The Bible’s Mystery Woman The last and most mysterious book of the Bible describes a woman who is the center of much controversy

Michie · Jan 2, 2026

Not everyone in the scholarly community has interpreted the Bible’s vision of the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1) in the same way.

St. John Henry Newman put it this way: Some scholars think that the woman stands for the Church. Others think she stands for the Church and Mary. Does the woman represent the Church and Mary, or does she represent the Church only?

The question isn’t either-or; it’s both-and.

I reviewed the opinions of five scholars, including Newman. Two think the woman of Revelation 12 doesn’t represent Mary: the Evangelical scholar Robert H. Mounce (231-232) and the Catholic scholar J. Massyngberde Ford(195-207). The other three do think the woman represents Mary: Michael Barber (151); Peter S. Williamson (206); and of course our Doctor of the Church, St. John Henry Newman.

Also, we should include in our assessment the Catholic Church’s interpretation. First, we see that the woman of Revelation 12 is often included in the Mass readings as an option on Marian solemnities and feast days. Therefore, the Catholic Church interprets that the woman of Revelation 12 is Mary. The recent document from the Vatican, Mater Populi Fidelis, takes this position as well (6), as do other Vatican documents. Mater Populi Fidelis took issue with the Marian titles of co-redemptrix and mediatrix of all graces, in part, because they aren’t rooted firmly in Scripture. However, the title of mother is.

Continued below.

The Bible's Mystery Woman

The last and most mysterious book of the Bible describes a woman who is the center of much controversy in Scripture study. So who is she?

www.catholic.com

Bob Crowley · Jan 3, 2026

The fact that Mary is regularly invoked by Catholic exorcists lends credence to the woman's identification as Mary.

The Catholic exorcist Pedro Barrajon was interviewed 20 years ago about Catholic exorcisms.

Pedro Barrajon, Paul Badde: Hell is a state (28/12/2005) - signandsight

At the end, the priest says to the demon, "Go away! Disappear!" The demon usually answers, "No, I don't want to." It rebels and revolts. Sometimes it says "You have no power over me. You are nothing to me." But after a while, its resistance weakens. This usually happens after the invocation of the Holy Mother, she's very important for that. No demon ever dares to insult her during an exorcism. Never.

Does he have more respect for Mary than for God himself?

Apparently. Otherwise no holds are barred, and everyone is insulted: the priests, everyone present, the bishops, the Pope, even Jesus Christ. But never the Virgin Mary. It's an enigma.

I've got a couple of books by Catholic exorcists on my book shelf and they say the same thing. Right at the beginning of Genesis God said there would be enmity between the devil and the woman.

Genesis 3:15 NIV "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Obviously her offspring is Christ, which leaves Mary. Since she is invoked during exorcisms, the devil fears her. Personally I think God has told Satan she is off limits - he is not going to be allowed to insult the woman He chose to be the mother of His divine Son.

Bob Crowley · Jan 3, 2026

To back up my assertion about Mary and the demonic, I found this item on the net -

The Role of Mary & the Saints Against Demonic Attacks - Catholic Exchange

“In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph”

catholicexchange.com

Mary’s Power in Our Lives

The help of the Virgin, however, goes beyond the exceptional situations of the demoniacs. In man’s every struggle against Satan and sin, it is always she who represents the extraordinary and the irreplaceable. The demon is terrified of her. In order to be very clear, I wish to cite an episode at which I personally assisted many years ago.

During an exorcism, Father Candido* asked the devil a question: “Why are you more afraid when I invoke Mary than when I implore God Himself?”

The demon responded: “I feel more humiliated being conquered by a simple creature than by God Himself.”

Mary is a creature like us, but, having been elevated to be the Mother of God, she has extraordinary power.

*Fr. Candido Amantini (1914–1992) was a Passionist priest, spiritual director, and exorcist in Rome. Stationed at the Sanctuary of the Scala Sancta, he saw dozens of people a day for confession and spiritual guidance and later taught moral theology while administering the rites of exorcism. He was the mentor and teacher of Fr. Amorth.

timothyu · Jan 3, 2026

Yes it represents the Virgin/Virgo but as verse 5 shows, it was a sign to the birth of a Saviour. ( 5 She bore a male Child hwho was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was icaught up to God and His throne.)

This short clip shows a scholar Dr. Heiser explain this revelation in the heavens quite adequately.

JimR-OCDS · Jan 3, 2026

A good book to read on the subject is "Hail Holy Queen," by Scott Hahn.

Michie · Jan 3, 2026

timothyu said:
Yes it represents the Virgin/Virgo but as verse 5 shows, it was a sign to the birth of a Saviour. ( 5 She bore a male Child hwho was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was icaught up to God and His throne.)

This short clip shows a scholar Dr. Heiser explain this revelation in the heavens quite adequately.

You are in the Catholic forum.

Michie · Jan 3, 2026

Michie said:
Not everyone in the scholarly community has interpreted the Bible’s vision of the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1) in the same way.

St. John Henry Newman put it this way: Some scholars think that the woman stands for the Church. Others think she stands for the Church and Mary. Does the woman represent the Church and Mary, or does she represent the Church only?

The question isn’t either-or; it’s both-and.

I reviewed the opinions of five scholars, including Newman. Two think the woman of Revelation 12 doesn’t represent Mary: the Evangelical scholar Robert H. Mounce (231-232) and the Catholic scholar J. Massyngberde Ford(195-207). The other three do think the woman represents Mary: Michael Barber (151); Peter S. Williamson (206); and of course our Doctor of the Church, St. John Henry Newman.

Also, we should include in our assessment the Catholic Church’s interpretation. First, we see that the woman of Revelation 12 is often included in the Mass readings as an option on Marian solemnities and feast days. Therefore, the Catholic Church interprets that the woman of Revelation 12 is Mary. The recent document from the Vatican, Mater Populi Fidelis, takes this position as well (6), as do other Vatican documents. Mater Populi Fidelis took issue with the Marian titles of co-redemptrix and mediatrix of all graces, in part, because they aren’t rooted firmly in Scripture. However, the title of mother is.

Continued below.

The Bible's Mystery Woman

The last and most mysterious book of the Bible describes a woman who is the center of much controversy in Scripture study. So who is she?

www.catholic.com

*Permission to post in full*

We might wonder why it’s important who the woman of Revelation 12 is. That woman’s identity is essential to understanding the Catholic position of Mary’s motherhood as it applies to us. If we get the woman’s identity wrong, we will miss an extremely important and relevant scriptural point for Marian theology today. Mater Populi Fidelis does make an important contribution to apologetics. It reinforces a point that may have gone unnoticed.

It is not enough to say that John Henry Newman interpreted the woman of Revelation 12 as Mary. We have to assess the reason why he took that position. When a saint is honored with the title of Doctor of the Church, that certainly gives credibility to his ideas, but it does not make him infallible. A more advanced approach than an appeal to his authority would be an appeal to his reasoning. So, let’s dive into Revelation 12.

First, we have to understand that the vision includes three figures: the dragon, the child, and the woman. The identity of the dragon is clear from Revelation 12 itself. We are told in the text that “the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (v. 9). The identity of the dragon is not up for debate. The dragon is the devil.

Now, who is the child that the woman gives birth to? Newman tells us that all agree that the child of the woman is Jesus Christ. (This is Newman’s assessment in nineteenth-centuryEngland.) Of the five scholars I analyzed above, Ford alone doesn’t think the child is Jesus. She writes that the child born to the woman is “a prominent leader” and that “in our present text there seems to be no Christological reference” (200, 205). However, the other four scholars are all on the same page: Mounce (231), Barber (155, 306, footnote 16), Williamson (206), and Newman. They agree that the child born of the woman in Revelation 12 is Jesus. The Protestant scholar Craig R. Koester does, too (119, 199). So our final tally of the scholars I investigated are five in favor of the Christological interpretation (including two Protestants) and one against.

The scholarly consensus agrees on two of the three figures from Revelation 12. The dragon is the devil. The child is Jesus Christ. So who is the woman who gives birth to Jesus Christ in the vision? Mary, Newman argues:

No one doubts that the “man-child” spoken of [in Revelation 12] is an allusion to our Lord: why then is not “the Woman” an allusion to his mother? This surely is the obvious sense of the words; of course they have a further sense also, which is the scope of the image; doubtless the child represents the children of the Church, and doubtless the woman represents the Church; this, I grant, is the real or direct sense, but what is the sense of the symbol under which that real sense is conveyed? Who are the woman and the child? I answer, they are not personifications, but persons. This is true of the child; therefore, it is true of the woman.

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It would be a personification only if the dragon only represented evil. But according to Revelation 12:9, the dragon is the devil. It would be a personification only to say that the child of Revelation 12 only represents “the children of the Church.” But scholars agree that the child isn’t only a personification; he represents an actual individual, Jesus Christ. It would be only a personification if we said that the woman of Revelation 12 is only the Church.

But Newman’s point is that both the dragon and the child are individuals as well as personifications. Therefore, the woman of Revelation 12 represents an actual individual as well: the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pope Benedict XVI concluded similarly in his homily on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (2011) that the woman of Revelation 12 represents Mary and “personifies the Church.”

Now that we have established who the woman of Revelation 12 is, we are led to the reason why it matters so significantly to the document Mater Populi Fidelis and our current interfaith dialogue. Revelation 12:17 calls the woman the mother of all Christians!

Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.

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The woman is the mother of the people who are Jesus’ witnesses and who keep the commandments. Therefore, whether Protestants recognize it or not, if they witness to Christ in word and in action, then Mary is their mother. That point comes straight from the Bible.

The goal of Mater Populi Fidelis is to refocus Catholic Marian theology on what is firmly rooted in Scripture. The theme of Mary’s motherhood of all Christians is right there in the Bible, and this document from the Vatican didn’t miss it.

Mary’s motherhood in relation to us is part of the fulfillment of the divine plan, accomplished in Christ’s paschal mystery. In a similar sense, the Book of Revelation presents the “woman” (Rev. 12:1) as the mother of the Messiah (cf. v. 5) and the mother of “the rest of her children” (v. 17). (6)

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Mater Populi Fidelis could be viewed as a Protestant victory in the sense that it corrects certain Marian excesses believed by some Catholics . . . including myself! However, the document takes a stance on who the woman of Revelation 12 is: the Blessed Virgin Mary. If this position is followed in the biblical discourse, it delivers a decisive blow to the Protestant position if Protestants try to ignore that Mary is our mother and theirs.

Bob Crowley · Tuesday at 7:05 AM

I also note that at the Wedding in Cana, when Mary effectively called Christ into His ministry, He addressed her as "Woman!"

John 2:4 NIV “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

Some moderns think the language infers Christ was rebuking Mary, but that is reading a modern cultural context into the incident.

Mary’s Sinlessness and the Wedding Feast at Cana | Year C

Episode 113: Year C – 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time In today’s episode, we focus on one detail found in the Gospel reading, taken from John 2:1-12, which is...

www.catholic.com

So, just because Jesus calls Mary “woman” at the Wedding of Cana doesn’t mean he’s rebuking her. This is simply a case of reading into the text the cultural experience of twenty-first century American.

This, however, just raises the question, “Why does Jesus call Mary ‘woman’?” Well, some scholars have suggested that Jesus is revealing Mary to be the “woman” of Genesis 3:15, the woman whom God separates from the devil, thereby revealing she is not under the devil’s dominion. After Eve’s fall, God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

And again as His death on the cross approaches, Christ again addresses Mary as "Woman!", and in doing so identifies Mary as the mother of all disciples, ie. the Mother of the Church, and the Woman of Revelation, as prophesied in Genesis centuries before.

John 19:26-27 NIV "26When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27Then He said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” So from that hour, this disciple took her into his home. 28After this, knowing that everything had now been accomplished,... "

His very last act in in finishing His ministry was to appoint Mary to be the Mother of the Church, with John standing in as proxy for all disciples.

PS - As an aside the fact Christ handed over His Mother Mary to John is an argument that He did not have any brothers. If He had, one of them would have been responsible for taking her under his roof.

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The Bible’s Mystery Woman The last and most mysterious book of the Bible describes a woman who is the center of much controversy

Michie

Well-Known Member