Celebrating the Dormition/Assumption of Mary the Godbearer/Theotokos

Today, August 15, is one of the big feasts of the Catholic world. In the Latin communion it is known as the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic communions it is known as the Dormition or falling asleep of the Theotokos or Godbearer (but those who still use the Julian calendar won't celebrate it until Gregorian August 28). In the Anglican communion, it's the Feast of the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As well as marking the death of the Virgin Mary the day also celebrates her Assumption, being taken up, resurrected, body and soul into the heavenly realm. The Roman communion teaches that she was resurrected on the day of her death but the Orthodox communions teach that she was resurrected three days after her death. In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption a necessary item of belief for the Roman communion, a declaration welcomed by Carl Jung (curiously, this Papal declaration is the only instance of a dogma declared invoking Papal Infallibility since it was affirmed in 1870 at Vatican I). Many Anglicans and some Lutherans too believe that Mary was resurrected after her death. Some Catholics, mostly in the Roman communion believe that Mary didn't die at all but was translated alive into the heavenly realm, something like Enoch in Genesis and the Enoch literature and also Elijah (but without the chariot). This is an old idea, the first clear instance of which is found in the 4th century when Epiphanius of Salamis said that no one knew whether Mary had died or not. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Assumption, the day is a public holiday in many countries including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chile, Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Colombia, Cyprus, East Timor, France, Gabon, Greece, Republic of Guinea, Haiti, Italy, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Republic of Macedonia, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritius, Monaco, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Tahiti, Togo and Vanuatu (I must admit I kind of like the idea of having a public holiday to celebrate an obscure peasant woman from 1st century Roman Palestine). As it falls on a Sunday this year I hope those countries follow the Australian practice of observing a compensatory holiday on the Monday. In Ethiopia, the day is also marked by a women's festival called Ashenda. I can't find out much more about Ashenda but Ethiopian Christianity is itself some 1600 years old so perhaps it derives from the pre-Christian past or maybe it is an Ethiopian Christian invention.

Mary, of course might be an obscure peasant woman from 1st century Palestine but for Catholic Christianity her very obscurity is key to her status. She is the model of what it means to be Christian who, in the words of the medieval German mystic and theologian, Meister Eckhart, are called to give birth to God in their lives. It's important to recall too that in Catholic teaching, both East and West, Mary freely works with God in a synergy. Hers is not a mere obedience or submission but a free consent, willing trust and active collaboration that are fundamental to her role. Through her Assumption, Mary models the entire Christian hope of deification, a deification that will extend to the entire cosmos. Mary instantiates the ancient deification principle that the glory of God is humanity fully alive. While she might seem like a goddess and no doubt has drawn on a variety of ancient goddesses as Christianity spread, she is greater than any goddess, precisely because she is human and indeed she humanises those old goddesses, mother goddesses, virgin goddesses, wisdom goddesses. Thus she demonstrates that Christianity is a form of applied Kabbalah, drawing out, releasing and lifting up (humanising) the sparks of the divine throughout creation, including within the deities and powers of the old religions.

It's these 'pagan' associations that lead many, particularly Protestants, to dismiss Mary and her cult. However, I would argue that to be true to its Jewish origins Christianity can only ever be both sacramental and Marian, Catholic. When Jesus stepped into that 1st century messianic gestalt, it would automatically incorporate his mother. I have written before on miraculous motherhood and ancient Judaism. But I also want to point you to an excellent essay by Margaret Barker, "Images of Mary in the Litany of Loreto" (pdf). Here's a sample to whet your appetite:

The world of the temple and the teaching of its priests was a sophisticated theology that now has to be reconstructed from many ancient texts, but it is clear that this is where Christianity has its roots. The Christians saw in Jesus the fulfilment of temple rites, which foreshadowed his work of salvation (Heb. 9.11–14),10 and they described him as Melchisedech, the high priest of the ancient royal house who was, in a way we no longer fully understand, the presence of the Lord on earth (Heb. 7.11–22). It was therefore to be expected that Mary was described as Wisdom, the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of the Lord on earth. The titles in the Litany of Loreto, and in many other praises of Mary, were drawn from the Wisdom tradition...

In this article I shall show that Wisdom was a fundamental figure in the ancient faith of Jerusalem, that the Church claimed Wisdom’s titles for Mary from the very beginning, and that by the time the Litany of Loreto was composed, the meaning of some of these titles was fading and their significance already lost. The titles in the Litany seem to be a summary of a much older tradition.

I don't agree with all of Barker's historical reconstructions of ancient Israelite Temple religion but I think her overall picture fits quite well with an understanding of ancient Judaism evolving out of an older Palestinian/Canaanite 'pagan' milieu, an evolution that was still happening even in Jesus' and Mary's own time. If Christianity could subsequently connect with 'pagan' traditions within and without the Roman Empire, it was precisely through its Jewish background/origins and not in spite of it.

In her essay, Barker refers to two Christian prayers or hymns, the Litany of Loreto and the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God. For those unfamiliar with them, I've embedded links to the texts. The Akathist Hymn probably dates back to the 6th century and is important in the liturgy of Eastern Christianity. Akathist means not sitting and is a genre of hymnody in the East. One recurring Marian title in the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God that I really like is Unwedded Bride.

Here is an excerpt from the hymn in English with visuals of some marvelous icons:



And here is another beautiful version in Arabic, again with some stunning icons:




And a Russian version, note the fabulous image of Mary on the bishop's vestments at the start:



And here's some more Marian music to celebrate the Dormition/Assumption, mostly from the East as a reminder that Western Christianity is not and never has been all there is to Christianity.

Here is a hymn specifically for the Dormition:




In giving birth thou didst preserve thy virginity; /
in thy dormition thou didst not forsake the world, O Theotokos. /
Thou wast translated unto life, / since thou art the Mother of Life; //
and by thine intercessions dost thou deliver our souls from death.

Kontakion, Tone 2:
The grave and death could not hold the Theotokos, /
who is sleepless in her intercessions and an unfailing hope in her mediations. /
For as the Mother of Life she was translated unto life //
by Him Who dwelt in her ever-virgin womb.

Exapostilarion:
O ye Apostles from afar, being now gathered together
here in the garden of Gethsemane, give burial to my body;
and Thou, my Son and my God, receive Thou my spirit.



And here is an Arabic hymn to Mary from Egypt which features a stunning image of Mary from the doe of the Coptic church in Zeitoun Cairo where in 1968-70 millions of Christians and Muslims saw a series of Marian apparitions:



(To find out more about the apparitions you can go here)

And here is another Egyptian hymn, Shere Ne Maria



I found this English text for it on a Coptic site

Shere Ne Maria Holy Virgin Mary
Shere Ne Maria Who art all Holy
Shere Ne Maria Due to you the glory
Shere Ne Maria Ethmav Empi Mayromi
Shere Ne Maria Sweet mother of light
Shere Ne Maria Who art always bright
Shere Ne Maria Standing on his right
Shere Ne Maria Asking day and night
Shere Ne Maria Hail full of grace
Shere Ne Maria Show thy glorious face
Shere Ne Maria Most kind in any case
Shere Ne Maria Intercede for thine poor race
Shere Ne Maria Through thy intercession
Shere Ne Maria Hear my petition
Shere Ne Maria And save from perdition
Shere Ne Maria Any pure Christian

As I said before, in Ethiopia the Assumption is the occasion for a women's festival called Ashenda. Here's a clip with music and dance for Ashenda:



And moving to the West, here is a beautiful setting of the Angelus with Ave Maria (Hail Mary), one of the great Marian prayers of the West, by the 20th century composer Franz Biebl:



And I thought I'd finish with a clip of Nina Hagen singing Ave Maria live. Love her work!






And if you want to read some ancient Christian texts about the Dormition you will find a collection at Stephen Shoemaker's site here.

Good Friday

It's Good Friday and here in Brisbane everything shuts down. It's one of two days in the year when even all licensed premises are closed, the other being Christmas Day. But unlike Christmas, Good Friday is not a day of festive frenzy, just quiet and peaceful; the whole system grinds to a halt. And I like that. I think it's good to have at least one day in the year when nothing much goes on, when everyone just takes a breather. Of course being a 4 day long weekend, many people have gone away, either to the north or south coast or up country to camp in the bush. And the autumnal weather actually makes the being outdoors pleasant, unlike in the full heat of summer.

In Brisbane, even the local paper takes a holiday today but it would appear not so in Melbourne. The Age has a Good Friday edition, at least online. And browsing today's Age I came across this piece, A Symbol of the Noblest Traditions, by Dr John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity at Macquarie University in Sydney. In it Dickson reflects on sacrifice and atonement, in particular responding to Richard Dawkins who charges that the notion of Jesus dying "for the sins of the world" is "vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent". Dickson responds:

First, he is wrong to say Paul invented the idea. Sacrificial atonement was central to Judaism right up until AD70, when the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem temple. Jesus' statement at the Last Supper, widely accepted as one of the most reliably preserved statements in earliest Christianity, reflects this sacrificial theme: "This is my body given for you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." The evidence suggests that Jesus himself thought of his impending death as a sacrifice for sins.

Was Jesus "barking mad"? Why indeed doesn't God simply forgive sins without atonement? The answer of the first Christians is clear. It is for the same reason that we would be outraged if a judge let a convicted criminal off the hook simply because it turned out he was his friend. Love and justice both matter in the Christian conception of God. And lest we think of this as some kind of cosmic child abuse — a father punishing a son for someone else's wrongs — we should remember that from the beginning Christians insisted that Jesus was not a third party at all; he was in fact God.

We may not like this idea either, but if we're going to dismiss the Christian idea of atonement, we should do so on its own terms, as an entire package. The first Christians said that God, the wronged party, entered the world and himself bore the punishment wrong-doers deserve. It was as if the judge paid the fine that was another's due. There is nothing "sadomasochistic" about this. The idea belongs to the noble tradition of self-sacrifice for the good of others.

He then goes on to provide a contemporary account of self-sacrifice (thankfully not a military one) to underscore the nobility of Jesus' death on the cross. However, I have problems with this account myself and I don't think that Dickson has adequately dealt with Dawkins' ethical concerns about the standard Christian account of the death of Jesus. Indeed, the whole notion of the substitutionary atonement is riddled with ethical issues inherent to the propitiatory, juridical, penal dynamics of this atonement model. Dickson tries to avoid it by taking a pseudo-unitarian appraoch by saying "God, the wronged party, entered the world and himself bore the punishment wrong-doers deserve." However, it's not just God but Jesus who, according to trinitarian theology, is God the Son who is the main protagonist here, in obedience to his Father. Thus a dynamic is established that is imbued with abusive dynamics of parent-child relationships and other broader sacrificial motifs of the worst kind.

Now Dickson is right to say that from its beginnings atonement has been the lens by which Christians have understood the execution of Jesus. He is also right when he says that atonement was central to Judaism up to the detruction of the Temple in 70. The Temple could even be construed as a type of atonement machine. And there was one day of the year when this atonement machine operated in full force, Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. But I want to qualify what he means by sacrificial atonement.

We don't know much about the Day of Atonement, despite its centrality to the whole Temple cult. Atonement wasn't even unique to Judaism. Purgatory and propitiatory rituals of atonement were a standard part of the ancient Middle eastern relgious world. Judaism shared these rituals with its neighbours and the cosmology that framed them. I mean here the understanding of the earth being in dynamic relationship to the heavenly realm, as above so below, and the place of the temple as the mediating or cross over point between those two worlds. Like their neighbours, Jews believed that the Temple was a piece of heaven of earth in which dwelt their God, in a complex relationship to the heavenly court, the heavenly Temple above. The rituals of the earthly Temple were instances of the rituals of this heavenly Temple. Indeed, the Temple itself was seen as a microcosm of the universe itself. The Temple was a holographic representation of the universe.

As I said we don't know much about the rituals of Atonement in the Jewish Temple(s). We have a very basic account in Leviticus 16. Further information is found in the Temple Scroll, in the Mishnah, in the Epistle of Barnabas. There are further clues in Hebrews and in the Enoch literature and in Zechariah. But if we take the bare outline from Leviticus 16 the ritual involves two goats - a bull too, but the goats are central. The High Priest slaughters the bull. Then he casts lots over the goats to determine which shall be "for the LORD (YHWH) " and which "for Azazel". It is from this second goat that we get the term scapegoat. The goat for the LORD is then slaughtered. In very abbreviated form, what follows is that the High Priest takes the blood of slaughtered goat, mixed with the blood of the bull, enters the Holy of Holies sprinkling the blood and then comes out of the Holy of Holies sprinkling and smearing the blood on the horns of the altar. These actions are described as making atonement. Then the High Priest goes to the other goat, lays his hands on it and confesses the sins of Israel over it. This goat is then sent out into the wilderness.

There has been much debate about the meaning of this ritual and especially about the identity of Azazel (I wont be going into that issue here). Margaret Barker has argued that Hebrew translated "for the LORD/Azazel" can also be translated "as the LORD/Azazel"and cites Origen who states that the second goat was called Azazel. In other words, the goats represent the LORD/YHWH and Azazel, respectively. The interesting point is that the High Priest's role in the Temple is as representative of YHWH. The High Priest wears the Name on his brow and his robes are the same multi-colours as the Veil of the Holy of Holies. The Veil in its four colours represents the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. Crispin Fletcher-Lewis has argued that the reason for the ban on images of the deity in biblical/Israelite religion is because only humans can function as an image of God, and one human in particular, the High Priest (I think in his "The High Priest as Divine Mediator in the Hebrew Bible: Dan 7.13 as a Test Case" SBL 1997 Seminar Papers). Indeed on the Day of Atonement the High Priest is the representative of YHWH, par excellence. It's the one and only day of the year that the High Priest can even enter the Holy of Holies (a place no one else can ever enter) and when he emerges he comes out as YHWH incarnate (taking flesh through the Veil of the four elements) amongst his people making atonement for his people and, as ther Temple represents the cosmos, the entire creation.

He does so with blood and blood, in biblical religion, is life. There are a whole suite of taboos around blood, especially the eating of blood, precisely because of this belief. So the High Priest makes atonement, healing the macrocosmic universe via the microsomic Temple, with blood, life force. Who's blood? If Barker is correct and we should read the first goat as representing YHWH then the blood/life force of the goat represents the blood/life force of YHWH him(her)self. In other words both goat and High Priest represent YHWH. In the heavenly ritual YHWH makes atonement/healing by the use of YHWH's own life force. In the earthly ritual, the blood of the goat serves as a substitute for the blood/life force of the High Priest. The goat is killed in place of the High Priest, giving the ritual a sacrificial appearance but in fact the Day of Atonement is not a a ritual of sacrifice at all; there is no propitation involved at all. The slaughter of the goat (and the bull) serves ritual but not sacrificial purposes. The other goat, the Azazel goat, as Mary Douglas points out, is simply turnd loose in the wilderness.

Now there are two interesting things about this ritual. Firstly, it works on a twofold pattern whereby one dies and the other is sent out. This pattern repeats itself through a suite of biblical narratives. Cain and Abel is an obvious example. David and Jonathan is another. If we allow for near or metaphorical death then we find Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. The Book of Jubilees 34.18 links the ritual to the story in Genesis of Joseph and his brothers in which Joseph is both the one sent out but is also one who dies or at least is assumed to have died (a goat is slaughtered in his place). And there is a suite of other biblical narratives in which this dynamic can be identified, one very pertinent one I will come to shortly.

The other thing about the Day of Atonement is that it is part of the New Year rituals taking place at the autumnal equinox in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. The calendar starts at the spring equinox in the first month, Nisan. The big festival at this time is Pesach/Passover, the time when Jesus is crucified. Now we don't know the origins of Pesach. Presumably it is an old agricultural feast related to the spring equinox. It has been biblically reconfigured and given a new myth, that of the Exodus. The Exodus is not history but story. There's no evidence of anything like these events in the archeological record. However in the story of the Exodus these atonement elements can also be identified. Moses himself is both one who is both sent out and is also threatened with death - not once but at least twice. Most importantly the Israelites themselves are sent out while the first-born of the Egyptians are slaughtered (and notice the fate of first born in so many biblical narratives). There are many other traces of atonement rituals in the Exodus stories but, in a sense, Pesach itself works as a kind of mini-atonement.

So when Jesus is executed at Pesach it's perhaps easy for his followers to make those connections. But then maybe Jesus had made them himself. Crispin Fletcher-Lewis ("Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah" Parts 1 & 2, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 4.2 2006, 5.1 2007) has also argued that Jesus messianic understanding was based upon the High Priestly role. It was as a royal high priestly that the messiah came to Israel. Jesus was the true High Priest as opposed to the corrupt collaborationist establishment in Jerusalem. The role of the High Priest was to make atonement to heal the cosmos with his life force, as YHWH does in the heavenly realm.

This is not a propitiatory process but a healing process. It is analogous to the maternal, as a mother gives her life (but not normally at the cost of her life) to the nurturing of her child both before and after birth. And YHWH is both Wisdom, Lady Wisdom, as well as Word. The only reason for the death of the goat in the atonement rituals is the need for blood as the life force - if not the goat then the HIgh Priest must die, or at least shed a large amount of blood. But in the heavenly realm, YHWH the heavenly High Priest does not die. But, as Wisdom, YHWH feeds, nurtures.

In her book, The Virgin Mary, Monotheism and Sacrifice, Cleo McNelly Kearns highlights the twofold dimension of sacrifice made by scholars. The first, strong sacrifice, is propitatiory, substitutionary. It is also very much a male affair. It can be understood as appropriating the maternal by the patriarchal order so as to suppress the maternal body, as Irigaray would say, and thus assuming maternal power into the male domain. The second, weak sacrifice, resembles the strong but is very strongly egalitarian and alimentary while, at the same time, allowing women as well as men to play relatively (at least) equal roles. Feeding is a central part of weak sacrifice and it can be seen as not appropriating the maternal but approximating it.

I would argue, then, that the Day of Atonement fits the weak sacrifice mode. Indeed from other ancient Jewish and Christian sources it appears there was, on occasion, some sort of communion involved with Yom Kippur. Certain, at least, of the priests would, on some occasions, eat the flesh of the slaughtered goat, raw and washed with vinegar.

Turning to Christian atonement, if Jesus saw himself as the heavenly High Priest or at least took the royal High Priest as his messiainc model then atonement becomes central to his messianic project. In first century, Palestine any messianic project was likely to end in tears. It would appear from the Gospels that Jesus was not interested in any military dimension to his messianic project. Perhaps he expected some sort of heavenly intervention. But perhaps he saw that there was only one endpoint for the trajectory on which he had embarked - a cross. But the High Priestly role of making atonement gave such likely death a whole new significance. In the Temple a goat must die in substitute for the High Priest but Jesus as the true High Priest will fully instantiate the Heavenly order and so bring the corrupt earthly one to an end. Heaven and earth meet finally on that cross as YHWH gives his life force to heal and sustain and nurture the cosmos and all life, presiding, arms outstretched, as Dame Wisdom at her feast, the great eschatological banquet open to all.

By doing so he brings to an end the established order, the structures of strong sacrifice, victimisation and oppression, the processes that require scapegoats, as well as the associated forms of propitiatory, substitutionary and penal atonement. The processes responsible for, but in no way justification for, his death.