Commenting on Gen 3:15, William G. Most offered the following defence of the “woman” being Mary, the mother of Jesus, and not Eve:
Objections to the Marian Interpretation.
Objection 1. It is a general principle of interpretation that in one and the same context a given word must everywhere have the same sense. Furthermore, a prophecy must be explained according to its context. But the word woman elsewhere in this context refers to Eve. Hence it must mean her also in vs. 15. Mary is nowhere mentioned in the context.
Answer: The above principle is incomplete. If two different speakers use the same word in the same context, the sense need not necessarily be the same. E.g., in Isa. 28:10-13, compare the words of the drunkards in vs. 10 to those of the Prophet in vs. 13. Or again, in John 2:19-21 the word temple is used in one sense by Our Lord, in another by the Jews. But in Gen. 3:15 there are two speakers; the human writer, and the words of God Himself to Adam and Eve. As to the context of a prophecy, consider Isa. 42:1 and 19. In vs. 1, the word servant refers to the Messias, while in vs. 19 it refers to blind Israel. Now Gen. 3:15 certainly refers to the Messias. Is it out of context to find the Mother of the Messias with Him?
Furthermore, in interpreting Gen. 3:15, we can learn from St. Peter the Apostle himself. On the day of the first Pentecost, Peter gave a sermon in which he quoted the prophecy made in Ps. 15:
. . . because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer the Holy One to see corruption. (Acts 2:27, citing Ps. 15:10)
Now in this Ps. 15 Christ is not even mentioned. The Psalmist speaks in the first person, and so seems undoubtedly to mean himself. Yet St. Peter tells us that he does not mean himself, but Christ. Why? Because the sense of the part of the Psalm simply could not fit David:
Ye men, brethren, let me freely speak to you of the patriarch David; that he died, and was buried; and his sepulchre is with us to this present day . . . he was a prophet . .. he spoke of the resurrection of Christ. For neither was he left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption. (Acts 2:29-31)
David’s flesh obviously did see corruption; hence he cannot be the one meant in the prophecy. Christ alone fulfilled it, so argues St. Peter. There are many prophecies to which this technique could be applied, and has been applied by the Fathers of the Church.
Similarly, in Gen 3:15, although the prophecy may seem to refer to Eve, yet she surely does not fulfill it, except perhaps in a very imperfect sense. (William G. Most, Mary in Our Life [Cork: The Mercier Press Limited, 1955], 269-70)
Interestingly, such would support the Book of Mormon which presents pre-Christian knowledge of the Mother of the Messiah within the context of Messianic prophecy (e.g., 1 Nephi 11; Mosiah 3:8; Alma 7:10).
It should be noted that Most tried to bring in the concept of the complete sinlessness of Mary, a la the Immaculate Conception, into this passage, something the text does not require. For more on this dogma, see my two chapters discussing the Immaculate Conception in light of the Bible and Christian history in Behold the Mother of My Lord: Towards a Mormon Mariology.
