Orignal Material Here:
Many variations on this basic story have been found, preserved in various languages—Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Slavonic and Latin—all written sometime between the years 400 and 750 A.D.
Together they form a small library of fractured fairytales—with colorful characters, bloated dialogue, dramatic fight scenes, magical appearances, implausible plot twists, strange religious ideas, and fanciful recastings of biblical history.
The sheer number and the dizzying diversity has made it nearly impossible for scholars to sort out the traditions and figure out where they all came from.
**They do seem to agree with early Church authorities that most of these tales were written by heretical splinter groups—perhaps the gnostics, or dissenters from the 451 Council of Chalcedon. **
The legends no doubt satisfied a popular hunger for details about Mary’s death. **But Church teachers never seemed too comfortable with them. **
It didn’t take long for the Latin translation of the legend to land on the sixth–century decree of heretical works attributed to Pope Gelasius I.
And some of the earliest homilies we have on Mary’s Assumption are at pains to put distance between themselves and the legend–writers.
“Although those who were present described her end truthfully. . .mischievous heretics later corrupted their accounts,” said John of Thessalonica in a homily delivered on August 15 sometime between the years 610 and 649.
Sometimes they sprinkled their homilies with some of the more fantastic details from the legend. But telling the story was of less concern it seems than celebrating what the story means.
In these early dormition homilies we see the full flowering of centuries of Marian prayer and devotion—a faith grown strong and tall from roots thrown down deep in sacred Scripture.
All the ancient biblical images—so familiar in liturgies, and prayers and sermons over the centuries—are summoned to celebrate the translation of the one woman whom the bonds of death could not hold.
These biblical images—of Mary as the New Eve, the Beloved of the Bridegroom, the Ark of the Covenant, the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven—remain the foundation of the Church’s Assumption Liturgy today.
In the end, though, Mary remains the mother of mystery. Even today, we don’t know what became of her mortal coil. Was she raised up like Enoch (Genesis 5:24) or Elijah (2 King 3:11)? Or did she die—as the ancient faithful and most ancient commentators believed?
Pope Pius XII deliberately left the question open, saying that she was assumed after “having completed the course of her earthly life.”
Pope John Paul II made it clear that he believes Mary, like her Son, experienced the “human drama of death.”
**However we want to think about it, it’s clear that the Church has believed from the earliest times that Mary shared in her Son’s dramatic victory—what Paul and the prophet Isaiah before him called “the swallowing up of death.” **
). Sigh… If you can not see the absurdity of this and the blatant mind control “of men” at work in Luther’s heretical teaching then I can’t help you.