According to the Julian calendar, the Orthodox Church enters these days (26.08.28) into the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (Lay Mary). At the end of summer, after the brightness of the Transfiguration, another mystery is placed before us: not light this time, but sleep.

Eastern Christianity calls the feast Κοίμησις τῆς Θεοτόκου – Koimesis, the falling asleep of the Mother of God. Slavonic and Russian have Успение – Uspenie, falling asleep or repose. Syriac and Aramaic Christian traditions preserve their vocabulary of repose, passage and departure.

Hebrew שֵׁנָה – sheynah, sleep, stands strikingly close to שָׁנָה – shanah, year. Aramaic and Syriac offer comparable resonances around sleep, passage and ܫܢܬܐ – shanatho/shatto, year. These should not be forced into an artificial common etymology. Yet their proximity speaks: a year passes and another begins; sleep interrupts consciousness and normally opens again into awakening.

Daniel speaks of those who “sleep in the dust of the earth” – יְשֵׁנֵי אַדְמַת־עָפָר – who shall awake (Daniel 12:2). Christian koimeterion, sleeping place, gives “cemetery.” The Orthodox Paschal proclamation goes further: Jesus entered death and, once risen, revives those in the tombs.

But sleep must not become a pleasant religious disguise for death. The Dormition icon itself prevents this. Mary’s dead body lies horizontally. Behind the bier stands the resurrected Jesus holding a small swaddled figure representing His Mother. The movement reverses the Nativity: Mary once carried the Child; now the Son carries His Mother.

This reversal is inseparable from Christian language about virginity. Mary is Παρθένος – Virgin, and in Eastern tradition Ἀειπάρθενος – Ever-Virgin. Yet before virginity became a title painted upon icons, it concerned an actual human body.

Hebrew בְּתוּלָה – betulah makes this particularly clear. As Géza Vermes emphasized in returning Christian vocabulary to its Jewish environment, betulah must also be heard within the concrete juridical world reflected in rabbinic literature, notably Ketubbot: marriage, ketubbah, age, evidence, personal status and right, and bodily integrity. It is not merely a poetic synonym for purity.

Luke places beside Mary another bodily impossibility: Elizabeth, עקרה – ʿaqarah, the barren woman from whom birth is no longer expected. Mary is the עלמה / בתולה – ʿalmah/betulah, the young woman or virgin from whom birth is not expected in this manner. Syriac ܥܠܝܡܬܐ – ʿlaymta, maiden or young woman, keeps us within that Semitic landscape.

Christian faith makes a startlingly physical claim: Mary gives human flesh to Jesus without male generation. “The power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). At the opposite end of her earthly existence, the movement reverses. The Mother who sheltered the developing human life of the Son is herself sheltered in His hands.

One could say, cautiously, that the Son broods His Mother toward eternal........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)