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Mary Queen Mother & Queen of Heaven: Biblical?

Mary Queen Mother & Queen of Heaven: Biblical?

Last updated on: June 13, 2026 at 1:11 pm by Dave Armstrong

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Mary Queen Mother & Queen of Heaven: Biblical? 2026-06-13T13:11:04-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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This is the initial transcript for the video, “Mary Queen of Heaven — What Protestants Get Wrong About This Catholic Title” (Catholic Bible Highlights, with Kenny Burchard, 3-20-26).

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Evangelical Protestant theologian Kenneth J. Collins and Anglican philosopher Jerry L. Walls wrote a book called, Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2017). When the book came out in October 2017, I made 13 critiques of it on my blog: all ignored of course. What else is new with critics of the Catholic Church?

Collins, in his chapter 15 about Mary, objected to Catholics referring to Mary as the Queen of Heaven. In footnote 33 for the chapter, readers are referred to “pagan use” of the term in Jeremiah, chapters 7 and 44.

Jeremiah 44:15-17 (RSV) Then all the men who knew that their wives had offered incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who dwelt in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: [16] “As for the word which you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. [17] But we will do everything that we have vowed, burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, . . .

Several sky or moon-goddesses were worshiped by polytheists in the ancient near east: for example, Ishtar, Isis, Astarte, and Asherah. The Protestant Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, under “Queen of Heaven” held that these practices, condemned by God through Jeremiah, were most closely connected to the Assyrian goddess Ishtar, and may have come into Judah via King Manasseh. We read in 2 Kings 21:3 that Manasseh:

. . . erected altars for Ba’al, and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them.

King Josiah’s reform ended such idolatrous practices, as we read in 2 Kings 4-15.

Collins is clearly playing the same tired old game that contra-Catholics and anti-Catholics have played for over 500 years: trying to connect Catholicism to ancient heathenism by any comparison that has the slightest similarity. Nothing, of course, that Catholics teach about Mary has any relation to the worship of sky-goddesses by backslidden Israelites 2600 years ago.

I don’t think Collins claimed that we worship Mary as a goddess (though I may have missed it), but many anti-Catholics make that claim. What they never do, however, is prove from any of our documents that we have ever proclaimed such a blasphemy. They simply repeat the lie, and that’s enough for millions of people – profoundly ignorant of Catholicism — eager to gobble up any gossip or slander, no matter how ridiculous.

So Collins protests the fact that Vatican II, in the document, Lumen Gentium, section 66, “without any biblical warrant” and supposedly drawing only from “what it has called Holy Tradition” proclaimed that Mary was “exalted above all angels and men to a place second only to her Son, as the most holy Mother of God . . . She is rightly honored by a special cult in the Church.”

Then he implied that it was beyond absurd that we declared that Mary sits at Jesus’ right hand, without, according to him, “any” biblical basis. That’s fascinating, since Jesus Himself “place[d]” the entire class of saved people “at his right hand” according to Matthew 25:33. That’s fine, yet he cries foul if we dare believe that Jesus might place His own mother at His right side in heaven. This is what unreasonable bias does to a mind.

But there is much more about this in the Bible. The Queen of Heaven motif in Catholicism doesn’t come from the “queen of heaven” goddesses, but rather, the office of the “Queen Mother” — which is described in the Old Testament. One can read about this in any Protestant Bible dictionary or encyclopedia. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia has a long article on it, which is available online (I cite most of it). See the link to that below. Here is a good chunk of that:

The gebhirah [pronounced gheb-ee-raw], or queen mother, occupied a position of high social and political importance; she took rank almost with the king. When Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, desired “to speak unto him for Adonijah,” her son “rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a throne to be set for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right hand” (1 Kings 2:19). And again, in 2 Kings 24:15, it is expressly stated that Nebuchadnezzar carried away the king’s mother into captivity; Jeremiah calls her gebhirah (29:2). The king was Jehoiachin (Jeconiah, Jeremiah 29:2), and his mother’s name was Nehushta (2 King 24:8). This was the royal pair whose impending doom the prophet was told to forecast (Jeremiah 13:18). Here again the queen mother is mentioned with the king, thus emphasizing her exalted position. . . .

And finally, the political importance of the gebhirah is illustrated by the fact that in the Books of Kings, with two exceptions, the names of the Jewish kings are recorded together with those of their respective mothers; . . .

Then the article names 17 of them (out of 19 kings listed in the book). Here’s another Bible passage about the Queen Mother at the king’s “right hand”:

Psalms 45:1, 9 . . . I address my verses to the king; . . . [9] daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor; at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

The parallels to Jesus (also a king: of Whom King David was the major prototype) and His mother are obvious. Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (“Queen”) states regarding gebhirah that “in Judah and Israel apparently was always the mother or grandmother of the king” (1 Ki 15:13; 2 Ki 10:13; Jer 13:18; 29:2 [cf. 2 Ki 24:15] ). The New Bible Dictionary (“Queen”) confirms all this as well, adding:

The most important woman in the royal household, in Israel and Judah as in neighbouring lands, was the queen-mother . . . and [she] sat at the monarch’s right hand . . .

Collins describes the Catholic belief in the “enthronement” and “crowning” of Mary in heaven: reiterated by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, Ad Caeli Reginam (October 1954). He thinks that that is unbiblical as well. Yet New Bible Dictionary informs us that Nehushta, mother of King Jehoiachin was “crowned”. Here is the passage:

Jeremiah 13:18 Say to the king and the queen mother: “Take a lowly seat, for your beautiful crown has come down from your head.”

And there is also Revelation 12:1:

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars;

Although the passage has a double application to the Church, we believe it refers to Mary also, since verse 5 states that her child “is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne.” The phrase, “rod of iron” is applied to Jesus in the messianic passage Psalms 2: and also in Revelation 19:15.

Thus, we now have seen evidence for the sublime power of the position of Queen Mother, the fact that she sits at the king’s right hand, on another throne, and is even crowned. If this is true of mothers of kings, why not also of the mother of the King of Kings: the Mother of God the Son? It’s perfectly plausible, fitting, expected, and not in the least contrary to this relevant data that we have presented.

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KEY PROTESTANT SOURCE

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, “Queen Mother”

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