portion, according to the Apocalyptic‐Traditional view;(450) for, apart from the fact that no such apocalypses are now extant, these sections, even if they were originally derived from such a source, have an application here that is distinctively new and specifically Christian. The vision itself is properly divisible into four parts or sections, as indicated in the arrangement that follows. A The Woman and the Dragon, Ch. 12:1‐6, and 13‐17 This is a vision of Satan persecuting the church and the Messiah, and of the effective divine deliverance, which although permitting a continuance of the conflict yet provides help for overcoming and anticipates final victory. The scene opens in heaven, but is afterward transferred to the earth—see verse six. 1 The Sun‐Clothed Woman, Ch. 12:1‐2, 5‐6, and 13f. A great sign is seen in heaven, a Woman glorious and crowned, arrayed with the sun, the bearer of light, and having the moon under her feet, i. e. triumphing over time and change, who evidently represents the church of God on earth which was first Jewish and then Christian—“the ideal community of God’s people”. The moon was the Jewish divider of time, and the phases of it being marked by recurrent changes, it naturally formed a ready type of both these ideas; and it may here also include the thought of stability of existence in the midst of change of outward appearance.(451) The sun and moon have been thought by some to indicate the relative light of the New and Old Dispensations, though it is more probable that both have been introduced mainly to enhance the conception of the church’s ideal glory. The crown of twelve stars is the sign of the covenant people,—the crown is στέφανος, the crown of victory, which God designs to give the church, and the number, twelve, is the number of the tribes of Israel—while the woman’s travail anguish is the figure of Jewish affliction, and of deep longing for the Messiah. Some interpret the figure of the woman as representing the Virgin Mary;(452) but the symbol is clearly wider than a person, as is shown by the whole course of the persecution with its transference to the rest of her seed when the Man‐ Child has escaped, and evidently applies to “the mystical mother of Christ”, the church whose seed are many, though the source and appropriateness of the figure is doubtless found in the fact that Christ was born of a woman. 2 The Great Red Dragon, Ch. 12:3‐4, and 13f.