AD The woman gives birth to a male child who is threatened by a dragon , identified as the Devil and Satan , who intends to devour the child as soon as he is born. This leads to a " War in Heaven " in which the angels cast out the dragon. The dragon attacks the woman, but the woman escapes on her wings for "a time, times and a time and a half".
The dragon then attacks her again with a flood of water from his mouth, which is subsequently swallowed by earth. The Woman of the Apocalypse is widely identified as the Virgin Mary. Some Catholic commentaries, such as Thomas Haydock 's Catholic Bible Commentary , allow for the interpretation of the woman as either the Church or Mary. The Israel of old gave birth to the Messiah Rev and then became the new Israel, the church, which suffers persecution by the dragon Rev.
Among Protestants , including particularly among those with more Reformed theology and Evangelicals , the Woman of the Apocalypse tends to be seen as the Church or Israel. Revelation 12 describes "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" Then there is "a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads" who is about to "devour her child as soon as it was born" But her child is "caught up unto God" , and the woman herself is "fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
Then there is a description of " War in Heaven " of the angels against the dragon, and "the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
The woman is again mentioned in , as she is persecuted by the dragon, and she escapes on her "two wings of a great eagle" The dragon attempts to inundate her place of refuge, by "water as a flood" emerging from his mouth , but the flood is swallowed up by the earth , so the dragon went "to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ" Ancient witnesses to the Marian interpretation include Epiphanius , [5] Tychonius [6] who heavily influenced Augustine , the unknown author of the History of Joseph the Carpenter , [7] Quodvultdeus a disciple of Augustine , Cassiodorus Complexiones in Apocalypsi, written c.
