Mary and the Discourse of Orthodoxy: Early Christian Identity and the Ancient Dormition Legends

Stephen J. Shoemaker, Ph.D. (Duke University, Religion, 1997)

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Abstract

The ancient Dormition traditions, a collection of narratives recounting the end of the Virgin Mary’s life, first emerge into historical view from an uncertain past during the fifth and sixth centuries.  Initially appearing in Syro-Palestine and Egypt, these legends rapidly spread throughout the Christian world, resulting in over 60 different narratives from before the tenth century preserved in nine ancient languages.  The first half of this dissertation largely concerns the organization of these diverse traditions.  The search for the “original” tradition has led many previous interpreters to attribute their diversity to a process of unilinear dogmatic development.  According to such interpretations, the various narratives types were adopted in succession to suit changes in Christian belief.  Nevertheless, evidence for either an “original” tradition or such a process of unilinear development is lacking.  In light of this, I argue that we should dispense with the search for origins and such developmental models, replacing both with an acceptance of the various extant Dormition traditions as independent, rival accounts of the end of Mary’s life.

            The second half of this study considers the contribution of these legends to Mary’s emergence during late antiquity as a locus of “orthodox” Christian identity.  Although many of the earliest narratives associate the Virgin with a variety of heterodox opinions, in the course of transmission these were either eliminated or gracefully reshaped, removing these obstacles to the Virgin’s identification with Christian orthodoxy.  Certain other features of these legends, however, were more congenial to the needs of early Byzantine “orthodoxy.”  During this age, the discourse of Christian orthodoxy provided vital ideological cement for an empire composed of culturally and linguistically diverse peoples.  The Virgin Mary, who was by this time a widely-revered figure, often featured prominently in this discourse of Christian truth.  Consequently, the concerns for religious truth and social cohesion that lie at the heart of the early Byzantine discourse of orthodoxy are likewise manifest in the contemporary traditions concerning the end of the Virgin’s life, particularly in their polemics against Jews and other religious non-conformists.

Various early narratives of the Virgin's Dormition may be found at this website by following this link: Early Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition