www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Scripture and Patristic Writings Genesis 3:15

My New American Catholic Bible (1950) has this passage (apparently the same as the Vulgate of St Jerome) as 'I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel' Protestant bibles and even newer Catholic versions have translated the 4th line as 'HE will crush your head'. Some Catholic theologians today have gone so far as to say that St Jerome was in error, while others like Father Gruner on the Fatima Network, claim that St Jerome was told by a Jewish convert that 'SHE will crush your head' was the original wording, and that rabbi's had deliberately changed the passage in the early days of the church, apparently to confuse Christians. So far the best explanation I can find for the passage is 'THEY will crush your head'. Can anyone shed any additional light on this controversial passage ?

http://www.petersnet.net/most/getchap.cfm?WorkNum=216&ChapNum=5

http://www.themoorings.org/apologetics/VirginBirth/Isaiah.html

I am posting these so I can go back and read them for myslef also. But as I have studied and read so often, you have to go to a word or another scripture for your answer.

Rose

My Septuagint translation reads as follows:

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, he shall watch (keep) against your head, and you shall watch (keep) against his heel." (Gen 3:16 LXX)

The New American Bible makes a note that "the antecedent for he and his is the collective noun offspring, i.e., all the descendants of the woman, a more exact rendering of the sacred writer's words would be, "They will strike ... at their heels."

My TaNaK edition reads:

"I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and hers;
They shall strike at your head,
And you shall strike at their heel." (Gen 3:15 Leningrad Codex)

The issue of descendants must not be overlooked. The entire book of Genesis deals with 'seed.' Much of what goes on between man and woman (a falling out) in Gen 2:17-3:24 is later reflected in the story of Cain and Abel (a falling out between siblings). In both cases we have a breakdown of family and social structure. Humanity tends towards corruption.

Joe

I would stay with the older translation. For example the Douay-Rheims Version says:

"I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."

Read Revelation Chapter 12:1-17 and see how the serpent attacks the woman. You might see Rev. 12 differently now if you keep the Gen 3:15 as "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head"

The woman and the serpent are enemies, always. That is one of the reasons why I believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Mary without sin is at TOTAL 100% enmity with the serpent.

BradM

These are all good and pious attempts at a Christian translation - but the translators knew nothing about a cosmology, how to read it, and how it is structured.

Adam (Man) represents our intellect and the Woman (re-named to Eve only after the fall) represents our will. Once the will has made the break with reality (Providence) there is division between it and natural reality. The image the writer is giving is a well know image of a man, perhaps walking on a trail, coming upon a deadly snake. In the encounter, the man and snake are at odds and the man raises his foot looking for the moment to crash his heel on the snakes head to kill it... while the snake is also looking for the right moment to bite the nearest part of the intruder (the heel of his raised foot). The text does not give a resolution - (�he shall crush his head�) at all� it rather portrays a continual and unresolved tension between the man (intellect) and the drives and purposes of the snake (the inner principles of nature). The subject of the surrounding text continues to portray this continual tension between the intellect and will - and man�s environment of nature. Man�s union with reality (Eden and Providence) is now broken. The Hebrew tense surrounding the action does not donate something that will take place in the future - but rather something taking place - now - as if to say it is a continuing and unresolved tension.

The surrounding text (all supportive of this continuing and unresolved tension) all portray this same tension as un-resolved.

(from my notes)
The 'seed' of the woman is mentioned. This section gave me trouble for days. A few celebrated Christian early fathers saw this as a first announcement of the Christ born of a virgin with no earthly father. The Semitic view is that the man gives the seed, it is the man's seed, yet assuming translations render this as the woman's seed. A virgin conception? Not the man's seed but the woman's alone? However, we must note that the first description or name in the story is adam and woman (universal intellect and will) next it is changed to ish and ishah (husband and wife) and finally it is changed to Adam and Eve as the individualized and particular sensate people. Uncreated, spiritual creation and sensate creation according to the levels of the cosmogony triad structure.

In proper context the names of Ish and ishah ( husband and wife) automatically imply the marriage union, the passing of seed, intimate knowledge of each other. It is the woman's seed only in the sense of a container for the man's seed. It is the thoughts of the intellect which are incubated in the will and are finally born into actions.

We already recognize in the text that the woman is portrayed as having been seduced by the serpent, his seed is within her as well as that of her husband. She has two seeds and it is between these two that there will be enmity ("between your seed and her seed") and this idea is played out later in Cain and Abel as in the Hebrew they are twins or �twain� (the one that is two). The concept here is that for the first time, the will is going to experience conflicting desires. Before the fall, in the intuitive union of the garden, the will experience no conflict... now the will is going to experience conflicting desires, being pulled in two ways over one subject. The gospels later portray this as the man who is possessed a legion (100 different voices). The woman is not a virgin for it is clear the serpent has seduced, gone into, and planted seed, she had played the harlot. - the prostitute of Revelations. So what is called 'her seed' is probably the man's seed of which it is natural that the Ish (husband) had intercourse with Ishah (wife) as the intellect knowing the will before the fall. In the spiritual sense, for the intellect and will to move, an intercourse between them must take place. The idea is that the intellect and the will know each other in a union which produces off-spring, male off-spring representing intellectual thoughts, personifications, exactly as Cain and Abel later represent. So this enmity between the seeds is probably the rise of conflicting desires in the will. The symbols of "he will crush your head with his heel and you shall strike at his heel" is a desert life scene, we can see a shepherd with foot raised to aim his heel at a snake's head, and the snake raised in poise looking to strike not at the leather covered sole but the unprotected heel... both in tension and looking for the right instant to strike first. There is no indication in this picture that the woman's seed has won the battle, the scene is one of dynamic stand-off. (SEE: Letter of James)

Dear RayK,

But we do know who'll win in the end, don't we?

Alex

God - never lost. Can not lose. There is no contest. There is but one God and no other god fights him. Who opposes him? What act might come into creation which the good God did not approve of and will to bring into be-ing? What item or event has come to be without him?


No one battles for our souls - as if God could loose.

Our one choice (since we have been given free will) is to do the will of God or not.

And what is the Will of God? It is simply put - Providence. Or put into modern terms - Reality - a God driven and authored - reality. The concept of reality being authored and directed and governed by an intelligent nature which we call God - should be restored to the term - reality.

The struggle is not �out there� it is within us. There is nothing �out there� which comes into a man and defiles him. Evil is not - out there. Signs of evil is �out there� but it can not hurt us. Nothing can harm us without the full intentions of God for it to work toward our good. Where is the harm in that? The struggle is within out own hearts and mind - and we initiated it. When we leave reality - we take into ourselves - un-reality. And when we find ourselves separated from reality - we think we can take portions of it and build a way back.

Reality is - the Will of God come to us. And reality is an experience (it is not analytical rules) it cannot be captured by thought - it can only be experienced as the events of - now. And this reality is Providential - that means - it is all-providing. Our fault (which we all do out of free will and we were not forced to do) is that we decided at some point to do - self-provide. Divorcing the chain of events that we witness life to be made of - divorcing that chain from the origin of God - we set about to arrange our own events in order to reap what we thought would be our own benefit. We did this as a whole (total humanity) and we did this as a group, and we did this each one as individual humans. And instead of coming out to face God - we hide inside behind reasoned out justifications for why we were forced and fooled to do what we did.

Neither heaven nor �eden� (all-providence) has gone anywhere. They are both still here. The kingdom of heavens is always - upon you. But do we allow it to govern us?

When Genesis is broken down to its meaning - it boils right back to what we already knew in our hearts. God simply knows we need complicated ways to understand it - we need images and signs and symbols because - like men coming out of a dark room - we prefer not to experience full sunlight but wish to do it in timid steps.

He allows us plenty of idols while on the road back to Eden.

-ray

To add more confussion to the matter, I had once read that the text of the Septuagint is in the neuter and therefore should read, "It will crush your head." as the King James Version Translates it.
The latin vulgate of Jerome of course translates it as "she" implying a foreshadowing of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the plan of God to overcome the serpent. Thus the case for the immaculate conception. Eve's disobedience was to be undone by the obedience of another virgin.
The the latin fathers saw the play on the words in latin Eva, Ave it reverses.
Stephanos I

Lawrence,
Here is what I have since discovered.
The "he" is a masculine personal pronoun in the Hevrew (hu') (there is no neuter personal pronoun in Hebrew) but because it is referring to seed which is also masculine. However, it is believed to be used in a collective sense (i.e. all descendants) by most scholars and so they say it should be translated "it."
The LXX however, uses the masculine instead of the neuter personal prononun. The Vulgate "she" came not through St.Jerome, but St. Ambrose who relied on Philo Judaeus who argued that the pronoun should pair with the woman (Eve) rather than the seed due to what he saw as a law of parallelism.

So there you have it.
Interesting eh?

Stephanos I

Last I heard, Father Gruner was under censure by the Vatican for various claims he made regarding Fatima, so quite frankly, I would take anything he says with a grain of salt.

My footnotes in the 1st edition of the Jerusalem Bible follows Stephanos's last post, Hebrew = it(used in the JB), Greek = he " the words of the Greek version therefore express the messianic interpretation held by many of the Fathers, and Latin = she " since in the messianic interpretation of our text, the Messiah and His Mother appear together, the pronoun has been taken to refer to Mary, this application is current in the Church ".

note: NAB uses the Greek version.

james

Someone once said that, �It is through the Seed of Seth, and not Abel, that the pronouncement against the serpent will be fulfilled.�

Take a look at the entire book of Genesis. The notion of �seed� runs through its entire pages from 3:15 to 49:8,10, from Eve to Judah. The word 'seed' is used 229 times in the Old Testament; 59 times just in Genesis. It can mean offspring, children, semen, people, descendents ...

The lineage traced through the chapters of this book point to a person in other books, namely David.

The New Testament also considers the �seed.� The �seed� is Christ.

Joe

Yes, but let us also look at he word "woman" in Genesis 3:15 the next time we see that word is at the foot of the Cross. Mary is made the "new eve" the "mother of all the spiritual living!"
As the Bible begins, so let us look at how it ends!
The "Woman" is again there! There is a struggle between the woman and her offspring and the dragon.
Rev 12 :17 "Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who the the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus."

I think we can see the clear connection.
Stephanos I

Through the prayer of the Mother of God, O Savior save our souls.

Hello again - Joe

May I take this opurtunity to offer this...

I was going to comment on something like this anyway so here it goes - in a discussion fashion.

There are many things that have not made it into either the old or new testament - simply because the understanding of them was taken for granted. This has much to do with the great lose of biblical antiquities (the understanding of difficult portions of scriptures) which things, at the time, were just common knowledge and no need to explain. Such of course would be the appointment of Peter - which was such common knowledge and automatically accepted as �of course!� by the early church that there was no need or thought that someday that common knowledge would ever be in jeopardy or in argument.

No one need explain to a real Jew of the time - what the title of Son of David meant. No one needed to explain that the �Rock� was the Temple mount and no one need to explain the �clouds of heaven� was the mysterious presence of the Shekina Light (Holy Spirit or 'Presence of God') that descended upon Mount Sinai, was the pillar of �smoke� that led them in the desert of Exodus, was the burning fire which passed through the two halves of the split calf, was the cloud that filled the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, and was that which split the curtain when Jesus was crucified. And every Jew understood immediately that for the father to run and greet the prodigal son he would have had to lift his garments and thereby exposed his bare legs (a sign of shame) which would have been the most shocking part of the story to a Jew (his father loved him so much that he he would shame himself in public to run to him!). Nor did the vow of the Nasserites, where the head was shaved during a Temple ceremony - and the hair then let to grow wild (un-touched by anything other than Providence) as a sign that the vowed person has thrown his mind and body upon the will of Providence. John the Baptist was the perfect fulfillment of the vow of the Nasserites, wild hair, unwashed, clothing not man-made but providided by Providence through nature, eating only what nature and Providence provided (that man had no part in growing) etc. THIS - was a prophet for sure!

The Line of The Seed - the �Blessing�

We have already touched on the title Son of David - else where. Explaining that it was the official title given to that son of David which had been selected by the last Son of David. The term �first-born� here actually being �first-fruits� and meaning - the best of the bunch. As I have said elsewhere, the genealogy of Matthew is a trace of this line of Son�s of David and the point of the trace is to prove that that appointment fell upon Jesus - making him the only legitimate �candidate� for the throne of Israel� the rightful King according to the will of Providence.

Well know to the Jews was the line of the �seed� of which you are talking about. It was called the �blessing�.

The �Blessing� was passed down the line of Adam in a Providential way. The appointment (somewhat similar to the way the Son of David was passed on) was done not by the Farther (or King etc..) but by a recognition of Providential signs and Providential appointment. - such as what took place when God (through Samuel) appointed David the next King and none of Jesse�s other sons. It is probably that Jesse had been a Son of Adam and that appointment passed to his son David. It was either a prophet of the High Priest which divined the appointment.

J Thur would know the line better than I (saving me the trouble to look it up) but it went through Seth (and not Able) and through Jacob (not Esau) etc� and I do not remember which of Noe�s sons (the third?) and so on down the line. While the King had the power to appoint the next King out of all his sons - only Providence (through the prophet or High Priest divining the signs) had the right to appoint the next Son of Adam.

In a human sense - this line was almost useless. In the human sense of it would only bloom - once - in the messiah. The messiah (that seed in which the promise would be fulfilled) would be from this line - and all other Sons of Adam before him were like �place holders�.

I do not remember the episode very well - but there is a time in which, I believe, the Temple had been taken and the High Priest went into hiding with the Urim and Thirum (I certainly have misspell that - the Oracular Stones which were in a box hung upon the High Priest�s chest) and it was either the stones or the rod of Aaron that was used to determine God�s will of upon whom the �Blessing� was to pass. I do not remember which - but the point is that Divine Providence (through divination) alone held the power to appoint upon whom the Blessing fell.

The appointment of the Son of David could be done through the appointment of a Queen Mother. And so it was that Solomon was appointed as Son of David by way of his mother (Bethsehba) being appointed as the next Queen Mother. Her son - (Solomon) would be the Son of David by way of her own appointment as the next Queen Mother.

So too did the line of the Son of Adam travel. I believe that it was Catherine Emmerick who vision�ed the appointment, by a prophet, of Mary, having been selected as a child to be the future mother who would birth the next Son of Adam (the Blessing being passed through the appointment of Mary). While the historical content of visions cannot be trusted - I do believe that the vision reflects what was held to be true and of common knowledge within the Catholic world - at the time in which Emmerick lived.

I believe it was also St. Catherine Emmerick (a remarkable visionary) who details the line of the �Blessing/� very accurately. Unlike most visionaries where the symbolic context is paramount - Catherine Emmerich was astoundingly accurate within what could be compared to historical facts and Jewish tradition and culture. Some of the details in here visions were only found to be surprisingly accurate - only after her death as research brought these traditions to light.

In any event - the line of the Son�s of David, and the line of the Son�s of Adam - converged within Jesus. Matthew chronicles only the Son of David line and I do not know of any records (extra-biblical) which chronicles or traces the Son of Adam line. Emmerich may have done so - and if she did I am sure her line would have been confirmed by Church authorities.

So we must take the gospels word for it that Jesus was the legitimate holder of both appointments. The convergence of these two line having never have happened before - and - of course - not since.


No matter the above deatils, this is the way I see it: is that the line of the Seed - is the same as the line of the Blessing - is the same as the title Son of Adam, which fell upon Christ and converged with Son of David - giving Jews proof positive that Jesus was the messiah as well as the only rightful King of the Jews.

-ray

Ray,

All the data would conclude the same. Very good.

It was Judah who received a much longer and greater blessing from Jacob. This helps us orient us in the direction that the genealogies, promises, blessings, and seed pointed us to. Jesus was the fulfilment.

God bless,
Joe Thur