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The Bible says little about Mary, or does it say a lot but we don’t know where to look? Let’s read the Bible through the eyes of early Christians and see what we can find about Mary. In this article we will deal with the dogma of the Assumption, but other Marian dogmas will show up too.

The Ark of the Covenant is the most sacred object in the Old Testament. God himself ordered it to be built and placed in the Holy of Holies, the most sacred place of the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting (the portable version of what would later be the Temple of Jerusalem). God is everywhere, but when he wanted to be especially present with his people, his glory, in the form of a cloud, settled inside the Ark of the Covenant. When the Israelites moved the Ark, the presence of God was in it. When they prayed in front of the Ark, they did not worship the wooden box, but God, who was in it. So in short we can say that God was inside the Ark in a special way, much more present and concrete than when we say that God is everywhere.

This article is part of the series "Mary in the Bible", and to understand it better, you are advised to read the introduction and especially the Typology section that appears at the beginning of the article Mary: the New Eve.

The Ark of the Covenant

The Ark of the Covenant is the materialization of the pact (alliance) that God established with the people of Israel when they were removed from Egypt. The Ark is the symbol, or more than that, the realization of the pact. With this covenant, God makes Israel his Chosen People, and Israel accepts Yahweh as his only God. With the Ark, the presence of God among his people becomes visible and tangible. The sad episode of the golden calf (Exodus 32:1-19) shows us how people need their five senses to participate in the worship of God, because in our current physical state, the material seems more real to us than what we cannot see. God forcefully condemned that act of idolatry and the idol was destroyed, but he understood the need to make the intangible tangible, that is why he ordered the construction of the Ark of the Covenant as the place where he could descend to be in the midst of his people in a more physical way, being the Ark what made that presence a reality for the senses.

Likewise, his manifestation as a cloud that accompanies and gives refreshing shade to his people, or descends and fills the Temple and the Ark, is another way of allowing the human senses to perceive the spiritual reality of an invisible God. Many centuries later, when God wants to engage and interact more deeply with us, he will take another step in the same direction and become flesh, a God now fully within the reach of our senses. And even afterward, he will continue to be physically present in the Eucharist. But let’s go back to the time of Moses.

God is infinite, invisible and is everywhere, but in the Ark God becomes somehow concrete, tangible, visible, physical and locatable. They cannot see the content, but they can see the container, to the point that both things come to be perceived in some way as one, the container receiving the same adoration and sacredness that is directed to the content, and acquiring also properties that are actually manifestations of the content. Thus, for example, the voice of God comes out of the Ark, and whoever defies the prohibition and touches the Ark, dies as if he had touched God himself.

From a human perspective, this is an enormous advantage, because if God is everywhere, it is as if he were nowhere. If all things and places are holy, then nothing is holy (since “holy” means set apart for God, separated from the rest for a holy reason). If you can pray to God anywhere, no place is special and nothing has the power to move you into the sacred. But if you know that right there, in front of you, is the Ark with the presence of God, that is, if God is there, in front of you, then your mind can encompass the immensity and be overwhelmed by the inconceivable presence of the infinite just two meters away.

Indeed for the human psyche to have God visible and at a specific point is a huge difference, because it is the way in which God can enter our field of perception and feel real and close. That is why God had the idea of “inhabiting” the Ark out of love for his people, because it was the way to penetrate not only their soul but also their physical reality and become more real to them, a kind of wonderful trick which, as every Catholic knows, works. In that sense we can consider that the Ark is clearly a type (sketch) of the Incarnation. Just as the material body contains the soul, the physical Ark contains the Spirit of God.

All the liturgy and worship of the Temple had the Ark at its very heart. And yet there was a moment when the Ark disappeared forever. Forever? Not quite. Let’s see how it happened.

When the Babylonians attacked Judea, the prophet Jeremiah decided to save the Ark of the Covenant before they could reach Jerusalem and destroy the temple. He, along with several Levites, took the Ark to a hidden place in the desert. When he noticed that some Levites had tried to make signs to show where it was hidden, Jeremiah rebuked them, saying that the Ark would not be revealed again until the fullness of time (that is, when the glory of God or Shekhina returned and the People of God be gathered). And so the Ark was lost for Israel.

After the construction of the second Temple, everything keeps functioning as if the Ark were still inside: the Holy of Holies, the veil, the rites… Only that the Ark was no longer there. However, the Jews of that time, as well as those of the first century, firmly believed that Jeremiah’s prophecy would come true, and the Ark would reappear in the fullness of time, that is why they did not simply forgot all about it, nor did they ever try to make a new one either, but continued with all their rites just the same, and with the Holy of Holies empty but always ready to welcome the Ark on its return, waiting for God to bring the Ark back to his people. This ancient Jewish belief was described in the book of Maccabees (2 Maccabees 2:4-8)

When the Babylonians plundered all the treasures of the Temple and then razed it to the ground, the Ark was no longer on the list of loot. When the Jews return from Exile and rebuild the temple, the Holy of Holies is nothing but an empty room. The Jewish historian Josephus, in the first century, confirms that there was nothing there, and in that same century the Roman historian Tacitus says that when the general Pompey conquered Jerusalem and entered the innermost part of the Temple, “there was nothing there.”

The Tent of Meeting that Moses built was destined to contain the Ark, God’s dwelling place. The Temple that David wanted to rise and that Solomon finally built was nothing more than the building designed to house the Ark. The Ark was not an object that was inside the Temple, such as the seven-armed chandelier, but rather the reverse, the Temple was the habitation built to guard the Ark. The sacredness was not in the Temple, it was in the Ark. And yet after the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadnezzar, the Ark disappears but the Jewish people will keep the memory alive and the Temple waiting for it to reappear one day, and on that day the Glory of God will return with it to dwell among us.

So the Temple that Jesus knew, had an empty Holy of Holies. But in the hearts of the Jews there was always the hope that when the fullness of time came, that is, when the hour of the Messiah arrived, God would reveal the Ark again, and once again establish his presence in a special way, physically, among his people. So just as the Jews awaited the arrival of the Messiah, with the same intensity they awaited the return of the Ark of the Covenant. The return of the Ark meant to them that God’s cloud would again fill the ark and God would once again dwell among his people.

In our article on Mary as the New Eve we saw the gospels present Jesus as the New Adam, or the “last Adam” as Saint Paul puts it, contrasting the first and the last just as later theology contrasts the new and the old one. Adam was a type or prefiguration of Jesus, a sketch that reveals and explains part of what Jesus will be. But equally the gospels present Moses over and over again as a type (figure) of Jesus.

"Typology" is an exegetical reasoning practiced by Christians from the beginning, and also used a lot within the New Testament, not only by Saint Paul and others, but even by Jesus to demonstrate who he is, so that the entire Old Testament is interpreted as prefiguring the New. In the Old we often have a figure (in Greek: typos) that is a sketch of what in the New will be its culmination and perfection. The New Testament reality prefigured by the type (typos) is called antitype (antitypos): Moses is the typos, Jesus the antitypos. (read more of it here) 

There are many scenes where Jesus is presented to us as the New Moses who has come to inaugurate a new Exodus and a new Pact (alliance) between God and men. There are many scenes in which Jesus re-enacts or perfects what God did when Moses. Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert, just like Moses did on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:28). In the crossing of the desert God fed his people with manna from heaven and quail, and Jesus fed the crowds with the multiplication of loaves and fish (Luke 9:10-17) and announces that he himself is the bread from heaven that surpasses that of Moses (John 6:31-33). Moses established an alliance with the twelve tribes of Israel (Exodus 24:1-8) and Jesus actualized that alliance with the twelve apostles representing the twelve tribes. Moses was sentenced to death at birth and saved from the waters by an Egyptian princess, Jesus was also sentenced to death at birth by Herod and was brought to safety in Egypt. And both were the architects of an alliance between God and men. Moses established the Old Covenant (or Old Testament), whose seal was circumcision, and Jesus established the New Covenant (or New Testament), whose seal is baptism. Moses lifts up the Brazen Serpent to heal bodies from the poison of the fiery serpents (Numbers 21:6-8), Jesus is himself raised up as a new Brazen Serpent to save souls from the poison of the primeval Serpent (John 3:14). The Exodus was a journey of material liberation that started from Egypt and had the Promised Land as its destination; the New Exodus was a journey of spiritual liberation that started from the Promised Land and had heaven as its destination. That’s why it makes perfect sense to present Jesus as the New Moses, and as always, the antitypos far exceeds the typos.

But if Jesus is the New Moses who has come to guide his people in the New Exodus, then the obvious question is, where is the New Ark of the Covenant? for in the Exodus of Moses the Ark of the Covenant played a key role in everything. The Ark of Moses disappeared with the promise of its return. Well then, if the New Moses appeared, it was also time for the return of the New Ark. And in truth, the Ark reappeared in the fullness of time, as the prophecy had announced: Just as Moses returned in the figure of Christ, the Ark also returned… in the figure of Mary.

That Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant (or the Ark of the New Covenant) is not a twisted modern argument, it was something already evident for the Early Church and up to this day; but it also happens that if we look at things through the eyes of a Jew from the time of Christ, it is all a matter of common sense.

The Ark was an acacia box covered with gold inside and out, that is, a physical object that contained God himself inside. In the same way, when God was incarnated in Mary, she becomes a physical being that contained God inside. Once again we find that what in the Old Testament appears as typos (foreshadowing, sketch) in the New Testament acquires fullness and perfection. The Ark was the imperfect announcement of what would be the incarnate God, the first step for a divine materialization that would not reach perfection until the incarnation of Christ. With Jesus we no longer have God within something physical, but God who becomes physical; Not a God who inhabits a visible object, but a God who makes himself visible, but before manifesting himself to the world, he was a God who inhabited the womb of Mary, just as Yahweh inhabited the interior of the Ark. Even after being born, that material body that was part of Jesus was completely Mary’s flesh, since only from her did he acquire his corporeality. Mary carried God inside her for nine months, and for this reason she would forever be the “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), the New Ark, and until the end of the centuries “all generations will call [her] blessed.” (Luke 1:48). Gesting God leaves a mark in the insides for ever and Mary was at the beginning, at the end and forever, the Ark of God.

In the Old Testament

To understand what it means to be the New Ark of the Covenant, it is first necessary to know what the original Ark was. We find that in the Old Testament. We have already said that the Ark was the chest where God made himself present in the midst of his people in an indirectly tangible manifestation. We will now summarize its main features:

1. It is a chest designed to contain the presence of God. (Exodus 25:21-22)
2. It is built with acacia wood. (Exodus 25:10)
3. It is covered with pure gold inside and out. (Exodus 25:10-11)
4. It contains the Tablets of the Law. (Deuteronomy 10:1-5)
5. When it was placed inside the tabernacle, a cloud covered it and the glory of God filled it. (Leviticus 16:2), the same happened when Solomon placed it in the Temple (1 Kings 8:10-11)
6. Nobody can touch it. (Numbers 4:6-20, 2 Samuel 6:6-7)
7. It will appear again in the fullness of time. (2 Maccabees 2:4-8)
8. It is a very powerful object, it causes the walls of Jericho to collapse (Joshua 6:1-5), it divides the waters of the Jordan (Joshua 3:13), and destroys enemies (Numbers 10:35). But its power does not come from itself but from the God who inhabits it.

Let’s see how these characteristics of the Ark, and even others, are fulfilled in Mary. If we bear in mind that the Ark of the Old Testament is a Typos of Mary, that means that the Antitypos, Mary, will have those characteristics but to a higher degree or nature.

In the New Testament

It is a chest designed to contain the presence of God

For nine months, Mary was the woman who had inside even God made flesh, so that the presence of God will no longer be perceived only indirectly through smoke, cloud or fire, but be clearly seen in the incarnate God who is Jesus. Besides, Mary is not just the container of God, in the manner of the Ark, but she herself gives God that same body in which he incarnates, since it is the fruit of her flesh and nothing else. Of all the comparable features, this is the most essential and at the same time the most evident, so no wonder it is the one most frequently used in the early Church and up to today to justify the title of Mary as “the New Ark”.

It is built with acacia wood

Acacia is an incredibly durable wood, especially in the climate of that area, to the point that it was considered incorruptible, which is why God commissioned that wood to be used. In Mary, that apparent incorruptibility will become authentic incorruptibility, since her body did not suffer the putrefaction of death, but was preserved and raised to heaven.

It is covered with pure gold inside and out

Pure gold is gold that does not contain any impurity, nothing that may stain it or pervert its nature or oxidize over time. Just as the Ark is covered with pure gold inside and out, Mary is most pure inside (Immaculate) and outside (Virgin), untouched and undefiled in her soul and in her body. Another noteworthy feature of gold is its malleability, it is easy to shape. Similarly, Mary is completely malleable to God’s will: “Be it done to me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38).

It contains the Tablets of the Law

These tablets, where the Ten Commandments were written, are also called the word of God or the Testimony. The Ark carries within this ancient word of God that brought forth the old Law. Mary carried within the Logos, the Divine Word, which is the Word of God that brought forth the new Law. The written Word becomes within Mary the Living word.

A cloud covered it and the glory of God filled it

The moment that God takes possession of the Ark, a cloud descends from heaven that covers it and fills it with his glory. We see that same scene when Mary, who had been prepared to be the new Ark, is likewise possessed by God:

And the angel answering, said to her: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God".
(Luke 1:35)

Compare that scene with this one:

Then a cloud covered the tent and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
(Exodus 40:34)

In the book of Exodus, the presence of God with his people is manifested in the form of a cloud, but we also have God leading his people through the desert and taking the form of a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night (see quotes). This is because at night the fire gives light and allowed them to see the way, and during the day, in the burning desert, the cloud gave shade and coolness, protecting them, that is why it is so frequent in the Bible to speak of the shadow of God as something that reveals his presence and gives protection. When God overshadows Mary, we revive the scene of Yahweh taking possession of the Ark to dwell inside and thus have a tangible presence among his people.

This parallel is even more evident if we compare the original text of Luke in Greek with the translation of Exodus into Greek that we find in the Septuagint (written time before Christ). In both scenes the verb form used is the same, “episkiazo”, which means “covered with his shadow” or “overshadowed”. Therefore for a first century Jew the scene in Luke means the obvious, that Mary is going to conceive the son of God, but also suggests two more things: that the same cloud of God that abandoned Israel (when Jeremiah took away the Ark) has at last returned to his people, and that, once more, that cloud has an Ark to descend into. That means that the hidden Ark has reappeared, that the fullness of time has arrived and so that all the promises of the Lord will be fulfilled. In a nutshell: The Messiah has arrived!

Notice that Jeremiah’s words were that the Ark would not appear again until the fullness of time, when…

Then the Lord will once again disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord will appear together with the cloud, as it was revealed in the time of Moses and when Solomon prayed that the place might be solemnly consecrated. 
(2 Maccabees 2:8)

And indeed, in the Annunciation we see the return to Sacred History of the glory of the Lord, filling Mary with grace, God’s cloud overshadowing her and, once again, settling inside his Ark. So yes, Mary fulfills the prophecy of Jeremiah.

Nobody can touch it

When God takes possession of the Ark, it becomes a totally sacred object and no one can touch it. Uzza dies for daring it. When God takes possession of Mary, she is protected by him (even retroactively) but also possessed by him, and also becomes a sacred being that no one else can “touch.” The Ark consecrated and inhabited by God could not later have been used for something mundane such as storing clothes or kitchen dishes in it as if it were a normal chest. Mary’s womb, consecrated and inhabited by God, could not later have been used for something mundane such as gestating another human being as if it were a normal womb. And should Joseph had not been holy and chaste, he would have been clever enough to leave Mary intact, so as not to end up like Uzza.

In the Book of Revelation we also see how Satan (the 7-headed dragon) tries to catch her but heaven makes sure that despite all his attempts he cannot even touch her (Revelation 12:13-16). Virgin and immaculate, that is Mary.

It will appear again in the fullness of time

When the Jews spoke of the “fullness of time” or “the end of time” (or the end of history) they were referring to Messianic times, that is, when the Messiah would walk the earth and God would gather all his people. This for the Jews implied gathering the scattered tribes, just as we are told in Maccabees (2 Maccabees 2:4-8) when Jeremiah speaks of the moment when the Ark will reappear. That is why Christians use the expression “the fullness of time” referring to the time Jesus lived on earth (Galatians 4:4). And it is then that Mary, the New Ark, lives and therefore the prophecy of Jeremiah is fulfilled.

It is a very powerful object but the power does not come from itself but from the God who inhabits it

Mary is also very powerful, and her power does not come from herself either, but from God. Her miracles and graces reach us due to her intercession. She has no power by herself, everything that she does for us, it is God acting through her, but because she is closer to God than anyone else, her intercession is also more powerful than that of any other saint.

Some people may think that all these details and parallels are little more than striking coincidences, lucky juggling, and that we certainly cannot explain what a New Testament person or event means by looking into older references in the Old Testament. But if a Christian thinks so, that means that their understanding of the Bible is very poor and lame, because that way of interpreting the Bible is not only the one used in the early Church, not even just the one that Saint Paul taught with his concept of typos and antitypos, but even Jesus teaches that this is how the Old Testament should be read, as a prefiguration of what the people and events of the new will be like. And he did so, for example, with the disciples on the road to Emmaus:

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets*, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things that were concerning him. (...) And they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in this way, and opened to us the scriptures?
(Luke 24:27, 32)

*Jesus refers to "the Law and the Prophets", which is what the Old Testament in general was then called.

The disciples of Emmaus finally understood who Jesus was and what was to happen to him through a re-reading of the Old Testament from a Christological point of view, that is, what the ancient books tell us, on the one hand truly refer to ancient characters and events, but on the other hand they are also figures (typos) of the characters and events that are to come in the fullness of time. This is how Saint Paul explains it when he says this:

For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. (…) Now all these things happened to them in figure [typos]: and they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come. 
(1 Corinthians 10:1,11)

Let’s not forget that for the very first Christians the New Testament did not yet exist, so Jesus was never directly mentioned in the Scriptures (which for them were only the Old Testament), and on the road to Emmaus Jesus is teaching them to see the hidden Christ in the Old Testament. We are doing the same thing here, like the first Christians, with Mary, deciphering the Old Testament to see what it tells us about her to understand what we find in the New.

Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that not only the main features of the Ark find a parallel or fulfillment in Mary, but also a whole series of other small details that likewise find parallels in her. We can verify this if we continue reading Luke, because after talking about the Annunciation with echoes of the Ark of Exodus, he then goes on to tell about the Visitation (Luke 1:39-57), and fills the scene with more reminiscences of the Ark, making of it the antitypos of the episode of David taking the Ark to Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 6:1-16 (we will follow Brant Pitre in this analysis). Although the parallel is best appreciated if we compare the Greek texts of Luke and the Septuagint, the parallel in meaning can equally be captured if we use modern English translations:

In the Book of Revelation

In the book of Revelation the Ark of the Covenant is mentioned apparently in passing, almost out of the blue.

And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail.
(Revelation 11:19)

And that’s it. End of chapter 11.

But everything in Revelation is symbolic and contains an important meaning, there are no superfluous details here. To begin with, we have to recall once again that the Jews of the first century believed that one of the signs that would accompany the end of times (the Messianic times) would be the appearance of the lost Ark. If Jesus was the true Messiah, the Ark would accompany him and God would dwell with his People forever.

To understand the role of the Ark in this heavenly vision we have to understand that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses is a practical innovation made in the 13th century to facilitate citations, so that “end of chapter” is a conventional mark that could be, and here in fact is, miscalibrated. That verse should not be the end of chapter 11 but the beginning of chapter 12, as chapter 11 ends with an angel blowing the seventh trumpet and the 24 elders reciting a praise to God. And then the scene caused by the seventh trumpet begins, which is the following:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail. And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered. And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads, and ten horns: and on his head seven diadems. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth, and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod: and her son was taken up to God, and to his throne. 
(Revelation 11:19 & 12:1-5)

Everything is part of the same scene, the one known as The Portent, which we already discussed in detail in our previous article on the New Eve, proving that this Woman was none other than Mary, the one who gave birth to the Messiah, that male child who was to govern all nations with an iron scepter, as prophesied in Psalm 2.

For a first century Jew, this scene is quite surprising because the lost Ark that is to reappear in the fullness of time does not appear on earth, as expected, but in heaven. The vision begins with the appearance of the Ark in the sky, surrounded by rays, and then a Woman appears, surrounded by rays of light. And no more is said about the Ark, but the story of that Woman who is Mary begins to unfold, as if the Ark had appeared on the scene by mistake and without any consequence. This is because it is not a question of two successive appearances but of one single appearance shown as two different symbols. The Ark and the Woman are Mary, so the Ark does not make a failed entrance into the scene, but opens the scene to establish the nature of the protagonist.

Even if we want to see it as two different symbols, that would also fit well with the large number of dualities that we see in the symbols of the book of Revelation, where two different elements represent the same reality. In chapter 12 we have three main characters, Mary, Jesus and Satan. Satan is represented in Revelation as a seven-headed red dragon or as the primeval serpent, Jesus appears as the Lamb or as a man, and Mary is represented as the Woman or as the Ark. Be that as it may, the beginning of this vision establishes a close connection between the Ark and Mary. And that connection between both natures becomes more explicit because the Woman is pregnant with the Messiah. Just as the golden Ark contains within the presence of God, the Woman clothed with the sun contains within the presence of God.

Let us now return to Jeremiah and see what he tells us about the Ark in his book:

And when you shall be multiplied, and increase in the land in those days, saith the Lord, they shall say no more: The ark of the covenant of the Lord: neither shall it come upon the heart, neither shall they remember it, neither shall it be visited, neither shall that be done any more.
(Jeremiah 3:16)

This contradicts what we read in Maccabees:

The place [where we just hid the Ark] shall be unknown, till God gather together the congregation of the people, and receive them to mercy. And then the Lord will shew these things, and the majesty of the Lord shall appear, and there shall be a cloud as it was also shewed to Moses, and he shewed it when Solomon prayed that the place might be sanctified to the great God.
(2 Maccabees 2:7-8)

But it also contradicts what the book of Revelation says:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail.
(Revelation 11:19)

If the three quotes refer to what will happen to the Ark of the Covenant in the fullness of time, it does not make much sense to say that Jeremiah announces that in those times the disappeared Ark will no longer be needed nor will it be built again, but then he announces that it will appear again when the cloud of the Lord returns and in Revelation, indeed, we see it again in the Temple. But the confusion is cleared up when we see that the first quote speaks of the original Ark, the golden chest, while the other two quotes are talking about the Ark as a symbol of Mary, who actually appeared in the fullness of time, as well as the shadow of God covering her. She also appears, as the New Ark, in Revelation inside the Temple and with God already inside (pregnant).

And now that we have seen that Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant, let’s see what implications this has in order to make true what the Church teaches in the catechism:

What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.
(CCC 487)

From Mary to Jesus

It is indisputable that Mary carried Jesus in her womb, but we are going to see what it means to present Mary as the New Ark, what does that tell us about Mary, and even more, what does that tell us about Jesus.

By identifying Mary as the New Ark, they are presenting her to us as the mother of God (because she carries God in her womb), as a perpetual virgin (because she is pure like pure gold, because she is untouchable and because she is incorruptible like acacia). The symbology of her virginity (pure body) can also refer to being immaculate (pure soul), but in principle the typos of the Ark refers more to the container, the body of Mary, and not so much to her soul, although also. For the immaculate Mary, without sin, the typos of the New Eve that we saw in the previous article works best. The Ark also tells us about her Ascension, but we will see that later. So the typos of the Ark contains the four Marian dogmas: mother of God, ever virgin, immaculate and the Ascension.

But also in the Ark we see another characteristic of Mary as a prophet, the one who speaks in the name of God, just as we see in her apparitions in Lourdes, Fatima, etc.:

And when Moses entered into the tabernacle of the covenant, to consult the oracle, he heard the voice of one speaking to him from the propitiatory, that was over the ark between the two cherubims, and from this place he spoke to him.
(Numbers 7:89)

Let us also remember the quote from Revelation, where we are told that voices came out of the Ark. God speaks through the Ark, that is, through Mary:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail. 
(Revelation 11:19)

The Ark of the Covenant was covered with pure gold and kept in the Holy of Holies of the Temple because it was the place where God would be present to his people and it would contain the most sacred objects of Israel: the Ten Commandments, the manna from heaven and Aaron’s rod (Hebrews 9:3-4). But if Mary is the New Ark, what does this tell us about Jesus?

Therefore, by identifying Mary with the Ark, one is also affirming that Jesus is the Word of God, the Bread of life, the High Priest and, finally, God himself.

In the early Church

But this connection between Mary and the Ark is not something we have discovered today, we can find it already in the early Church. Let’s see some examples:

The Lord was created without sin, made in his human nature of incorruptible wood, that is, of the Virgin and of the Holy Spirit, covered inside and out, as it was, by the purest gold of the word of God... Tell us, O Blessed Mary, what was conceived in your womb; What did you carry inside? It was the Word of God, the firstborn of paradise.

(Hippolytus of Rome, Discourse on Psalm 23, 2nd to 3rd centuries) 

Oh noble Virgin, you are truly greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness, oh habitation of God the Word?... Oh [Ark of the New] Covenant, clothed in purity instead of gold! You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel that contains the true manna, that is, the flesh in which divinity resides... You carry inside the feet, the head and the entire body of the perfect God. .. you are the place where God rests.

(Anastasius of Alexandria, Homily on the Turin Papyrus, 4th century)

And these things I have also related about the stamnos, because in the stamnos, which has been handed down as a feminine noun, manna was placed, which was the heavenly bread but symbolized the Perpetual Virgin Mary, which is certainly gold from "tried gold." "for the evidence of her virginity, because it contained the manna that came down from heaven […] So the stamnos contained the manna, and had a capacity of 4 xestai, and Mary (contained) the Word that was proclaimed through the four evangelists. For she herself was the sacred Ark to which it pointed, of which the Ark that was made in the desert was a prefiguration (typos)... But holy Mary, the living Ark, carried the living Word within her... And furthermore, when the prophet David carried the Ark to Zion, danced before it singing and rejoicing. And it was not a miracle, but a sign by way of prophecy. "For these things happened as a foreshadowing (typically), and were written as an example for us, to whom the end of time has come," as the apostolic words teach. But here there was a miracle. Because when the living Ark —I'm talking about Mary— entered Elizabeth's house, the child John danced in his mother's womb, jumping for joy in front of the Ark because of the one she was going to give birth to, the living Word, the Messiah.

(Epiphanius of Salamis, Treatise on weights and measures, 35, 4th century)

The Mother, Virgin and blessed, was even more beautiful than the Ark full of mysteries of the house of God... When they carried the Ark, David danced joyfully... He (David) is the typos of what happened to John [the Baptist] with [the Visitation of] Mary, because that maiden was also the Ark of Divinity.

(Jacob of Sarug, Homily III on the Mother of God, 671, 5th-6th centuries)

And we cannot help but be surprised every time we see how Christian theology developed so quickly, since practically all the biblical interpretations that we are giving in this article were already developed in the first three or four centuries of Christianity’s life. In these examples we also see how the early Church, following the apostles, takes its beliefs not only from what the New Testament says, but also from what the Old Testament says directly or indirectly about Jesus, and that sometimes goes through Mary.

But these teachings that we find in the early Church have been faithfully preserved by the Catholic Church, and thus we can read in the catechism:

Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is "the dwelling of God with men."
(CCC 2676)

The Assumption of Mary

Of all the Marian dogmas that we find reflected in the typos of the Ark, the most subtle is that of the Assumption, so we are going to dedicate an entire section to it. If we want to find a trace of the belief in the Assumption of Mary in the Bible, that trace should be in the only book that was written after the event occurred, that is, in the Apocalypse of Saint John (a.k.a Book of Revelation), and indeed there we find a trace of it. Let us remember again the scene in which the Ark appears:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail. And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered.
(Revelation 11:19 and 12:1-2)

In this vision, John sees the Temple of God in heaven, there he sees the Ark of the Covenant, and then the vision of the Ark is replaced by the vision of the Woman, who is Mary and is the Ark. Thus, John sees Mary, whom he had at home until the end, up in heaven, but he does not see her just as a spirit, but rather as the Ark, a pregnant woman who has the Messiah inside. Mary as Ark cannot simply be a pure spirit, but a body that contains God within her physical womb. We might think that Mary pregnant with the Messiah, that is, Mary full of the divinity, is simply a symbol of what Luke described as “full of grace”, Mary full of God’s grace; but it is not like that, because that idea is already symbolized in “clothed with the sun”. A soul can be covered with the sun, with light, full of grace, but it cannot be pregnant, that image alludes to the body, not the soul. So the Woman covered with the sun that John sees in heaven is a corporeal woman, not a spiritual being. We have already seen previously that the typos of the Ark refers to Mary above all as a corporeal concept, as a physical container just like the Ark. Therefore, John is seeing Mary in heaven with body and soul, and she is in the same place as the Ark, in the Holy of Holies of the heavenly Temple, next to God, on a level above any other saint in heaven.

We had already seen how the early Church believed that Mary was the New Ark. The connection between the Assumption and the Woman of the Apocalypse did not go unnoticed by them.

The Scripture has maintained the most complete silence on the prodigy so as not to arouse excessive astonishment in the minds of men. […] the Apocalypse of John says: "And the dragon hastened after the woman who had given birth to the male child, and they gave her eagle's wings and she was carried away into the desert, so that the dragon could not seize her" ( Revelation 12:13-14). Perhaps this may apply to her; I can't decide for sure. And I am not saying that she has remained immortal, but I am not saying that she has died either.

(Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, book III, against the antidicomarians 78.11,1-11,2, 4th century)

Here we see Epiphanius doubting whether the eagle wings that the Woman receives to escape from the dragon could be a sign of her Ascension or not. Others have also pointed to the same passage, although it is probably more accurate to see the Ascension from the first moment of the scene, since the Woman already appears in the sky from the beginning, soul and body. But let us not discard the symbology of the eagle’s wings either, because in that scene, in order to remain forever out of the reach of the dragon (sin and death), we are first told that the son of the Woman is taken up to heaven to the throne of his Father (Ascension), and then we are told that his mother receives eagle wings to escape too, not by herself, but with the help of the wings (Assumption). Everything fits very well, except for the confusing information that the Woman will go to seek refuge in the desert, and not in heaven (where, on the other hand, she already is). That is why we find Epiphanius’ vacillation justified.

He also cryptically tells us that Mary is neither dead nor immortal. So what has happened? The answer to this oriental riddle is the Assumption (she is neither dead nor alive in this world, but she ascended to heaven), as he clearly reveals to us in the following chapter of his work:

And if I must say something else in his praise, [Mary is] like Elijah, who was a virgin from his mother's womb, so he always remained, and was assumed and has not seen death.

(Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, book III, against the antidicomarians 79.5,1, 4th century)

And from the middle of this century is a letter written by Dionysius the Egyptian to Titus, Bishop of Crete, although some date it to the end of the third century. In that letter we find a summary of what the popular tradition says about the Transit of the Virgin. Let us reproduce two fragments:

She delivered her soul all holy, similar to the scents of good smell, and commended it into the hands of the Lord. This is how she, adorned with graces, was elevated to the region of the Angels, and sent to the immutable life of the supernatural world. [...] But when they opened the sepulcher that had contained the sacred body, they found it empty and without the mortal remains. Although sad and disconsolate, they were able to understand that, after the celestial songs were finished, the holy body had been snatched away by the ethereal powers, after being supernaturally prepared for the celestial mansion of light and glory hidden from this visible and carnal world, in Jesus Christ Our Lord, to whom be glory and honor for ever and ever. Amen.

(Letter from Dionysus the Egyptian to Titus, 3rd-4rth century)

Besides, in the 4th century or maybe earlier, the church of Antioch celebrates the feast of “The Memory of Mary”, which commemorated the entry into heaven of the Virgin referring to her assumption. We also know that in the fifth century in Constantinople, in The Church of Saint Mary of Blachernae, the shroud of Mary was venerated, but neither there nor anywhere else in Christendom was it ever said that her bones were venerated, which is significant considering the great veneration that there was for Mary and also for the relics of the deceased saints in general, whose bones were guarded with great zeal. And Mary’s bones, if they existed, could fall into oblivion? We also know that in the 5th century the Assumption of Mary was celebrated in the Gethsemane church on August 15, a church where an empty tomb that has been dated to the 1st century is still preserved. Franciscan Frédéric Manns argues in his research (here in Italian) that the celebration of the Assumption in Jerusalem dates back to at least the second century.

Anyway, if a belief enters the liturgy, that is proof that it is an established belief and accepted by all, not a novelty introduced at that time by heretics, so that although it is in the fourth century when we most clearly see the references to this doctrine, it must be assumed that no one perceived it as novel, but rather as an established part of Tradition. This news was not part of the first wave of apostolic preaching, since the Virgin was still alive at that time, and it is believed that the focus from which it spread was Jerusalem itself, which, as we have said, very soon began to celebrate a festival in honor of Mary in the place where her sepulcher was (and from where she was assumed), spreading from there to the rest of the east quickly, and more slowly towards the west. The Emperor Mauritius at the end of the 6th century ordered that it be celebrated throughout the empire, becoming increasingly popular.

John Paul II, in the general audience of July 2, 1997, declared:

The first trace of belief in the Virgin's Assumption can be found in the apocryphal accounts entitled Transitus Mariae, whose origin dates to the second and third centuries. These are popular and sometimes romanticized depictions, which in this case, however, pick up an intuition of faith on the part of God's People.

Indeed, within the variety of versions that we see in these texts, one stands out for being considered the oldest, the family of texts called “The palm of the tree of life”. Research shows that these texts —of which the best example is the Liber Requiei from the fourth century, preserved in Latin, Irish and Syriac— develop traditions and a theology that allow us to locate their origin among the second century Judeo-Christian communities in Judea. Although they are apocryphal books, that is, not considered divinely inspired, they help us to verify that the Assumption was a living belief, which is why so many writings appeared narrating how they suppose it happened, perhaps also collecting bits of oral traditions on the subject.

These versions differ in many details, but most have certain elements in common: an angel appears to Mary, hands her a palm frond, and brings the news of her imminent death in three days. Mary informs her relatives, and especially John. The rest of the apostles are miraculously brought to Jerusalem to accompany her. On the third day Christ appears with angels and takes her soul. Jesus tells Peter to bury Mary in a tomb. There her body lies for three days and again Jesus and the angels appear and now also take her body to paradise, where it is reunited with her soul.

It must be recognized, however, that the disparity in the accounts does not allow us to reconstruct the original events with a certain reliability, although they do serve as witnesses to prove that the veneration of Mary has been widespread since early dates, as well as the belief that Mary ascended to heaven body and soul. For this reason, when the Catholic Church decided to establish this primitive belief as dogma in 1950, she did not go into details and simply affirmed that Mary ascended to heaven body and soul:

We declare it to be a divinely revealed dogma, that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.

But he leaves there another undefined detail. In recent centuries, the belief that Mary fell asleep but did not die had been widespread (hence why it is often called the “Dormition of Mary”). That belief is based on the fact that if death entered the world through sin and Mary had no sin, nor could she die. Pius XII did not want to settle that controversy when declaring the dogma and hence he opted for the phrase “having completed the course of her earthly life“. Subsequently, John Paul II, in his general audience on June 25, 1997, declared (not dogmatically) that Mary did indeed die before her ascension because all the early fathers of the Church who spoke about the subject declared so and because Jesus was also free of sin and yet died before rising again. This confusion is due to the quote from Saint Paul “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.” (Romans 5:12). We assume that Saint Paul is not referring to biological death but to the death of the soul that sin produces. And that “all have sinned” is nuanced already by the early fathers when they said, except for Jesus and Mary: “because in You there is no stain, nor in your Mother” (Ephrem the Syrian, year 350, Carmina Nisiben 27.8).

And finally, turning to art, the first artistic representation of the Assumption that we preserve is in a sarcophagus found in the Basilica of Santa Engracia, in Zaragoza, called Receptio Animae. This sarcophagus represents various miracles of Jesus, and in its central scene, as one more miracle, Mary appears at the moment of being taken up to heaven by the hand of Christ, pulling her before the astonished gaze of Saint Peter, who in his left hand holds the speech that, according to the oldest traditions of the Transitus Mariae, he read to Mary at the vigil that preceded her death. Dated around the year 330.

Conclusion

In our previous article on Mary as the New Eve we saw the biblical typology speaking of the pure soul of Mary and presenting her as the most pure, that is, the Immaculate. Here we see the biblical typology speaking to us of the body of Mary, and presenting her as the most pure, that is, the Virgin (because she is pure and untouchable), as the mother of God (because she carried the Lord in her womb) and as the Asumpta (because that body symbolized by the Ark went up to the temple of God in heaven) and even the prophet (because God speaks to us through her).

The identification of Mary as the New Ark is easy to see. But the assumption of Mary as antitypos of the New Ark does not appear as clearly in the Bible as for example the Immaculate seen in the antitypos of the New Eve. There is nothing in history or in the biblical texts to prevent it, and we do find in the Book of Revelation a clue that could clearly point in that direction (the Pregnant Woman in Heaven), which would not make any sense if it did not refer to this. We also have the typos of the Ark, which presents her as having a body pure (gold) and incorruptible (gold and acacia). Even so, that clue would not be enough for us if we did not have the support of the oral tradition confirming that idea.

The accounts that spread from the second century do not seem very reliable to reconstruct the facts, so we can assume that Mary died in the 60s or 70s, so that probably the only living apostle would be John, who took care of her. That is why the only biblical book that gives us a clue to the Assumption is precisely Revelation, which would be the only one written after the event. That is also why the oral tradition of the Assumption did not travel through the empire along with the apostles, but spread later from its focus in Jerusalem, the place of the events, and only John would give us an account of it, in his own personal style.

For many Protestants, the dogma of the Assumption is a recent Catholic invention that demonstrates the supposed attempt to deify Mary by equaling her to Jesus, so that this dogma would be like a copy of the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus to heaven in body and soul. To seal it they usually offer a quote contrary to the Ascension, when Jesus says: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who came down from there, that is, the Son of man” (John 3:13)

We have already seen that the declaration of the dogma is recent, but the belief comes from the early Church, and although it is not explicit, it does have theological support in the Scriptures. But anyway, why is it so hard for some to believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus/God, received the honor of being taken body and soul to heaven? Jesus is not the only one who had such an honor, two other figures far inferior to Mary also had that same honor: Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) (2 Kings 2:1) and the hardly known Enoch (Genesis 5:22-24). (Hebrews 11:5). So in the above quote from John 3:13 Jesus does not make a mistake by telling Nicodemus that he is the only one who has ascended to heaven; rather, Jesus means that of all the people (that there are now on earth), he is the only one who has been in heaven, that is why he can talk about what it is like and his testimony is true, even if others try to contradict him.

Furthermore, according to Saint Paul, when Jesus returns, the dead will rise again and the righteous who are alive will ascend to heaven without passing through death, that is, in body and soul (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) (1 Corinthians 15:51-54).

Accordingly, Jesus and Mary would have been (together with Enoch and Elijah) the firstfruits of the resurrection, that is, the first to be in heaven in body and soul, but ultimately all the just will have that same state, although according to St. Paul our corruptible body will be transformed and turned into a glorious body, as we saw in Jesus. It should also be noted that there is an important difference between Jesus and Mary in this regard. What happened to Jesus was an Ascension, since he ascended to heaven by his own power; that of Mary and all the others was an Assumption, since she was assumed, that is, taken to heaven, she did not ascend by her own power.

Therefore, if there are already more cases of saints taken up to heaven in body and soul, why should it be so strange that Jesus wanted to preserve from corruption that blessed body that gave him his physical being? Is there another body for him more worthy of preservation than the one that gave him home, DNA and food? pure as the gold of the Ark, incorruptible as the acacia wood from which it was built, was it not worth more in the eyes of Jesus Mary than Enoch? If he loved his mother so much that he wanted to preserve her soul from sin, it stands to reason that he also wanted to preserve her body from corruption. For a Catholic, the matter was definitively settled at the moment in which Pius XII declared it a dogma of faith, and the Orthodox and Anglican Church share that same belief, but for a Protestant there is too much data to dismiss everything as if it were nonsense. This bodily ascent to heaven after death, led by Jesus and then by Mary, is already prophesied in the ancient psalm, as Saint Albert the Great reminds us:

Arise, O Lord, and go up to your resting place, you and the Ark of your might.
(Psalm 132:8)

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