And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.

And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth.

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient ser­pent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, say­ing, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Rejoice then, O heaven and you that dwell therein! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had born the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.

To what extent is this “woman” a reflection of the pagan “Queen of Heaven’?^{[213] [214] To discover this we will investigate the extra-biblical material and mythology that may have shaped the view of the author of the book of Revelation and that may be reflected in this particular vision? The drama itself—the birth of a child and events related to it—are beyond the scope of this study. Our interest will be limited to the figure of the “woman” only and this to the degree that she may be a product of pagan mythological thought patterns.}

The entire myth is of pre-Christian origin.^[215] It was the so-called “religionsgeschichtliche Schule” in Germany at the end of the nine­teenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries that called attention to these facts, and it was scholars belonging to this school whose genius and tireless work opened up new horizons in the understanding of the book of Revelation. By refusing to view the book in isolation and by integrating it into the total experience of the Mediterranean world these scholars gave meaning to many of the mysterious references in the book, especially to those pertaining to our problem in Chapter 12.

Eberhard Vischer was the first to suggest that the book of Revelation should be understood from a Jewish background. He used talmudic parallels to prove his point. The name of the great historian Adolf von Harnack in the title of Vischer’s book added greater weight to his arguments.^[216] Soon after Vischer, Albrecht Dieterich pointed to Greek mythology and suggested that there was a similarity between the pythian dragon, the birth of Apollo from Leto, and the story in Revelation 12.^[217] Herman Gunkel then opened up Babylonian mythology for biblical research and showed the interdependency of the world of ideas in Genesis 1 and Revelation 12.^{[218] [219] It was Gunkel who formulated the position of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule with the statement that “die neu- testamentliche Religion bei ihrer Entstehung und Ausbildung in wichtigen, ja in einigen wesentlichen Punkten unter entscheidenden Einfluss fremder Religionen gestanden hat, und dass dieser Einfluss zu den Männern des Neuen Testaments durch das Judentum hindurch gekommen ist”s The publication of Wilhelm Bousset’s commentary on the book of Revelation in 1906 was a major event; this book still has not been superseded.}

Horus, the young sun-god, and the dragon Typhon as parallels to the figures in Revelation 12. ^{[220] [221] [222]} Solche Herübernahme von Mythen, Erzählungen, Sagen und Symbolen, Lehren und Vorschriften von einer Religion in die andere, ” Bousset said. “Gehoren doch zu den allergewohn­liebsten geschichtlichen Vorgängen. Durch nichts kann wirkungsvoller für eine neue Religion Propaganda gemacht werden, als wenn man sie im Gewand der alten darstellt. ”⁹

Alfred Jeremias¹⁰ compared the Egyptian myth of the struggle between Ra and Apophis with the cosmic battle in Revelation 12. Carl Clemen put the entire New Testament under the magnify­ing glass of the religionsgeschichtliche method, taking into account all previously published scholarly works written on the subject.¹¹ His book is a mine of information; reading it gives one the impression that all later Ph.D. theses and commentaries on Reve­lation were based on his researches; nothing essentially new has been added.

Unfortunately for Christian scholarship, one aspect of the study of Revelation 12 is often neglected: the influence of astrology, which was considerable in the early Roman empire. Indeed, so preoccupied were people with the influence of the stars that one major Roman historian called astrology “the religion par excel­lence of the Mediterranean world at this time.”^[223] Yet in the study of the New Testament this is seldom considered. In this respect Franz Boll has contributed much invaluable material; he was the first to research this problem and to show the frequency with which contemporary readers’ minds turned to astral mythology upon reading Revelation 12.^[224]

We will now give a brief account of how the material drawn from outside the corpus of biblical literature aids us in understand­ing the historical background of Revelation 12.