun fact I wanted to pull out after diving into his newest translation.
>> But you know, you you you bring up something that that is really really uh I think fascinating and worth reiterating and and and emphasizing. You mentioned that Dr. Hummaker is showing how a lot of these things may have existed in the himynelss of the church going back to the 4th century. And when we talk about manuscripts and evidence and and things like that, these things were not public. Those himnels and the things that were sung in the church were very very private and they were not things that were circulated publicly.
People weren't writing books uh or papyrie back in the 4th century. Oh, look. Here's the himyn himnil hymns of the church of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, of of Rome, of wherever it that's not the way it happened. You went to church to hear them. You didn't take those those documents and manuscripts out of the church and take them home and highlight them and, you know, things like that. They were really kept very private. So, in order to hear them, you had to go to church. So if someone went to church and they heard them and they're hearing within the context of of Orthodox worship within the life of the church, no one's going to really question that and and leave the church and then write something saying, "We don't worship Mary. Maybe we need to start worshiping Mary. Maybe we need to start start writing." It's already there. They're they're not going to they're not going to go after talking about something that is already there, you know. So I I think that's worth noting that these things were of the church. They were in the church. Yeah, I read that in Dr. Shoemaker's thesis, by the way. I'm glad you brought that up.
And and clearly these are things that that um that the the church therefore would have been familiar. I that's the whole christoologgical problem with the third ecumenical council. You know, oh, she didn't bear God the word. She bore God in his humanity. Well, you know, we got a lot of problems with that. Let's talk about it. So, >> right, >> probably for a while there were problems in being able to publicly say call her Theotocos, even though it was happening back in the mid-3rd century. Who knows?
You know, we don't know about persecution or things like that. But in in any event, um it's really interesting to note that Dr. Shoemaker points as Dr. Shoemaker points out that these hymns may have been in the church, heard by the faithful long before they were written about outside of the church.
Good, good point.
>> Yeah, we're just so used to the 247 hour news service, right? Where we're always just hearing constant information and everyone's documenting the what's happening in real time. And in the ancient world, it's just so different where these are the hidden mysteries like let the catechumans depart, right?
Catacumans couldn't even stay for the whole the whole liturgy. So there's a lot going on there that's that's hidden in the mystical and lurggical life of the church that's slowly being revealed to the public and to the empire. That's a very good point. Uh Father Jonathan, I did want to add one more thing and then we'll get into the question and answers and that is another little piece. I guess we've been bringing up Dr. Steven Shoemaker quite a bit, but there is a journal article that he wrote five years after his his dissertation.
And so he wrote that in 2003 or two and then in 2008 he actually wrote a journal article and he actually updates his view on St. Epanius. You know he was living in the 380s.
Dr. Shoemaker I'm not going to say he's come around but he's a lot more open to St. Epanius actually embracing that there were there was an early tradition of Mary's dormission and assumption and then and then he basically embraces it.
This comes from u his article. Let me pull it up. Well, I can't pull it up for you because we're looking at father Jonathan's slides, but it comes from you can look on on academia.edu.
It's when he's uh corresponding with the colarajians.
It's a early dorm mission narratives and again this is from his journal article from 2008 and this is what he says. He says um uh perhaps in the intervening years traditions about the end of Mary's life had begun to circulate more widely make it making it increasingly difficult to maintain a position of of ignorance or or agnosticism about you know how she died or how she left this world. He goes on there can be no mistake that St. Epiphanius here takes a different position regarding the end of Mary's life than his letter to Arabia 7 years earlier. He goes on and he says uh in contrast to his uncertainty in the letter to Arabia, Epipanius here declares that Elijah uh Mary's life has also ended in assumption drawing further comparisons between Mary and the tradition of John's uh also uh the disciple John's assumption. So I'm just saying what Dr. Shoemaker said in 2008 and that is he actually does think as epipanius uh embraced her dorm mission as he became more aware of circulating stories out of Jerusalem. So it's just an interesting uh side point. I actually need to write a little bit more about this. Dr. Gavin and Gort Dr. Gavin Orland and I actually went back and forth about this piece of scholarship a few years ago and uh he he actually was quite open to it and he's like okay I have to stand a little bit corrected on Dr. Shoemaker's work here. It sounds like he's a little bit updated his his position on this. Um, unfortunately, it didn't show up in Dr. Gavin Ortland's book.
>> It's not why does that not surprise me?
>> Uh, because we had talked about this a few years before he published his book.
Um, because I said according to Shoemaker, when uh, Epipanius is is acting a little bit agnostic about, you know, did she did she not die? Did she die? Um he's a little bit agnostic.
Shoemaker says that's from his letter to Arabia seven years before his next letter in correspondence >> in and Dr. Gavin. Yeah. In Dr. Gavin Nortland's book, >> he neglects to say the seven-year gap there and instead states that oh just a chapter before uh Epiphanius says this.
And so that's one of the things you have to keep in note when you're reading St. Epiphanius is that his uh his book against heresies uh basic he's writing against heresies is a collection of correspondence over many years and so it's not like a a chapter by chapter narrative >> but rather it's a collection of his his correspondence and responding to different groups and so Dr. Shoemaker's perspective is that either Epanius changed his mind or he was subduing one of his perspectives in order to uh in order to not give any uh fuel to a heretical group who was offering sacrificial bread and cakes to Mary.
They actually were doing they were actually offering a kind of sacrifice to Mary and he's condemning that group. And so in his condemning of that group, he doesn't want to give them any fuel that that uh perhaps she was assumed into heaven. So kind of like how you're how the the fathers will respond to different heretical groups in different ways depending on what their weakness is. That's what Dr. Shoemaker is saying about what he's doing with these groups.
Anyways, just a side note of information for our our listeners since we've been talking about >> that's interesting. I mean, Shoemaker has done some some really good stuff.
And I would encourage anybody who wants to read more about the ethos of the time, the history of the time, the traditions, the customs, the any manuscript evidence, read Dr. Steven Shoemaker's um thesis. It's easy to find online, by the way. Um and he seems to be an excellent scholar and someone that I quite frankly want to read uh from whom I want to read more, learn more.
Yeah, I've just been I so I read his dissertation years ago and then what I've noticed is that he's actually coming closer and closer to the Orthodox position in the sense of there being greater reliability to this circulation of stories coming out of Jerusalem. So it's just it's just important for our our listeners who may sometimes get a little skeptical because I've even talked to fellow Orthodox Christians who sometimes this issue can shake them up a bit and then I introduce them to some of Dr. shoemakaker later works and it's helpful for them uh in seeing that there is greater scholarship being produced to show the reliability.
>> Cash I want to I want to offer one more thought um that um I was thinking about as I was preparing for this.
>> If Yeah, go ahead. Michael the Archangel and Satan himself could argue over the body of Moses.
How much more contention contentious would have been Satan's arguing over the body of Mary if Jesus had not brought her into heaven the way he did? It just seems to me that this was something that the Lord was doing um both to favor his mother but also giving us a foretaste of our own entry into the kingdom itself.
You know, bypassing Satan disputing about us and being able to one day hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the glory that has been laid for you from the foundations of the world." So, like I said, so if if Michael and Satan could argue over Moses, imagine what what would have been the result of Michael and Satan arguing over the body of Mary. So, it makes sense that Jesus would have taken her with him.
>> Yeah, I think there's a lot of good lines of like thinking that we can go with that. But I I also think um we've touched on this but you know the the whole concept of her relics not being around I mean she is like venerated as the number one woman in the early church this is just a fact you know uh Dr. Shoemaker will say St.Al >> yeah St.Al was also highly venerated and honored and people would go to her tomb uh and St. Jerome talks about all these places that they want to go they want to go venerate. But what's interesting is why is the early church not making a big deal that the number one lady that they love and are praising that her relics can't be found. It could be legitimately that they held to this oral tradition that her body was not there like her body was not there and her relics were not there. Um and I think it has goodability that kind of line of thinking.
>> Yeah. And and I think to our our friend Dr. Gavin Ortland uh dear viewers this this is the place you end up in in his book when you need to see everything written down. Now, I'd like to think that our lady was chosen by God not in a capriccious manner because I don't believe that we believe in a God who does anything capricciously.
Everything he does has purpose and meaning and and has been thought out ahead of time. So, if he chose Mary, he chose her deliberately.
If she bore the eternal son of God in her womb, what did that do to her?
And I think that we we are dealing with a a Protestant world that can't even comprehend correctly what the scriptures are saying. Blessed are you. Blessed is the wound that bore you in the breast you suck. No, rather blessed is he who hears the word of God and keeps it. See, that proves that Mary was being corrected by her own son. No, that's not what the Greek says.
Because if you read it in Greek and if you talk to someone who really knows biblical Greek, don't just talk to some Protestant seminary graduate who took one year of Arasmian Greek. If you find out what it really means in the Keiny Greek, what Jesus was saying, no, she's not blessed because she bore me. She's blessed because she heard the word of God and did it. That's why she's blessed. Because remember Mary said all generations will call me blessed. So is Jesus saying no we can't call her blessed now anymore. These kind of things are are what I would call sort of Christian common sense which most Protestants don't have because they're looking at literal readings of the scriptures and completely misunderstanding the intent and the context. So um you know quite frankly I I I I like Dr. Gavin Orland. I I think he's dead wrong on this and so many other things. Um perhaps his heart is in the right place for a Protestant, but our heart is a little bit bigger when it comes to the fellowship and the the konia that we enjoy with not only each other here in this world, but with all of the saints that have gone before us, including the mother of God herself.
>> Very true. Very true. Yeah, those are all very good points, Father Jonathan.
Thanks you. Thank you for bringing that up. I think sometimes we do reading the scriptures, Protestants can create kind of a false dichotomy. It's like, oh, you know, the one that bore you versus the one who obeys you when she's actually honored as both, right? She's the one that's the mother of the king >> and she's the great example. She's faithful to him all the way to the cross.
>> That's right.
>> And then she becomes the mother of the church where she's in the midst of the apostles at Pentecost in the upper room.
>> Yeah. Um, so she's, as Father Tom Hopkco would say, she's not the great exception, but the great example.
>> Exactly.
>> She's, yeah, she's the icon of disciplehip, I think, is a uh, one way that I like to think of her is, man, if I can just have a little drop of what she had and how she followed our Lord, I'd be in a lot better shape uh, today.
>> Amen to that. I think we all would be.
>> Yes. Yes. So, let's go ahead. Father, uh, do you have time for some question and answers today?
>> I have plenty.
>> Go ahead.
>> Great. Guys, I've already encouraged you to do this, but definitely throw in some questions into the stream. I have seen some questions coming in, so I want to begin uh with the top here. I just had it. Let me see if I can find it again here. The person asks, I know this is a question that is asked a lot, but what do we make of the phrase theotocos save us? Very popular question.
>> Oh, very good. I love that. I love that.
Okay. In in order to to begin a discussion on that, let me ask you a question, dear viewer.
when Jesus was walking on water and approaching the boat that all the apostles were in. And Peter sees him and says, "Lord, bid me to come to you."
Jesus says, "Come." And Peter gets out, steps down, realizes he can walk on water. This is great. And he starts walking toward Jesus. And then he he makes the stupid mistake of looking at the big waves that are on his right and on his left, and he gets afraid, and he starts to sink. And as he's sinking, he cries out, of course, in Greek, Kittyas, Lord, save me.
I'm pretty sure at that point he wasn't saying to Jesus, Lord, give me everlasting salvation right now.
Because that's not what the word save means. It means to deliver, to rescue, to redeem. That's what the word save means. And in in every context that it's used in the New Testament, that's how it's used.
So when we say most holy Theotoko save us, we're not saying most holy Theotocus give us eternal and everlasting life.
We're not asking for that which only God can bestow, which only God can reward or award, however you want to look at it. We're asking her to deliver us just as if I were sinking and I would reach out my hand to any of you and say, "Save me, help me, rescue me, deliver me, prevent me from going any lower and any deeper than I already am." And that's what we mean by most holy Theotocos. Save us.
Not bring us eternal and everlasting life. Only Jesus can do that. But holy lady, through your prayerful intercessions before the throne of God himself, as you stand at his right hand, please remember me in this time and deliver me, rescue me, save me.
>> Thank you, Father Jonathan. Uh, it's also interesting that you find these phrases in the catacombs of the early church, even in reference to St. Peter and Paul.
>> St. Peter and Paul. Yeah. Save St. Peter and Paul. resue.
>> So, it's not just applied to her either.
It's also applied to the saints. Uh >> so that when we're bearing our beloved ones, you know, in the tombs, in the catacombs, we're asking for the angels and the saints concerning them to to pray for them, particularly that they would join in fellowship with him and not be cast out of the kingdom of God. So, >> that's very good. I've got another another question coming in. The question is actually it's a very very specific question and that is uh in relationship to how old Mary was theotocos when she passed the person one uh the question is St. Maximus the confessor places at at the age of 80 but St. James uh the great was martyed in 44 AD.
Would he be present at her dorm mission?
Oh, let let me see that. Let me say the question again. St. Maximus confessed her places at 80, but James the Great was martyed in the year 44 AD. Would he be present at her dorm mission? Oh, I see what's being asked.
Yeah, some of those dates of when the apostles actually died are are are generally agreed on, but but there is some wiggle room as to whether it was a year before, 2 years after, whatever. Um clearly if if if the theotocos was about give or take 15ish 16 when she gave birth to Jesus um then she would have been about 48 49 maybe when he died and was resurrected.
So she wasn't exactly young again but she wasn't exactly old. Um, but my understanding from from things I've read is that she lived another 15 years or so. Now, my again, I've read many things about how long she lived. Um, but it wasn't until she was 80. I don't believe that that's what the church would support.
Um, but I I think some of the things I've read about the the apostles who were at her dorm mission were the ones who were left at that time.
So it wasn't all of them because James, you know, as you mentioned, died early and and so forth. So um it's the ones that were still alive at that time. So obviously Thomas was there. He hadn't been flayed alive in India yet. Uh but the others, you know, they were all brought there by the Holy Spirit and um Thomas came 3 days late. Tomb was already sealed. He asked it to be open up so he could venerate her one more time. When they opened the tomb, she was not there. And instead of the stench of decay, they smelled fragrant flowers, which is by the way, if you're wondering why we bless flowers on the dorm mission, that's why. Um, so would would James would would she have died before James was was killed?
Again, I don't know for sure. There are varying traditions in terms of the preciseness of these dates because we don't know them for sure. There are generally accepted dates, but my understanding is that the apostles that were still alive at the time were brought to Jerusalem. I hope that helps.
>> Yeah, if if uh St. Peter was um you know martyed in the mid60s then uh probably before then.
But you're right. Yeah, good answer there. Let's see here. Another question coming in at the Let's see here. Oh, this is from Father Ron. Thanks for joining us at Remote Orthodoxy.
>> Hey, Father Ron.
>> Question.
Yeah, Father Ron should and I should be doing an interview soon, whether it be on this podcast or another. I'm not We got to schedule it. I'm in the middle of moving, so my life's a bit crazy right now. Uh, but we'll get you on, Father Ron. He writes, "Can you please comment on Galatians 4 26?" Chapter 4 26. Spo spoiler. I think this is referring to Mary and not to Sarah who was not mentioned by name in Galatians 4 21- 28.
>> So in Galatians 4, he said 21-26.
>> Uh let's see here.
>> Um I'm just pulling it up right now.
Yeah, he's Yeah. uh chapter 4:es 21- 28 and then who is the woman referring to in verse 26. So I'm just okay.
>> Tell me you who desire to be born under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond woman, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond woman was born according to the flesh and he of the free woman through promise which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants. The one from Mount Si which gives birth to bondage which is Hagar and uh for this Hagar is Mount Si in Arabia and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free which is the mother of us all. It seems to be referring in verse 26 not to a specific um woman but rather to the fact that Jerusalem is the the and I would imagine when he's speaking about the Jerusalem above the heavenly Jerusalem being the mother of Assaul may be the reference that he's talking about there. Uh for it is written rejoice O baron you who do not bear break forth and shout you who are not in labor for the desolate has many more children than she who has a hundred. Now we brethren as Isaac was are children of promise.
Okay. So that that ends the paricopy 21-28.
So father Ron you're asking about verse 26. Uh it doesn't seem to be referring to a woman but that the heavenly Jerusalem is that which is our home and perhaps our mother in the world to come.
That that's how I would kind of see that without going to any other commentaries.
That that's would be my interpretation.
>> Yeah. Jerusalem from above makes you think of uh the end of the book of Revelation where Jerusalem is above us and coming down out of the heavens. Um but it is interesting because when you do get to the book of Revelation chapter 12 when you see the the lady in the sky who's pregnant with the Lord, it's like this imagery of both Mary but also the church and they're like almost kind of intermingled. Um, so I think that I think that there can be a discussion talking about how both the church is our mother, but Mary's like the icon of the church as mother. That's right. It's kind of an interesting >> That's right.
>> So there's still a relationship always with mother church and mother Mary. And you even see those connections happening, I think, even in Revelation chapter 12. Um, >> yeah. And so that's a that's a that's a cool reference there. I had never quite connected Jerusalem from above with the book of Revelation in my mind. So that's a fun I need to go back and look at this. That's fun stuff. Okay, another question coming in. Let's see here.
Uh is this is from Roy Paul 1769.
Another fun YouTube name. Is there any place for legend in the dorm mission tradition or is everything taken literally like the archangel cutting a guy's hand off? Uh so I think the question is like when we have like narratives of the saints particularly the dorm mission do we take everything literally in these stories or is there a little bit of wiggle room for some of it to be legend or or added details for teaching purposes?
>> You know we say in our church we we pray what we believe.
Now, having said that, and by the way, we do believe that we pray what we believe. Having said that, when we hear of a parable from the Lord, do we take that as gospel truth? In other words, do we take that as something that actually happened? No. We take it as exemplary or as instructional or um you know, teach a teachable moment for us. But we don't necessarily take that parable as something that literally happened. For example, the the prodical son probably never happened. Doesn't matter whether it did or didn't. It's instructional, incredibly instructional for us. Um, by the way, just as an aside, um, I've heard many Orthodox biblical commentators say that the story of the rich man and Lazarus may have indeed been an example cuz Lazarus is the only person in in a parable of that type named in any of the four gospels.
So, there may have been a poor man sitting at the gates of a rich man in Jerusalem named Lazarus that the people of Jerusalem may have been familiar with.
But back to your question, I'm sorry for the digression. Um, we generally would say that we don't believe in legends that we believe in in in in the God who has revealed himself to us or has revealed anything else to us because it's necessary for our salvation. Um, so until something can be clearly shown to be legend, uh, I think we have to believe that our miraculous God reveals things to us miraculously. And even if they sound miraculous, why is that a problem? I mean, the whole Old Testament, let alone the New Testament, is filled with miracles. So, um, we believe what we teach and pray and sing about Mary, uh, at her at her feasts.
Um, I I know a priest who for the longest time struggled with the feast of the entrance of the Theotocos into the temple. He couldn't believe that they would let a woman, a little girl, march up those steps, that the high priest would take her right into the holy of holies and you know, how could that be and so forth? And then in the last 50 years, biblical archaeological scholarship has come to the conclusion that the uh Herodian temple did have places for the virgins to stay because they were the ones that made the garments of the priest. they were the ones that that repaired or sewed the veil of the temple and so forth. So, uh they had to be on site uh dedicated and devoted to temple service. So, yes, the idea that Mary would have been sent there as a as a child and uh would have stayed there until she began menstruating because then she had to leave and given over to a man who could watch over her and protect her and so forth and so on. Once archaeology began to give credence to the composition of the story of the entrance, uh, this priest really had a lot of problems dealing with the veracity of that story. And he told me that he accepted it because the church u taught it, but he he really struggled with it.
Only in time to find archaeology kind of confirming what he was struggling with all those all all that time.
very good point, father uh father Jonathan. I I can understand where people are coming from sometimes as they as they wrestle with these. I've been in the world of biblical scholarship and it's like you know oh like 10 20 years ago it's like the scholarship was saying this but then you you find these new discoveries even someone like Dr. Steven Shoemaker and then his position advances and develops. Um it's fun to see how sometimes these can move closer to our our own position. Um but you know I think we deal with these things even in you know there these things even happen in scripture. Uh like what do you do when you go to the tomb and one gospel says there's one angel and then another gospel says there's two or you go to an Orthodox church and you see an icon and well this icon has this this feature and this icon it's missing in that you know should that trip you up to say well these things never happened. Um, I think part of it's just our modern way of thinking where we want everything reported with the exact literalness of the event, right? Because we're just used to like 247 news, the 247 news cycle, and we just want everything exactly the way it happened without any kind of artistic or typological references kind of being uh added there. So, that's one place that I've ended up. Um, I've I've also had people ask me, "What about St. George and the Dragon? You think the dragon was real? Right. Uh St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland. Were there really snakes there in Ireland at all? Or is it just him exercising the demons from from pagan Ireland? Right. So these are all things we have to kind of work through as modern Christians when we read the lives of the saints.
>> Cassian, let me let me just mention one more thing about that question. It it really might bear comment. Um um in this story of the in the Old Testament when the ark was being moved at one point and it was going to tip and fall over, a man put forth his hand to to prevent the ark from falling off the the beer that it was on and and died. But he tried to touch the ark presumably in good faith, but the Lord said, "Don't touch the ark." So he touched the ark, he died.
And in the story of the dorm mission kind of a similar thing happened but in a different way. A man came forth not to steady the theotocous's beer but to uh B I E R by the way but to steady not not not to steady it but to tip it over and for his um for his insolence um the the angel came and cut his hand off. kind of a similar thing because the Theotokos is seen as the the new ark.
Uh, you know, the old ark was sort of a prototype. Well, she's the new ark in whom the heavenly mana and the law dwelt and things like that. So, uh, there's a lot of symbology uh, between the ark and Mary. And, um, the cutting off of the hand is just one perhaps one example of a, um, parallel typology.
Oh, what a good point there, Father Jonathan, in pointing out the typology of the ark of the covenant. I mean, it's all over in the fathers that Mary is the new ark of the covenant. It's in the scriptures where Luke is talking about, you know, the the traveling over the Judean Hill Country and St. John the Baptist dancing in the womb of Elizabeth at the arrival of of her carrying, you know, the she's the container of the uncontainable. And that parallels what we find in Samuel, right, with King uh with the ark traveling over the Judean hill country and then King David dancing at the uh the arrival of the ark of the covenant. And so um this is just another kind of layer that we could even connect to the dorm mission. Would the Lord want his ark, his new ark of the covenant to be destroyed or would he rather receive it into, you know, the heavenly sanctuary? Um, I think of course our our thinking, our biblical thinking leads to being received into the heavenly sanctuary. So that's good, very good point there.
>> Yeah. I think it's it's really quite quite extraordinary to think that had Mary not been assumed into heaven and and buried someplace that that Can you imagine the the the gross the gross uh u reactions of tomb robbers and and people like that? Relics robbers. I mean, they existed back then. looking for a piece of the famous just like people, you know, do today. I remember hearing stories when Bonnie and Clyde or John Dillinger were killed and sent to the morg, people were ripping off pieces of their clothing and things like that, you know, relic hunters, trophy hunters. Can you imagine the desecration possible to her body by people who would tried to have opened that tomb and robbed it, let alone if her body had remained there and the and the the the Muslims had come by six centuries later, what they might have done. I mean, it's just it's just too gross to even think about. No, God wanted to honor his mother and in so showing her resurrection from the dead prefigure our own. Very simple.
>> Very that's a very good point, Father Jonathan. in the sense of it's there isn't there is the layer of him uh our lord wanting to honor his mother as the royal queen mother as the ark of the covenant receiving her as as a high honor into the heavenly temple but also just from the mere fact of not wanting her body to be desecrated by the enemies of the church right >> um >> yeah that would be it's it's just really unthinkable to us uh for someone who again her body was holy you Well, yeah.
Uh, part of this is having to have a whole room in your theology for sacred space, uh, and a hierarchy of spaces.
And so when we when we think of Mary, we think of a of a holy woman who loved the Lord and followed after the Lord, but also a holy space, like a holy place.
Um, but it took me some time to wrap my mind around that over the years.
Let's see what other questions we have coming into the stream here.
I was going to ask you a question, Father Jonathan, and this is actually not related to our topic today, but I've been receiving a lot of correspondence from people uh about the topic of Orthodox burntout.
people maybe maybe they uh became catechumans and then entered the church over the last few years and they're experiencing a kind of burnout in their life. They they and I' I've been reading Substack articles about this and I've been hearing it from friends and they've been sending this to me and I'm like, you know what, I really want to ask this question to Father Jonathan today on our stream. And how do you guide uh you know, uh maybe someone who's been Orthodox for two, three, four, five years, whenever whenever they get into this dark dark place uh where they feel like they're in kind of a a little bit of a valley.
What is your advice as a pastor of souls, as a as a priest to someone who's going through that?
>> I I have noticed lately a couple of things along that line. Number one, um and and this goes back to how we receive inquirers and catechumans and and just overall spiritual formation to begin with. I have people who show up on my doorstep and and any of my prisoners watching this right now, I'm not referring to you. I have people that have shown up on my doorstep and have said, "Oh, father, I've read Timothy Wear, the Orthodox Church, and I've read the Orthodox Way, and I've read uh, you know, uh, Vladimir Loski and all of John Mayandorf, and uh, you know, the book of Enoch, and and all of this kind of stuff." And and I'm and and then they'll say, "And I'm ready to become a catacum."
And I usually say, and I'm saying more and more now, no, now you're ready to be an inquirer.
because you don't even know what it's like to be an Orthodox Christian yet.
You've read all this stuff. Is this your first visit to the church? Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Well, that that's Let's stop right there. When when you first heard of Orthodoxy, why did you not then seek us out? And there are a lot of people that are approaching orthodoxy with a lot of head knowledge, but not a lot of heart knowledge. And I think the burnout happens when the two are not talking to each other, are not in sync with each other.
And I've I've encountered Orthodox people as obviously as inquirers, as catechumans, as as as Orthodox Christians, baptized, charismated, whatever, received into the church who do burn out. And a lot of it has to do with this this this allin attitude.
And a lot of it has to do with being online too much, reading too much that they're not ready for. I I tell a lot of my catechumans now, for every Orthodox book you read, read a nonorthodox book.
Read read the classics, you know, uh pick up uh Jules Vern or uh Jane Austin, I don't care. Bring up pick up something that's a classic book and read it and let's you and I discuss it. Oh, you mean the Orthodox book? No, I mean the nonorthodox one. Let's see where your you know, what are your hobbies? What are you doing besides reading, you know, all the time? Um, are you spending enough time with your wife? Are you spending enough time with your kids?
When's the last time you went out and saw a movie? Not that there's anything, you know, that good to see out there, but don't go see The Odyssey. That's just my own opinion. So, you know what? What are you doing that's causing the burnout? Burnout usually comes from being too absorbed in and too involved in something, not just the church. People can get burned out of a lot of things. So I I find that that with with some people um there's that disconnect I mentioned between the heart and the mind and on the other hand their world has not not grown with orthodoxy it's shrunk down to only orthodoxy. When you look at the a lot of the church fathers and certainly in the Byzantine era um a lot of the people that lived back then I mean they studied philosophy and rhetoric and astronomy and they knew the mythology and they uh they studied sciences and poetry. When was the last time you read a poetry book? So, I think that that that what I mean by the world shrinking down to orthodoxy is not an insult to our faith. It's that our faith should be illumining illuminating more of the world for you so that you can see the good in it. So that you can embrace the good. Um you know we we we say in our prayer books, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Get out there and take a walk with with your wife. take get out there and take a walk with your kids. Go to the park. Go on vacation. I can't tell you how many people I talk to that haven't been on vacation for years.
So, I I I'm concerned about people um getting burned out, but I think part of it has to do with an unhealthy approach to their spiritual growth after they have been received.
>> Very good, Father Jonathan. It's really sound advice.
I remember reading uh years ago Father uh Sarah from Rose's advice to new converts and he said something kind of similar like what you're gonna say.
>> Um go read Charles Dickens uh uh go you know he he yeah he's like go be go become like a a human being and let Christ transform this human being. uh don't just be focusing on yeah just reading these kinds of things or being overly critical of those around you uh because they don't get it or something like that.
>> Dan, by the way, if you have the rudder, throw it away.
>> You shouldn't be reading it. um the the collection of of of cannons over the over the centuries.
Someone says, "Read read Tolken." Yeah.
Uh Lord of the Rings.
>> Read to read read Tolken. Read Tolken.
Read read you know The Hobbit and and The Lord of the Rings and and The Lion, the Witch, the Wardrobe, that whole series. Great Christian thematic stuff in there. Really great stuff. Read Frankenstein. I hated Frankenstein, but there were really interesting themes in there about creator created uh and and really some interesting stuff. I I I I I can't uh recommend enough getting into the classics of some kind. You know, when we when we had the co shutdown, I had the Iliad and the Odyssey right right over here. And I never had time to read them.
I mean, one is this big and the other is this big. during the the co shutdown, I had time to read and I read both of them and I thought they were fantastic. It was a great translation that I had a very highly recommended translation and I thought it was terrific. Uh, and I really really enjoyed I enjoyed reading it. Um, can't say my life was necessarily changed because of it, but I'm not looking to be changed. I'm not looking to be entertained necessarily either, but perhaps I'm looking to expand my world a little bit by knowing what else has happened since I was born, you know, or before I was born. I'm sure a lot of people thought a lot of things, wrote a lot of things that are worth discovering.
Get a hobby, you know, get do do stuff.
I mean, don't just read theology books.
>> Uh, very good. Very good. Uh, somebody asked the question. I had it here just in front of me. Oh, here it is. Joseph uh Beltron question. Being new to orthodoxy, would you say it's better to speak with Protestants uh of orthodoxy from my current understandings or direct them more to informed sources such as yourselves?
>> Uh I don't know that I understood the question. Uh Cashion.
>> Yeah, let me repeat the question in a little bit of a different way.
Basically, the person's asking, um, if if I have like a friend or a relative and they're wanting to know why I'm Orthodox or becoming Orthodox, should I should I attempt to give them an answer or should I just point them to other resources?
>> Oh, I see. Being new to orthodoxy, would you say it's better to speak with Protestants of Orthodoxy from my current understand?
Direct them to No, direct them to more informed sources. I, you know, you you could have a lot of enthusiasm. I I realized when I went to seminary, I would hear the professors speaking and going, "Wow, that's great." And I'd go home and my mom would say, uh, you go back to California during the breaks and my mom would say, "What did you learn?"
I don't know, Mom, but it was great. You know, I couldn't repeat it necessarily, but I knew it was truth. I knew it was what, you know, I'm hearing the church's teachings. This is great, but it took me a long time to to assimilate them and be able to repeat them back. So, if you're new, you run the risk of maybe enthusiastically screwing something up and saying something you really are going to regret later that you don't want to say that could be dangerous for them to hear. So, be careful. You know, if there if there are better informed sources than you that you can direct them to, by all means, do that.
until you learn how until you learn really how to engage with people where they are and you know what they're what they're what they you know from what they believe and things like that.
>> Yeah, that's really good advice. Uh father I I think about okay well what do you say then? Like what do you just say nothing at all? And I I think maybe one one thing that you could say to somebody who is interested in your journey is simply saying, you know, um the is is leading me to deeper places in my relationship with Christ. You know, something like that can really >> telling your own story rather than trying to teach from the fathers or something like that may be the way to do it. You know when when instead of saying oh I want my friends to read this book and that book and I want them to no live as an Orthodox Christian in such a way that they will come to you and say what are you I want to be what you are I want to have what you have.
Okay. Well I think uh Father Jonathan that concludes most of our questions for today that I could find. Is there anything that you would like to add about dorm mission? Of course, the the fast, the dorm mission fast will be coming up soon. I'm sure I'm sure people have questions about that. Why do we fast for a couple weeks with great intensity before the dorm mission? Uh and then the the celebration will be coming up uh which is one of the, you know, the great 12 liturgical feasts of the year. Any anything that you'd like to say as we wrap up today's episode?
You know, one of the things that we we have in our church that's really wonderful is this cycle of of feasts and fasts and um in the middle of summer as we uh engage in summer activities and we uh uh we may be going to parties and barbecues and this that and the other thing, it's tempting because I can see attendance figures at church on Sundays during summer to neglect church sometimes. Oh, I got something to do. I got a place to go away. I'm I'm going on a trip. I'm traveling. This that and the other thing. When these fasting periods come and there's one coming up be beginning August 1st. It's a great way to slow down the world and to return to the world of the church to return to her cycle of fasts and feasts and things like that.
And during the dormission fast is not just fast fast fast for 14 days and then all of a sudden we have a feast. It's, you know, you've got the the the transfiguration is right practically in the middle of it, which means vigil and liturgy. You've got paraclesis services that in some churches they do every night. Um, it's a great time not only to fast, but to go to confession if you haven't been for a long time. So, it's a great way to use that time as an opportunity to, as I like to call it, return to God. Not that you never necessarily left him, but that you might have strayed a little bit and maybe it's time to reconnect. Maybe it's time to get back to the source. Maybe it's time to just be there a little bit more and absorb the grace that comes from simply sometimes being at the divine services.
>> Thank you, Father Jonathan. A joy to have you on the show today. You're welcome back anytime. And uh I love this particular topic. It's it's one that I think it just really proclaims the beauty of what Christ wants to do in us because he's done it in the Theotocos in such a profound way. So, thanks again for for coming on uh coming on the show.
>> Passion, thank you very much for having me on and we're going to have you on the transfigured life very soon.
>> Be a joy to have you on uh to come on.
It'd be fun to to collaborate and do that anytime. Well, everyone, thanks for watching the show. So, if you ever have emails or questions, you can email me at cassenking ancientfaith.com. Cassian Kingcientfaith.com.
Questions for next week's episode or or the following. Uh, but those are always helpful to get more questions for each episode. Well, everyone, this has been a presentation from an Ancient Faith Ministries and listener supported by you. Thank you so much for listening.
Heat. Heat.
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