The Theotokos and Isis

Q & A with Fr Job, installment IV:

Question: Why is so little said about the Theotokos in the Bible, but She is venerated almost no less than the Savior Himself? Is not the cult of the Theotokos a transformation of the cult of the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis?

Answer: There is an incorrect statement in the question. In the Bible a great deal is written about the All-Holy Theotokos. In the sacred books of the Old Testament this is said in the form of prophecies and prefigurations. In the New Testament, the Evangelists relate Her participation in the most important events of Sacred history: the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Circumcision of the Lord, the Meeting. The beginning of the miracles of Jesus Christ and the revelation of His glory took place in Cana of Galilee by the request of the Mother of God. The Evangelists portrayed Her standing at Her Son’s Cross.

Her veneration arose from the special feeling of gratitude and warm love for the Mother of our Savior and the Supplicant for all people. But never in the Church, neither theologically-dogmatically (c.f., the Symbol of faith), nor liturgically-prayerfully, did this veneration become equal to that of God.

As concerns the attempts of cultureologists-rationalists of the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century (James Frazer and others) to place the foundations of of Christian doctrine upon pagan cults and mythology, today serious scholars consider these affirmations arbitrary. Under the guise of science was expressed, openly or disguisedly, an anti-Christian disposition.