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Christine85
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A Protestant person I know thinks the Queen of Heaven referred to in Jermeiah 44 is Mary. Who is the Queen of Heaven referred to in that Chapter?
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Christine85
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It’s ok I found this to send him - catholic-convert.com/wp-content/uploads/Documents/QueenOfHeaven.pdf
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Aefensang
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The Queen of Heaven was probably Astarte/Ashtoreth, consort of Ba’al in many pagan mythologies.
I find it an unfortunate association that Mary was named Queen of Heaven by Rome. It may not be some mystical fulfillment of Jeremiah 44, but it’s uncomfortably close for many Protestants. Those who say that the title, the demon-Queen, and Mary are the same person, are probably going a tad far.
I find it an unfortunate association that Mary was named Queen of Heaven by Rome. It may not be some mystical fulfillment of Jeremiah 44, but it’s uncomfortably close for many Protestants. Those who say that the title, the demon-Queen, and Mary are the same person, are probably going a tad far.
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bzkoss236
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Right, from the NAB bible in reference to the Queen of Heaven mentioned in Jeremiah chapter 7:The Queen of Heaven was probably Astarte/Ashtoreth, consort of Ba’al in many pagan mythologies.
I find it an unfortunate association that Mary was named Queen of Heaven by Rome. It may not be some mystical fulfillment of Jeremiah 44, but it’s uncomfortably close for many Protestants. Those who say that the title, the demon-Queen, and Mary are the same person, are probably going a tad far.
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bzkoss236
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Not unfortunate, but a correction as to who the real Queen of Heaven is. Granted, she would probably not have been considered the Queen of Heaven before she was born, or before her assumption for that matter (whether she died first or not is irrelevant).The Queen of Heaven was probably Astarte/Ashtoreth, consort of Ba’al in many pagan mythologies.
I find it an unfortunate association that Mary was named Queen of Heaven by Rome. It may not be some mystical fulfillment of Jeremiah 44, but it’s uncomfortably close for many Protestants. Those who say that the title, the demon-Queen, and Mary are the same person, are probably going a tad far.
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kkollwitz
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There’s no shortage of pagan Kings of Heaven…hope they don’t cause anyone to conflate the One True God with a load of bogus ones.
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Tantum_ergo
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We have no problem referring to Jesus Christ as the King of Kings (there are even hymns with this designation) but the Bible refers to several earthly kings such as Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzer with this title. Nebuchadnezzer, especially, is painted very poorly character wise.
So imagine how jarring it is to hear our Savior given the same title as one who ‘has been tested and found wanting’.
But it isn’t jarring. Christ is the TRUE ‘King of Kings’.
Why is it jarring to hear Mary called “Queen of Heaven”?
Remember, there were many female deities in the time Jeremiah references. No doubt along with the ‘queen of heaven’ spoken of, there were male deities during that time who were also getting offerings of cake, wine, ale, etc. Who were being called, "lord of the universe’, and "almighty’, etc.’
It is extremely UNLIKELY that the people actually giving that worship SOLELY referred to the deity involved as ‘queen of heaven’, OR that they understood that deity as SOLE goddess of the universe. These were pantheistic peoples.
Furthermore, WE as Catholics do not believe that Mary is a goddess, or sole goddess. We believe she is a creature who happens to be the MOTHER OF THE KING OF THE UNIVERSE. As mother, she is made Queen. This was certainly the well-established understanding among the Jewish people of the time --the MOTHER of the King of the Jews was referred to as "gibberah’ which is QUEEN.
So the idea that Catholics are ‘renewing’ an old pagan worship is based on the idea that because three words were used of a false god THEN, that the person we use those words to NOW is a false god. Talk about a botched up syllogism!!! Talk about logical fallacies!
So imagine how jarring it is to hear our Savior given the same title as one who ‘has been tested and found wanting’.
But it isn’t jarring. Christ is the TRUE ‘King of Kings’.
Why is it jarring to hear Mary called “Queen of Heaven”?
Remember, there were many female deities in the time Jeremiah references. No doubt along with the ‘queen of heaven’ spoken of, there were male deities during that time who were also getting offerings of cake, wine, ale, etc. Who were being called, "lord of the universe’, and "almighty’, etc.’
It is extremely UNLIKELY that the people actually giving that worship SOLELY referred to the deity involved as ‘queen of heaven’, OR that they understood that deity as SOLE goddess of the universe. These were pantheistic peoples.
Furthermore, WE as Catholics do not believe that Mary is a goddess, or sole goddess. We believe she is a creature who happens to be the MOTHER OF THE KING OF THE UNIVERSE. As mother, she is made Queen. This was certainly the well-established understanding among the Jewish people of the time --the MOTHER of the King of the Jews was referred to as "gibberah’ which is QUEEN.
So the idea that Catholics are ‘renewing’ an old pagan worship is based on the idea that because three words were used of a false god THEN, that the person we use those words to NOW is a false god. Talk about a botched up syllogism!!! Talk about logical fallacies!
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bzkoss236
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So… Swing and a miss for your Protestant friend.
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Aefensang
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Why do you believe the virgin is the Queen of Heaven, speaking after a Biblical manner (since this is about the Biblical Jeremiah 44)?
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Tantum_ergo
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Is Jesus the King of Heaven? Yes He is.
In the bible, is the mother of the Jewish King a Queen? Yes she is.
Is Mary the mother of Jesus Christ, King of Heaven? Yes she is.
So the mother of the Jewish King is a queen.
ERGO:
The mother of the King of Heaven is a queen.
It’s very biblical.
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Aefensang
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Just to transfer what I edited my above post to say:
It is jarring to me because it does not seem to be supported by Scripture nor by any apparent tradition of the Fathers from at least the first 500 years of the Church’s life. Maybe Ephraim the Syrian has something about her, but he is not exactly representative of the great Fathers.
That bit about Mary being Jesus’ mother and thus the Queen of the Universe is a bit of a conceit I think. Just because this was the system in ancient Israel, to call the King’s mother “Queen”, does not mean the Queen ruled Israel for, or with the King - and yet the Catholic title “Queen of Heaven & Earth”, along with pious mystical literature calling her Queen of Angels, seems to imply that she has some sort of command far beyond the Royal Hebrew tradition.
If you will cite Revelation to call Mary the Queen, you needn’t bother.
Gregory the Great's Moralia on Job Book 34 Paragraph 25:
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TimothyH
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The Hebrew word for queen-mother or literally “Grand lady” is Gebirah. We see explicit references to the Gebirah at least twice in scripture.
Jehu met the kinsmen of Ahazi’ah king of Judah, and he said, “Who are you?” And they answered, "We are the kinsmen of Ahazi’ah, and we came down to visit the royal princes and the sons of the queen mother."
(2 Kings 10:13)
This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the artisans and smiths had left Jerusalem. (Jerimiah 29:2)
In fact, the various kings throught he centuries are listed in the 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles and with every king, the king’s mother is also listed.
In the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam, son of Nebat, Abijam became king of Judah; he reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Maacah, daughter of Abishalom. (1 Kings 15:1-2)
In the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam, Abijah became king of Judah; he reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother was named Micaiah, daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. (2 Chronicals 13:1-2)
Uzziah was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jecoliah, from Jerusalem. (2 Chronicals 26:3)
There are twenty seven verses like this. When God repeats something once or twice in the Bible, he is trying to tell us something. When God repeats something twenty seven times, we had better take notice. God is telling us who the mother of the king was because the mother of the king was a queen.
I won’t cite Revelation 12, but will simply point out that the queen was whom ordinary citizens approached to get an audience witht he king, and the queen was in charge of the royal court, wives, concubines and day to day operation of the kings personal houshold. No one outside of the kings inner circle got in to see the king without the queen knowing about it and approving it. Favor’s were granted to ordinary citizens from the king through the queen.
Jesus’ kingdom is the fulfillment, completion and perfection of all the Davidic kings of the Old Testament, and the way those kingdom’s operated, for better or worse, is part of God’s revelation to man about how Jesus’ kingdom would operate.
-Tim-
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losh14
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I’ll make an extension and say that there’s probably no problem with calling Mary a Queen by extension of her relationship to Jesus, a title of honor and of relationship. Where the problem probably comes in is imputing the Queenship to be more than an honor, and becoming an indication of authority.
To put it another way, there’s a difference between Queen Mother and Queen Regent. In human monarchies (since we’re drawing the comparison from an established human monarchy) the former is an honorific and the latter indicates power. Even in the latter, the power is not the Queen’s own to exercise but rather the King’s authority given to the Queen to use on behalf of the King while the King is either too young to rule, away on campaigns, etc.
It would probably help frame discussion of comparisons if we remember that in Judea the power was vested in the male lineage, and so resided in the male, not the female. To follow TimothyH’s thoughts on Queen Mothers in the OT, the only example I can find in Scripture of a Queen Mother in the Davidic line ruling on her own (ie, no husband, no son) was Athaliah, who murdered her grandchildren after her husband and son were killed to keep from losing power. So that at no point in time should we take Mary’s Queenship to mean any sort of pushing aside of Jesus, King of Kings. Whatever power or authority we impute to her, must be at the fiat of the Lord.
The response has to be, then, why the veneration of Mary is distinct from the worship of Asherah/Astaroth/Ishtar.
Bear in mind that this is devotion, not requirement. No one must be devoted to Mary, and prayers may appropriately be addressed to the Lord without Mary’s involvement. I’m still sorting out where that leaves those of us who don’t understand or who think they understand but don’t accept some of the Marian teachings (like that Mary is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, or that those who aren’t devoted to Mary are predestined to Hell, or that Mary will lead the armies of the Lord at Armageddon), since the Popes have tended to fully embrace Montfort’s writings.
There, match thrown.
Also, let’s be careful in making a distinction between the mediation of Christ and the mediation of Mary. The two are distinct - only Christ could die on the Cross for Redemption, and only Christ could grant us access to the Father.
To put it another way, there’s a difference between Queen Mother and Queen Regent. In human monarchies (since we’re drawing the comparison from an established human monarchy) the former is an honorific and the latter indicates power. Even in the latter, the power is not the Queen’s own to exercise but rather the King’s authority given to the Queen to use on behalf of the King while the King is either too young to rule, away on campaigns, etc.
It would probably help frame discussion of comparisons if we remember that in Judea the power was vested in the male lineage, and so resided in the male, not the female. To follow TimothyH’s thoughts on Queen Mothers in the OT, the only example I can find in Scripture of a Queen Mother in the Davidic line ruling on her own (ie, no husband, no son) was Athaliah, who murdered her grandchildren after her husband and son were killed to keep from losing power. So that at no point in time should we take Mary’s Queenship to mean any sort of pushing aside of Jesus, King of Kings. Whatever power or authority we impute to her, must be at the fiat of the Lord.
Agreed, and Catholics in response need to understand that the comparison isn’t a slight against the Biblical understanding of Mary (because without Mary, we don’t have a birth or a fully-human, fully-divine Savior), but rather against what is seen by Protestants as an extension of some cult of Feminine Divine. The Astaroth cult mentioned in Jeremiah is a convenient example, not least because Jeremiah also rails against Asherah trees which some have taken to mean Christmas trees. This is obviously untrue because we get our Christmas trees from an entirely different pagan tradition (heavily secularized, of course).Those who say that the title, the demon-Queen, and Mary are the same person, are probably going a tad far.
The response has to be, then, why the veneration of Mary is distinct from the worship of Asherah/Astaroth/Ishtar.
Your research is much in line with mine. Modern Marian veneration owes much of its development to a pietistic school of thought in the 17th century that very strongly emphasized the role of Mary in the salvation of the individual. St. Louis de Montfort is most emblematic of this school, having written several texts including “Total Consecration to the Blessed Virgin” and “The Secret of Mary”, and developed a method of Total Consecration to Mary in which one basically makes himself or herself a “slave” of Mary. I know your eyes are chafing at this, so I need to caveat that everything Louis de Montfort writes (and some of those who have taken on this mantle of consecration would agree) couches it so that nothing should be seen to take away from the work of Christ. I will note I have profound difficulty accepting de Montfort’s writings because I don’t see how he can make the claims he does about Mary without taking away from Christ.
Bear in mind that this is devotion, not requirement. No one must be devoted to Mary, and prayers may appropriately be addressed to the Lord without Mary’s involvement. I’m still sorting out where that leaves those of us who don’t understand or who think they understand but don’t accept some of the Marian teachings (like that Mary is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, or that those who aren’t devoted to Mary are predestined to Hell, or that Mary will lead the armies of the Lord at Armageddon), since the Popes have tended to fully embrace Montfort’s writings.
There, match thrown.
Scripture just isn’t this clean-cut. TimothyH and I have another discussion, and I’ll add my thoughts to his briefly here as well. The repetition of Queen Mother is lineal and most of the Davidic Queen Mothers aren’t anything more than a footnote in history. The exceptions are the notorious ones:
- Bathsheba, who made a request of her son, Solomon, thinking he can’t refuse, but he did refuse and instead rose up and slaughtered his adversaries
- Maacah (mentioned by TimothyH) who was deposed by her own son because of her worship of Baal
- Athaliah (as both TimothyH and I mentioned above) who actively pushed pagan cults and was betrayed and killed righteously by Israel
TimothyH, thanks for this. If this is true it does indeed bolster the connection between Mary as mediatrix and adjuticatrix, and the roles of the Queen Mothers in the Davidic lineage. Do you have a source? I won’t dispute the Queen’s role in managing the day-to-day affairs of the King’s personal household (I’m thinking running of the palace), but I think she’d have no role with the military, treasury or foreign affairs. Also, Scripture is full of references of Kings holding court, but to my knowledge very few of those involve some mediation on the part of the Queen or Queen Mother. The King had ministers to oversee audiences and appointments - he wasn’t aloof and unavailable to his people, at least not the important ones.
Also, let’s be careful in making a distinction between the mediation of Christ and the mediation of Mary. The two are distinct - only Christ could die on the Cross for Redemption, and only Christ could grant us access to the Father.
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losh14
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This is the case that Newman would make, that the pagan distortions of truth are corrected by the Catholic Church.
I think that also explains why some traditions like carrying a statue of Mary in a parade, or adorning the parish statue of Mary with flowers during the May Crowning can be seen by Protestants as an act of idol worship or something akin to the paganism that Jeremiah condemns. We must remember that our spirituality - even beyond the Divine worship of the Lord - is very much physical, with the tactile, olfactory, auditory and visual senses engaged, which may be lacking among our Protestant brethren (though I think the Anglicans are more sensory-oriented than most in their worship).
Whoever posted the link to the blog catholiconvert.com, that link has some good points, notably in the distinction of the worship of Astaroth as opposed to the veneration of Mary. If we thank God for Mary, ask her for prayers, feel a love deep in our hearts for her, her example, and her obedience and cooperation in the Gospel, that’s entirely different from making sacrificial offerings to a pagan deity. Perhaps in evangelizing we can ask our Protestant brethren to think on some Christmas songs - “Mary, do you know?” or “What Child is This?” etc - and ponder the thoughts and devotion of the woman who first pondered the Truth of Christ in her heart (Lk 2:19).
I think that also explains why some traditions like carrying a statue of Mary in a parade, or adorning the parish statue of Mary with flowers during the May Crowning can be seen by Protestants as an act of idol worship or something akin to the paganism that Jeremiah condemns. We must remember that our spirituality - even beyond the Divine worship of the Lord - is very much physical, with the tactile, olfactory, auditory and visual senses engaged, which may be lacking among our Protestant brethren (though I think the Anglicans are more sensory-oriented than most in their worship).
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bzkoss236
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Many have already stated it, with Jesus being the King. And because Jesus lived in that time, he would have held to the customs of that time, which would include honoring his mother as Queen (especially since Jesus was not married).
More on Mary
More on Mary
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Christine85
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He sent me the link to an article from Jesus is Savior .com which I didn’t bother opening as it says false religion Catholicism , Mary worship. Apparently finding from a former nun
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losh14
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How close of a friend is this, and how serious is his or her inquiry? That would determine the degree of information you need to delve into here.
Sites like the one above tend to be more superstition than anything. These alleged “personal stories” from former clergy are generally made-up and often repeated from the pulp presses of Nativism and anti-Catholicism in the 19th century. The story of Maria Monk has been around for perhaps 150 years (I think it was a cause of the Baltimore Know-Nothing Riots), but every so often it gets reprinted on a website with the publishers claiming that they heard it personally from Maria Monk herself. Jack Chick is another publisher who likes to rehash old propaganda without so much as an investigative look.
Christine85, you’ve been in discussions with me and you know my objections to some aspects of Church teaching (and the pain it causes me to have these objections as a practicing Catholic). I’ll tell you that my objections, no matter how correct or incorrect, are at least sincere, pondered over, prayed and fasted about. The drivel on some sites is just an excuse to not have to go through the really difficult process of trying to understand.
The site you mention isn’t one of the more thoughtful criticisms of Catholicism. I’ve had good discussions with learned Presbyterians (I count several as my friends) who bring up objections that at least have reasonable bases and their approach is both compassionate, thoughtful, and willing to consider the evidence in response. I’ve convinced some of them to actually attend Mass (they usually think the homilies are boring, but otherwise like it).
Sites like the one above tend to be more superstition than anything. These alleged “personal stories” from former clergy are generally made-up and often repeated from the pulp presses of Nativism and anti-Catholicism in the 19th century. The story of Maria Monk has been around for perhaps 150 years (I think it was a cause of the Baltimore Know-Nothing Riots), but every so often it gets reprinted on a website with the publishers claiming that they heard it personally from Maria Monk herself. Jack Chick is another publisher who likes to rehash old propaganda without so much as an investigative look.
Christine85, you’ve been in discussions with me and you know my objections to some aspects of Church teaching (and the pain it causes me to have these objections as a practicing Catholic). I’ll tell you that my objections, no matter how correct or incorrect, are at least sincere, pondered over, prayed and fasted about. The drivel on some sites is just an excuse to not have to go through the really difficult process of trying to understand.
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chosen_people
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Chapter 44 deals with Jeremiah warning the Jews in Egypt against idolatry. At the time, the people of Egypt worshiped the sun as a god. In chapter 43:13 we read “He will shatter the pillars of the temple of the sun that is in the land of Egypt, and he will burn [down] the temples of the Egyptian gods in fire”. In Chapter 44 the people, after being warned by Jeremiah not to follow Egyptian idolatry, answer that they will not listen to the words that Jeremiah speaks in the name of Hashem and that they will continue “to burn incense to the queen of the heavens and pour out libations to her…”. We see from the context and the previous chapter that the “queen of the heavens” is the sun.
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bzkoss236
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Then you already know my answer. It is clear that Revelation 12 talks about Mary, and your quote of the personal interpretation is just that a “personal” interpretation, I do not hold it as binding, and I do not agree with the interpretation.
Revelation 12 mentions a woman adorned as one who is truly the Queen of Heaven, and then gives a description of her being pregnant and a dragon seeking to destroy her child. If you don’t see this passage as talking about Mary, then who do you think it is talking about?
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losh14
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I had long waffled over whether the woman represented Mary or the Church (as many Protestants hold, but by no means all). I believe the representation is of Mary because the Church did not birth Christ, but rather that Christ founded His Church.
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