Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion

by Stephen J. Shoemaker

For the first time a noted historian of Christianity explores the full story of the emergence and development of the Marian cult in the early Christian centuries. The means by which Mary, mother of Jesus, came to prominence have long remained strangely overlooked despite, or perhaps because of, her centrality in Christian devotion. Gathering together fresh information from often neglected sources, including early liturgical texts and Dormition and Assumption apocrypha, Stephen Shoemaker reveals that Marian devotion played a far more vital role in the development of early Christian belief and practice than has been previously recognized, finding evidence that dates back to the latter half of the second century. Through extensive research, the author is able to provide a fascinating background to the hitherto inexplicable “explosion” of Marian devotion that historians and theologians have pondered for decades, offering a wide-ranging study that challenges many conventional beliefs surrounding the subject of Mary, Mother of God.

Genres: Religion, History, Theology, Nonfiction, Christianity, Catholic

304 pages, Hardcover

Published July 26, 2016

About the author

Stephen Shoemaker (Ph.D. ’97, Duke University) is a specialist on the history of Christianity and the beginnings of Islam. His primary interests lie in the ancient and early medieval Christian traditions, and more specifically in early Byzantine and Near Eastern Christianity. His research focuses on early devotion to the Virgin Mary, Christian apocryphal literature, and Islamic origins.

Prof. Shoemaker is the author of The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad’s Life and the Beginnings of Islam (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), a study of the “historical Muhammad” that focuses on traditions about the end of his life. He has also published numerous studies on early Christian traditions about Mary (especially in apocrypha), including The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford University Press, 2002), a study of the earliest traditions of the end of Mary’s life that combines archaeological, liturgical, and literary evidence. This volume also includes critical translations of many of the earliest narratives of Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, made from Ethiopic, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Greek.

Prof. Shoemaker has recently published a translation of the earliest Life of the Virgin attributed to Maximus the Confessor (Yale University Press, 2012), a pivotal if overlooked late ancient text that survives only in a Georgian translation. Currently he is finishing a book on the beginnings of Christian devotion to Mary and completing the translation of several eighth-century Christian martyrdoms from the early Islamic Near East. In addition, he is preparing a new critical edition of the early Syriac Dormition narratives.

Prof. Shoemaker has been awarded research fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Reviews

[Zachary Flessert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This text collects together the various data on literary and archaeological evidence to understand the development of Marian devotion leading up to the defeat of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus.

Although a familiarity with early church history is helpful, Shoemaker is incredibly accessible for curious readers. His writing is clear and even conversational at times, and he gives good faith explanations for ideas he doesn't agree with. Claims and evidence are clearly laid out, and conclusions summarized at the ends of arguments.

Having grown up Catholic, it was fascinating to see the roots of certain Catholic prayers, traditions, and images of Mary, oftentimes from apocryphal (paracanonical?) texts. The conclusion that I found most interesting was that Marian devotion was largely driven from popular practice, rather than driven from church leaders ("early Church Fathers"). This goes against the Catholic tendency to read their dogma into and from the early fathers. At a time when popular piety and belief in the Catholic Church does not match the clergy, these histories are even more relevant.

Bonus points to this book for introducing me to transmasc saints like Thecla!

[Dakota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here, Shoemaker does a good job of comprehensively diving through the earliest traditions of Mary. As a convinced Protestant, I found his conclusions embolden my ecclesial convictions. He does leave room for nuance and mentions that perhaps the earliest Fathers were pro cult of Mary, but fail to mention it because they were busy writing about other heresies. The earliest Fathers only seem to mention her in how a modern day, low church Protestant would (one that isn’t afraid of any sort of Mary appreciation, out of fear of being labeled RCC or even EO).

Ultimately his conclusions seem to be that the cult of Mary really developed in the 3-4th Century based off Gnostic-type Christian sects, who emphasized esoteric knowledge. He starts at the Protoevangelium of James and wraps up at the Nestorian/Theotokos controversy, whipping and weaving through the nuance and different scholarly perspectives.

One item I am personally grateful he touched on, was from his qualified opinion, the cult of Mary didn’t begin from something like influence the cult of Artemis. To expound, I have heard history lessons that the church mistakenly surrounded Mary (or allowed Mary to have) with a cult like devotion solely for the purpose of uniting the newly Christian empire and making it more palatable for those who had previously worshiped pagan Goddesses such as Artemis. His argument is that this isn’t the source, but it’s more so Gnosticism.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This's a history of veneration of the Virgin Mary in the early Christian Church: not the theology (which only started being established at the Council of Ephesus at the very end of the book) but the practice, and what we can glean of the practice from writings. Shoemaker writes from a secular perspective, which is sometimes grating to me as a Christian with strong opinions on a lot of this, but other times helpful in that he's reporting on these different groups and usually leaving me to draw my own conclusions.

Shoemaker reports a surprising amount of veneration for Mary at surprisingly early dates back to the second century. But for all this surprising evidence, I'm now more solidly reassured in my Protestantism. Nearly all the ante-Nicene groups Shoemaker is pulling from were Gnostics, pagan syncretists, or otherwise heretical. The one exception is whoever was behind the [i]Protoevangelium of James[/i], but that account of Mary's early life is visibly over-the-top in ways that betray a total lack of knowledge of Jewish life and religion.

So, I can now say more confidently - with St. Epiphanius of Salamis, whom Shoemaker quotes as a dissenting voice - that veneration of Mary has no rightful place in orthodox Christianity.

[Sasha Wolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, but I don't think I would read any other books by the same author; his tone when writing about positions he disagrees with puts me off a bit.

[w gall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough scholarly examination of evidences of early church veneration of the Virgin Mary, according to her title, Theotokos.

[Rory Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is a well known expert on Early Christian and Early Islamic writings. He brings an extraordinary facility with ancient languages to make available a comprehensive overview of early Christian views about Mary, the mother of Jesus.

This has sometimes proved to be a difficult topic to write about, as it falls in the middle of historical disagreements between Protestants and Catholics. That means that some previous writings on the topic have not always found the right balance between historical accuracy and faith perspectives.

Maximalists have tried to argue that the most modern views about Mary can be found in the earliest traditions of Christianity. Minimalists have argued that Mary herself cannot be found in the earliest documents, as saints like Thecla were ‘bigger’ and more popular at the time.

The author offers a much more nuanced reading of history, citing new sources as well as new readings of old sources. For example, it is sometimes said that Mary cannot be truly significant to Christians, otherwise she should have had a more significant place in the bible.

But the author notes that New Testament documents were written against a backdrop of disagreements between St Paul and James. Paul was stressing a more expansionist view of Christianity, whilst James was stressing a more traditional Jewish interpretation. With Jesus’ family often identified with James’ supporters, and with Paul’s views triumphing, it is understandable that the earliest Christian writers may not have wanted to say much about Jesus’ relatives, including of course his mother.

The author identifies evidence of an ancient liturgical cult of Mary in the second and third centuries, which is earlier than many scholars have traditionally recognised. He even makes a thoughtful case that some of the texts which have traditionally been thought to be about Mary Magdalene may actually be about Mary the mother of Jesus.

This book is a contribution to academic scholarship, and it is written in a very accessible style for non-expert readers. It deserves a wide readership amongst anyone interested in the origins of early Christian ideas and practices.