Three Jewish witnesses: She will crush your head, in Gen 3:15

[Xavier]

Dear friends, do you believe that Almighty God spoke of His Mother as crushing the Serpent in Gen 3:15? St. Jerome, who had access both to original Hebrew texts beside the Masoretic that sometimes have not come down to us, as well as to versions of the Septuagint in Greek, renders it rightly, "She will crush your head". When the Mother of God crushed serpent worship in Guadalupe and introduced Herself as "I am the Virgin Mother of the true God for Whom we must live", and caused so many conversions that there was not time in the day to baptize them all(!), She manifested once more, that God has given to Her in a special way the task of crushing the Serpent's head, as He foretold in Genesis 1000s of years ago.

Taylor Marshall has a nice article on the Hebrew: "Our three best Jewish witnesses to Gen 3:15 interpret the passage as "she shall crush." These are Philo Judaeus, Josephus the roman historian, and Moses Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher. Philo argues that the Hebrew parallel poetry of Gen 3:15 demands the reading of "she shall crush." Josephus, also writing in Greek, describes the passage for us as reading "she shall crush." Then last of all, Maimonides also states that Gen 3:15 teaches that the woman shall crush the head of the serpent." http://taylormarshall.com/2010/12/who-crushes-satans-head-in-genesis-315.html

http://www.newadvent.org/bible/gen003.htm

Latin can be read here beside the Greek: "Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum,", "??? ?????? ???? ??? ????? ??? ??? ??? ????? ??? ???????? ??? ??? ????? ??? ????????? ??? ??? ??? ????? ??? ????????? ????? ????? ??? ??????? ??????? ??? ?? ???????? ????? ???????" Greek seems to translate he, although by interpretation of the Hebrew, and possibly not in the original. The below site makes the case that the Hebrew should be translated she, as the best Hebraic witnesses tell us it was translated in their day, including Philo and Josephus, and as Maimonides confirms from the Grammar, because the seed is not in the singular case. Although as Fr. Haydock says, in either case, the Woman crushes the Serpent through Her Seed, the Virgin Born Son of God, and also us Her spiritual children, nevertheless the textual dispute is not irrelevant, and it would be good if we can prove critically that the text says Her.

"Saint Jerome, in writing the Latin and Greek Vulgates, took the old Testament from the Septuagint but checked the wording against the Hebrew ...
Saint Jerome is Right

The reason St. Jerome is right, and all modern translations are WRONG is because he clearly understood the meaning of CONTEXT of the passage. The context is that there is an enmity between the WOMAN and the SERPENT - and only ONE can rightfully be permitted to CRUSH HIS HEAD. The choices are 1) the woman, or 2) all of her combined offspring designated by the term "it". If there is anything CERTAIN, it is that the OFFSPRING is not a SINGULAR case. Only the WOMAN can be used in the singular case. Therefore, "the former" that the scripture is referring to is, as Jerome accurately translated it, is the woman. "

http://www.unitypublishing.com/SheWillCrush.htm

Thoughts? Anyone has done analysis here on the original Hebrew? Rev 12 gives us a final mention of the Woman and Her seed in the New Testament.

[aquinas138]

I don't know if I think the Vulgate reading is "wrong," but it is alone in that reading among ancient versions. Marshall's arguments would be a lot more helpful if he gave references – plowing through Maimonides and Philo and Josephus without reference doesn't sound like fun.

The LXX indeed says "he," but it is interesting. "He" is a bit of an interpretation, because if it is referring to the "seed," it is shifting grammatical gender since ????????? is neuter. The Syriac Peshitta translates unambiguously in the masculine, like the Masoretic text, and in both languages the "seed" is grammatically masculine as well. The Peshitta witness is significant because the Peshitta OT is 200 years older than the Vulgate (the NT is roughly contemporaneous).

Weirdest of all is the pre-Vulgate Vetus Latina: BOTH ipsa and ipse are found in various places, and the verb for what's going on is some form of servare or observare: "he/she will observe your head, and you will observe his/her heel."

I have looked at the Hebrew many times. The issue with Hebrew is twofold: (1) the vowels are later than the consonantal text, so subject to occasional error, and (2) the pronoun rendered "he." If the Masoretic reading is correct, it is absolutely unambiguously "he." The possible issue (not probable, just possible) is that IF the vowel point is incorrect AND IF a very uncommon form of the feminine pronoun was meant,* then it is possible. But I doubt that very much, personally. Semitic scribes were much more careful than Greco-Latin scribes, especially with sacred texts for which a single misshapen letter was enough to require junking a whole scroll.

*And by "very uncommon," I mean I'm not sure the form actually existed, and that the Masoretes may have given a masculine pronoun a feminine vocalization in a few odd spots to make sense of a passage. That's not what's going on here – the consonants are the masculine form, and it is given the masculine vocalization, as is reasonable.

Unity Publishing's argument about "only one being permitted to crush his head" is ridiculous. They ignore that if the woman is Mary, then the seed is obviously Christ, not every descendant of Eve.

[Vetus Ordo]

The one who crushes the serpent's head is Christ, no-one else.

It couldn't be any simpler.

[Lynne]

It's interesting that Judith and Jael from the Old Testament are considered a prefigurement of Mary. Judith drove a spike through a tyrant's head and saved the Jews. And Jael cut off a tyrant's head and saved the Jews. I guess the Prots don't have the Book of Judith in their bible and I think they excluded the book which talked about Jael. 

[Daniel]

I don't know if I think the Vulgate reading is "wrong," but it is alone in that reading among ancient versions. Marshall's arguments would be a lot more helpful if he gave references – plowing through Maimonides and Philo and Josephus without reference doesn't sound like fun.

A lot of Taylor Marshall's stuff usually comes from Cornelius a Lapide, so I tried looking there for a reference ( http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080014741_C/1080014741_T1/1080014741_T1.html ), and I'm not good enough with Latin to read much of the commentary, but I do see these two references:
Josephus - Antiquities, book I, chapter 3, section 4
Maimonides - More nebochim, P. II, chapter 30
I don't see anything about Philo, though.

The numbering of the Josephus reference seems wrong, but the passage being referring to is this:

Abstulit autem et serpenti uoce, iratus eius [deus] malignitati quam gesserat in Adam et uenenum ei sub lingua ponens, quo[d] esset hominibus inimicum, praecepitque: ut mulier eius capiti plagas inferret, ille uero iacens, hominib<us> esset aduersus, et interitum facilem eis pro uindicta portaret, quem pedibus priuabit ut uolutatusin puluere traheretur.

???????? ?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ????? ????????? ??? ?? ????????? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ??? ????????? ??? ??? ??????? ???? ???????? ????????? ????????? ??? ?????????? ???? ??? ??????? ?????? ??? ??????, ?? ?? ?????? ??? ?? ????? ??? ???? ????????? ???????? ??? ??? ???????? ?????? ???? ??????????? ????????, ????? ?? ????? ??????????? ???????? ???? ??? ??? ??????????? ???????.

He also deprived the serpent of speech, out of indignation at his malicious disposition towards Adam. Besides this, he inserted poison under his tongue, and made him an enemy to men; and suggested to them, that they should direct their strokes against his head, that being the place wherein lay his mischievous designs towards men, and it being easiest to take vengeance on him, that way.

(text from https://sites.google.com/site/latinjosephus/antiquities/book-1 )

I don't know Greek, but the English is certainly not the same as the Latin. I translate the latin thus: 'he commanded that the woman should confer a strike to his head'.

Cornelius a Lapide makes mention that the Greek word '????' is the equivalent to 'ipsa' and is important here, though I don't see '????' anywhere in the Greek text. My guess is, either the Greek text here is corrupted, or else the copy that Cornelius a Lapide was working from was corrupted.


As for Maimonides, I can't find an English copy of his More nebochim so I'm not sure what's in that. Cornelius a Lapide says that Maimonides wrote, 'Sed mirandum magis est, quod serpens cum Eva conjugatur, hoc [---], semen illius cum hujus semine, caput et calcaneus, quod illa (Eva) vincat ipsum (serpentem) in capite, et ille vincat ipsam in calcaneo'.

[aquinas138]

The English is a translation of the Greek, so the Greek and English basically agree; this is the classic and well-regarded Whiston translation. Thackeray's translation in the Loeb Library can be found on Archive.org. He translates it basically the same way; the Greek is on the facing page.

Honestly, the Latin looks like an interpolation. That manuscript is a ninth-century manuscript from northern Italy; it may have been harmonized with the Vulgate reading of Gen. 3:15. Whether that was intentionally done or subconsciously done because of familiarity with the biblical text, I don't know.

[Xavier]

Vetus, not at all, even your Protestant KJV renders it "It".

Yes, Lynne, the Biblical types Judith and Jael confirm and make certain St. Jerome's translation and the Latin Vulgate's rendering of the verse, which is the correct one. And don't forget Queen Esther! The Protestants do have both Esther and Jael, though they lack Judith. Here is Deborah singing the praises of Jael in Judges 5, KJV, "26 She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. 27 At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead."

This is what Mary is going to do to Satan very soon, in time for the Age of Mary, in fulfilment of the commission She received from Her Son. Rev 12 confirms this, as does the passage where it says God will crush Satan under the feet of His Church. It is God who crushes, but through a Woman.

There they sang, God defeated Sisera by the hand of a woman. Here, the Lord God will crush Satan by the Feet of His Mother.

Unity Publishing's argument about "only one being permitted to crush his head" is ridiculous.

Not at all. Till this part, you were making linguistic arguments. But you haven't answered the main argument from the UP site.

They ignore that if the woman is Mary, then the seed is obviously Christ, not every descendant of Eve.

This response is not a linguistic argument, first of all, but an exegetical one. As exegesis, it contradicts Rev 12:17 explicitly. The Seed of the Woman is only used in two places, it can only be used of the Virgin Mother, who gave birth without a human father (the reference is to men in all other cases) The Vulgate has Rev 12:17 "Et iratus est draco in mulierem: et abiit facere prælium cum reliquis de semine ejus, qui custodiunt mandata Dei, et habent testimonium Jesu Christi." The KJV renders it as 12:17 "And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." Of course, the Seed is first and foremost the Virgin Born Son of God, for God made this prophesy because He willed to become the Seed of the Woman without a human father. But it is clearly referring also to all of us, the Virgin Mother's spiritual children, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. So it is in the plural, according to the internal evidence of the Scriptures, and the revelation of St. John the Apostle, and Unity Publishing's argument stands.

Finally, Philo, Josephus etc have great weight even as Jewish scholars. They also were very open to Christ and His Apostles. Philo records the ancient Christian monastic communities, and Josephus plainly testifies to the Resurrection. St. Jerome says this in Illustrious Men, where he speaks primarily of the Apostles, but enlists these two as well. So, their testimony that in their day it was read and understood as She will crush is compelling.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2708.htm

"Philo the Jew, an Alexandrian of the priestly class, is placed by us among the ecclesiastical writers on the ground that, writing a book concerning the first church of Mark the evangelist at Alexandria, he writes to our praise, declaring not only that they were there, but also that they were in many provinces and calling their habitations monasteries."

"Josephus, the son of Matthias, priest of Jerusalem ... In the eighth book of his Antiquities he most openly acknowledges that Christ was slain by the Pharisees on account of the greatness of his miracles, that John the Baptist was truly a prophet, and that Jerusalem was destroyed because of the murder of James the apostle."

I think one can comment on Taylor Marshall's site or mail him for the reference. I'll try to get it for you.

Daniel, the Latin passage you mentioned in Josephus could be translated God "made him an enemy to men, commanding; that the Woman should deliver a blow to his head". 

Edit: Your intuition was right, Daniel: "Cornelius à Lapide says that another early Jewish witness to the "she" reading is the historian Josephus, who died around 101 A.D.."Whence also Josephus (Book 1, Chap. 3) reads it this way as our translator writes. For he says: 'He ordained that the woman should inflict wounds on his head' from which it is evident that Josephus in his day read aute , that is to say, "she. "Josephus and Philo wrote in Greek, but knew Hebrew, so their testimony witnesses to the fact that both the Septuagint and the Hebrew of their day read "she." http://www.marycoredemptrix.com/coredemptrix.html

[aquinas138]

Xavier, I understand that Philo and Josephus are illustrious men. I am saying that the Greek text of Josephus does not say what you, Marshall, and Lapide say it says. The Latin version says that, and it does not agree with the Greek.

As to the rest, I'll respond another time.

[Vetus Ordo]

This is the text in Hebrew:



Jerome's translation of "she" instead of "he" is merely interpretative.

The serpent's head was crushed at Golgotha: this is the very center of the Christian faith. The Blessed Virgin only crushes the serpent's head in a secondary sense, as the vehicle through which the Logos became flesh. The one actually crushing the serpent is Christ.

[Michael Wilson]

I thought that in the Hebrew, there were no articles, therefore there is no "He" or "She" in the text, only "it"?

[Vetus Ordo]

I thought that in the Hebrew, there were no articles, therefore there is no "He" or "She" in the text, only "it"?

"He", "she" and "it" aren't articles. They are pronouns which Semitic languages, including Hebrew, share with our own.

Hebrew doesn't have an indefinite article (Eng. "a", "an") but it does have a definite article (Eng. "the").

[aquinas138]

I thought that in the Hebrew, there were no articles, therefore there is no "He" or "She" in the text, only "it"?

In Vetus Ordo's image, the word third from the left on the second line is the word in question: ???? (hû). This is the masculine pronoun. The normal form of the feminine pronoun is ???? (hî). Note that the middle consonant is different. The dot in each word indicates the vowel sound – the raised dot in the masculine indicates the "u" and the sublinear dot in the feminine indicates the "i." The dots are a later development in the written language than the letters themselves; the text would have been originally written without them. However, anyone who is familiar with Semitic languages would read the word in Gen. 3:15 as hû, that is, as masculine, even without the vowel dot, absent a clear reason to do otherwise.

Now, there are a few places where the text has the rarer, archaic form ???? - that is, spelled like the masculine, vocalized like the feminine. It is found only in the Pentateuch, alongside the more common form, except for one occurrence in Isaiah. There are two instances of this archaic form in Genesis 3, actually, adding to the confusion.

[Before continuing, I freely admit I may well be wrong in my conclusion. Though I am familiar with Hebrew, my specialty is not in that language. And this is admittedly a convoluted issue.]

In 3:12, the "she" in "[she] gave me of the tree" is this rarer form, as it is in 3:20 in "she was the mother of all the living." Now, you could go one of two ways in understanding 3:15:

(1) You could posit that the original unpointed text had the rarer form and that it was commonly misunderstood as the masculine, even though it was supposed to be the rarer feminine form, referring to the woman; the Old Latin (in some manuscripts) and the Vulgate recognized this while other ancient translations did not. The presence of the rarer form in this very chapter indicates that this is at least possible (but maybe not probable). Or,

(2) The Masoretic text is correct. Typological interpretation, the pronoun being taken as feminine in at least some manuscripts in the pre-Vulgate Old Latin, perhaps a Hebrew manuscript pointed feminine, etc., could have led St. Jerome to read it as feminine, given the rare form being present in nearby verses, even though this is a mistake.

Personally, I think (2) is more likely. The fact that no version of the OT outside the Latin tradition preserves this rendering, even in variants, is compelling to me. It doesn't affect my faith either way, as I don't believe the two readings intrinsically incompatible.

[Kephapaulos]

It sounds like from what you said, aquinas138, that Genesis 3 then expresses in the rare Hebrew feminine pronoun form the significance of God's promise of the New Eve undoing what the First Eve did. Also, the fact that the Latin church preserves this ancient rendering, as then even done so by St. Jerome, is a testimony to its uniqueness of teaching the true doctrine of Christ and upholding the One True Religion of Catholicism. The unique pronoun rendering seems to also meet halfway in vowel usage between the commonly used masculine and feminine forms you showed, aquinas 138. It expresses the work of Our Lord and Our Lady either both or each crushing the head of the serpent.

St. Jerome had manuscripts at his disposal older than the Masoretic text though. I had learned he used a manuscript recommended by a Hebrew scholar even though not quite the original manuscipts. St. Alphonsus Liguori, whose feast is today, had pointed out in his writing about the Psalms that the later Hebrew manuscripts had deficiencies. The Jews would have claimed there was kind of inspired mystical change in the copying of the texts through the centuries. It seems we also cannot completely rely on the Masoretic text then. What about the Dead Sea scrolls too?

[Gardener]

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain many fragments of Genesis, but none specifically have 3:15. The closest ends at verse 14.

[Michael Wilson]

"Articles", "pronouns"; what's the difference? As you can tell, Grammar isn't my strong suit.