John gives a remarkable amount of detail about the Great Lady and her story, bearing in mind that the visions of temple prophets were not just of the future but of the whole plan of history so that they knew where they stood in the divine plan. As we have seen, Jesus knew this vision because he said he had seen Satan fall like lightning form heaven when his disciples confirmed that they had power over demons (Lk. 10.18). He also said: ‘I have given you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy’. The disciples were the angels fighting against ‘the great dragon, the ancient serpent . . .’ (Rev. 12.9), the conflict which happened after the Great Lady gave birth to her Son, and he was snatched up to God and his throne. ‘Then the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring’ (Rev. 12.17).

When did this happen? In the physical sense, the human Mary of Nazareth gave birth to her son, but this event was fused—more than once—with the timeless vision of the Great Lady and her Son. Matthew linked it to the conception of Mary’s child and quoted Isaiah’s prophecy: ‘The Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son . . .’ (Mt. 1.23). If Isaiah’s prophecy is thought to refer only to a mortal woman who would give birth to the next king in Jerusalem, then the significance of the prophecy at this point is lost. In the eighth century BCE, Isaiah declared that the Great Lady would give birth to another king in Jerusalem. He would have a human mother, but the Great Lady would be his heavenly Mother. In court ritual the Queen mother represented the Great Lady. In fact, that was her title: where the English translations have ‘queen-mother’, the word is gebhîrâ, ‘Great Lady (e.g. 1 Kgs 15.13; Jer. 13.18; 29.2). By quoting this prophecy, Matthew shows that Mary was the earthly manifestation of the LORD: Immanuel, meaning ‘God with us’. Luke linked Isaiah’s royal birth oracle to Mary’s experience to Gabriel’s words. ‘He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the LORD God will give him the throne of his father David’ (Lk. 1.32), is a reference to Isaiah’s prophecy of naming the child: ‘His name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace [or “the Angel of great counsel”] . . . upon the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it’ (Isa. 9.6-7).