The religious scholar named the main mistakes in the description of the events of the Assumption

For the secular reader, the key errors in the perception of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary are related to its interpretation as an event solely of Mary's biological death, as well as to an incorrect understanding of the sources and theological content of this event. This was announced by religious scholar Nikita Pavlov in an interview with Izvestia.

"In the Orthodox tradition, it is not so much about death in the biological sense, as about "repose" — the transition from earthly life to eternal life. The very word "dormition" means sleep, temporary rest, followed by awakening," he noted.

According to him, this is why the holiday occupies a special place in the church calendar and is perceived not as a day of mourning, but as a celebration of victory over death, continuing the Easter theme of resurrection and eternal life.

The regional scholar also drew attention to a common misconception associated with the search for a detailed description of the Dormition in the canonical texts of the New Testament. He stressed that such information was missing, as it was preserved in the Sacred Tradition of the Church and a number of early Christian apocryphal monuments.

At the same time, he added that although the apocrypha is not considered by the Orthodox tradition as inspired texts, they played a significant role in shaping church memory, influencing worship, iconography and hymnography. In this regard, it is a mistake both to completely reject these sources and to take them literally as a historical description of events.

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In 2026, the end of the Dormition Fast is postponed by one day due to Friday.

The expert called the differences between the Orthodox and Catholic understanding of the bodily ascension of the Virgin Mary another important aspect. He recalled that in the Catholic Church in 1950, the dogma of the bodily ascension of the Virgin Mary to heaven was proclaimed, whereas the Orthodox tradition does not formalize this provision as a separate dogma of modern times.

"Eastern Christian theology is characterized by preserving the space of liturgical contemplation and church tradition, rather than striving for the most detailed dogmatic definition of all the circumstances of an event," Pavlov emphasized.

From a scientific point of view, according to the religious scholar, the greatest interest is not so much the historical reconstruction of the last days of the Virgin, as the mechanism of transmission of religious meanings. He noted that it was through Tradition, liturgical texts, rituals and iconography that the image of the Dormition was formed as the victory of life over death. In this context, the holiday had a significant impact on Orthodox culture, where death is understood not as the end of existence, but as a transition to a future resurrection.

The Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the 12 most important holidays of the Orthodox Church after Easter. It is dedicated to the victory of life over death. By resurrecting, Jesus proved that eternal life beyond the human world is possible for all believers. The Mother of God became the first and one of the few mortals who rose before the Second Coming and the Last Judgment.

Earlier, Philip Ilyashenko, a priest and vice-rector of St. Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities, told Izvestia what can and cannot be done during Peter's Fast.