In his book chronicling the history of the popes, the Roman Catholic historian Eamon Duffy notes, “the definition embarrassed many Roman Catholic theologians, since it was unsupported in scripture and was unknown in the early Church.”4 In response to this challenge, there have been waves of scholarly efforts to find information about Mary’s ultimate fate. Yet many Roman Catholic scholars concede that such efforts have produced no historical or biblical foundation for the assumption of Mary. In his book on Mary, Duffy puts it more plainly: “there is, clearly, no historical evidence whatever for
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