The book is traditionally attributed to John the Apostle,[1][2] but the precise identity of the author remains a point of academic debate.
[4] William Robertson Nicoll, a Scottish Free Church minister, suggests that in this chapter the writer has created a Christianised version of a Jewish source which "described the birth of the Messiah in terms borrowed from ... cosmological myths [such as] that of the conflict between the sun-god and the dragon of darkness and the deep".
[14] Anglican biblical commentator William Boyd Carpenter writes that "the word sign is preferable to wonder, both in this verse and in Revelation 12:3.
It is a sign which is seen: not a mere wonder, but something which has a meaning; it is not 'a surprise ending with itself', but a signal to arrest attention, and possessing significance; there is 'an idea concealed behind it'.
Michael (Mikha'el in David H. Stern's translation of the Bible into English) appears in the Book of Daniel as "the special patron or guardian angel of the people of Israel".