The So-Called
Protoevangelium in Genesis 3.15
As noted
earlier, the serpent was eventually cursed by God for temping the woman into
disobeying him, and is destined to become the lowest of wild beasts, crawling
on its belly (Gen. 3.14). In so doing it is said to eat dust (cf. Mic. 7.17;
Isa. 65.25), through serpents do not actually do so, but merely appear. At the conclusion
of the cursing of the serpent in Gen. 3.15 God declares to the serpent, ‘I will
put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her
offspring; they shall strike your head, and you will strike their heel’. In its
original meaning, cohering with the character of Gen. 3.14-19 as an aetiology
of the state of the world as the Israelites knew it, this is clearly referring
to the enmity between snakes and human beings, with snakes biting the heels of
human beings and humans treading on snakes’ heads. The same Hebrew verb (šûp)
is used for both humans treading on the head of the serpent and for the serpent
biting the heels of humans. The traditional rendering ‘bruise’ (AV, RV, RSV)
does not seem quite appropriate for the latter action. The best way to
reproduce the meaning of the Hebrew here is to render by ‘strike’ or ‘strike at’
in both places, as it is appropriate for the action of both humans and snakes,
as several modern Bible translations recognize (NRSV, NEB, REB, NAB). The same
Hebrew verb is used in Job 9.17, where Job complains of God, ‘For he crushes
me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause’. In Exod. 32.20
this verb means ‘to grind’. All this is in keeping with the parallel Aramaic
verb šûp, which means ‘to pound, crush grind’. Since ‘to pound’ means ‘to
strike heavily or repeatedly’, translating the verb šûp in Gen. 3.15 as ‘strike’
or strike at’ seems quite appropriate. Anyway, what is here translated ‘they
shall strike’ is literally ‘he shall strike’, the ‘be’ being a collective
singular, referring to Eve’s offspring or seed (Hebrew zera’, a
masculine word). There is no indication that one side would be victorious over
the other in the ongoing hostilities (even if striking the head sounds more
severe than striking the heel), and an eschatological meaning would be
completely out of place in this aetiological context. However, for centuries a
popular Christian understanding of these words understood them as a prediction
of Christ’s victory over Satan, a view first attested c. 180 CE in Irenaeus’s
Against Heresies 3.23.7 and 5.21.1. This passage of Genesis thus became known
as the Protoevangelium, the first declaration of the Gospel. While this
is an interpretation that very few scholars today would entertain, this passage
is still read out at some Christmas services with the traditional understanding
in view, for example, at the annual service of carols and lessons from King’s
College, Cambridge.
It has, however, been suggested by R.
A. Martin that the Greek Septuagint in the third century BCE, which rendered ‘he
will watch your head, and you will watch his heel’, already equated the ‘he’
with the Messiah, in which case this would be the earliest known Messianic
interpretation of Gen. 3.15. The evidence for this view is that the Septuagint
speaks of ‘he’, although rendering ‘offspring ‘or ‘seed’ by the Greek word sperma,
which is neuter, despite the fact that everywhere else in the Septuagint of Genesis
the Hebrew word hû’, ‘he’, is translated by a word of the
appropriate gender in Greek, whether autos, ‘he’, aute, ‘she’, or
auto, ‘it’. The Septuagint’s ‘he’, it has therefore been argued, most
naturally does not refer to Eve’s offspring generally but to a specific
masculine individual and it has been proposed that this is the Messiah. There
is, however, a problem with this view. This is that it would be remarkable if
the Septuagint understood the ‘he’ as referring to the Messiah, when such an
understanding is completely lacking in subsequent Jewish understanding of the
verse. Even though the fulfilment of Gen. 3.15 in the Messianic age is attested
several centuries later in Neofiti, Pseudo-Jonathan and Fragment Targums, the ‘he’
is there still interpreted collectively (of the righteous Jews) and not of the
Messiah. In light of all this it seems more likely that the Septuagint’s ‘he’
is simply an over-literal translation of the Hebrew. Nevertheless, the idea of
the Protoevangelium did eventually emerge from it in the early church.
Finally, it
is interesting to note that in Gen. 3.15 the Latin Vulgate reads ‘she’ (ipsa)
rather than ‘he’ (ipse) for whoever is to strike the head of the serpent.
This is surprising, since Jerome was generally very concerned to adhere closely
to the original Hebrew in his Vulgate translation. Indeed, in his Quaestiones
Hebraicae in Genesim, when commenting on Gen. 3.15, Jerome clearly
presupposes the reading ipse, ‘he’, and makes no reference to the ipsa,
‘she’, reading. The ’she’ of the Vulgate must therefore be seen as a later
scribal alteration of the text, probably undertaken by someone who felt it more
appropriate that the one striking the head of the serpent (Satan) should be equated
with Eve, who has just been mentioned earlier in the verse and being at enmity
with the serpent. However, many mediaeval and later exegetes within the Roman
Catholic Church subsequently understood the Vulgate’s ‘she’ as referring to the
Virgin Mary, who is to join with Jesus in vanquishing the serpent Satan.
However, modern Catholic critical scholars now rightly reject this
understanding of Gen. 3.15 and follow the Hebrew text (cf. NAB, JB, NJB). (John
Day, “The Serpent in the Garden of Eden: Its Background and Role,” in From
Creation to Abraham: Further Studies in Genesis 1-11 [Library of Hebrew
Bible/Old Testament Studies 726; London: T&T Clark, 2022], 57-60)