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

Started by Xavier, August 01, 2018, 12:14:11 AM

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Xavier

Thanks, PatronofHeaven. Good post.

Yes, Josephus, Maimonides and others, interpret she will crush as referring to Eve. Catholic Faith, of course, assures us it refers to the New Eve, namely our Blessed Mother Mary. The text cannot refer to old Eve because she was not the One Who crushed the enemy but was deceived by him. The Protestant KJV translated as "it" because they were uncertain.

Just imagine if Protestants had the translation right, "She will crush your head ...". That may just help crush their Protestantism! And bring them back to the Church. Anyway, one reason God willed to crush the Serpent by His Mother's Heel is to humble his pride to the utmost.

"As St. Louis de Montfort9 wrote: "Satan, being proud, suffers infinitely more from being beaten and punished by a little and humble handmaid of God, and her humility humbles him more than the divine power." https://missiomagazine.com/shall-crush-head-genesis-315/

Satan and his devils cause and exacerbate all the sins and evils in the world. God's promise is an assurance Our Lady will defeat them.

Bible verses on walking blamelessly with God, after being forgiven from our former sins. Some verses here: https://dailyverses.net/blameless

"[2] He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice:[3] He that speaketh truth in his heart, who hath not used deceit in his tongue: Nor hath done evil to his neighbour: nor taken up a reproach against his neighbours.(Psalm 14)

"[2] For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man."(James 3)

"[14] And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; [15] That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world." (Phil 2:14-15)

PatronOfHeaven

#31
I find it interesting though that even in Josephus' works there is a war over the interpretation of Genesis 3:15.

Thomas Lodge translated the first english version from the Latin and French in London in 1602 and wrote. 
Quote"... declaring him an enemy both to man and woman; whom he commanded to bruise the head of the serpent,..."

Ebenezar Thompson, from the "Original Greek" in 1777
Quote"...branded him as the avowed enemy of mankind; further predicting, that Eve should tread upon his head,..."

What if Thomas Lodge mis-punctuated his translation and the right rendering is
Quote"... declaring him an enemy both to man(kind); and THE woman whom he commanded to bruise the head of the serpent,..."

Either way, both of these translations make reference to a feminine subject (woman/Eve), which the Whiston translation, the Thackeray translation and the Feldman translation all omit.

aquinas138

Quote from: PatronOfHeaven on January 24, 2019, 11:41:29 PM
I find it interesting though that even in Josephus' works there is a war over the interpretation of Genesis 3:15.

Thomas Lodge translated the first english version from the Latin and French in London in 1602 and wrote. 
Quote"... declaring him an enemy both to man and woman; whom he commanded to bruise the head of the serpent,..."

Ebenezar Thompson, from the "Original Greek" in 1777
Quote"...branded him as the avowed enemy of mankind; further predicting, that Eve should tread upon his head,..."

What if Thomas Lodge mis-punctuated his translation and the right rendering is
Quote"... declaring him an enemy both to man(kind); and THE woman whom he commanded to bruise the head of the serpent,..."

Either way, both of these translations make reference to a feminine subject (woman/Eve), which the Whiston translation, the Thackeray translation and the Feldman translation all omit.

The Thompson is more interesting, but I'm still at a loss as to where he gets it. I already mentioned that the Latin editions of Josephus support the Vulgate reading (I am inclined to think this is due to a harmonization with the Western scriptures), so Lodge's reading is unsurprising. If Thompson is actually from the original Greek, that is interesting, but Whiston and Thackeray aren't omitting this — their Greek text does not say it, and so their translation is accurate.

As to your speculation about punctuation in Lodge, it's not just a matter of fiddling with punctuation (which Josephus and ancient translations would not have used anyway); the endings of the words would have to be completely different to support your speculation. I don't have the Latin edition handy, so I can't make a comment about how much would have to be changed.
What shall we call you, O full of grace? * Heaven? for you have shone forth the Sun of Righteousness. * Paradise? for you have brought forth the Flower of immortality. * Virgin? for you have remained incorrupt. * Pure Mother? for you have held in your holy embrace your Son, the God of all. * Entreat Him to save our souls.

Maximilian

Here is a fascinating video:



It has lots of interesting information on a range of Biblical subjects. I learned a lot.

But most of all it points out that there were good motives for the Jews to corrupt the Masoretic text. St. Paul refers to Jews in his own day who were falsifying genealogies in order to discredit Jesus as the new High Priest.


Gardener

Do we know that the Jews were falsifying genealogies for that particular reason (Jesus as new High Priest), or if they were referencing the given genealogies in regards to Joseph or Mary and contending with them as such? When did maternal lineage become a determination for Jewish identity, and what, if any, effect would that have on Levitical/Melchizedech claims?

The argument in the video stems from a theory it seems, and he is using Paul to justify the theory. But what proof is there that such a theory was what Paul was referencing?
"If anyone does not wish to have Mary Immaculate for his Mother, he will not have Christ for his Brother." - St. Maximilian Kolbe

Kreuzritter

#35
There are all sorts of shenanigans in the Old Testament, and not just in the Masoretic like with Psalm 110 (109) verse 3.

Take this one from Isaiah 6:13

"Yet   ???????
(ve·'o·vd)
there will be a tenth portion   ?????????????
(a·si·ri·yah,)
in it, And it will again   ?????????
(ve·sha·vah)
be [subject] to burning,   ????????
(le·va·'er;)
Like a terebinth   ?????????
(ka·'e·lah)
or an oak   ????????????
(ve·cha·'al·lo·vn)
Whose   ???????
(a·sher)

stump   
remains when   

it is felled.   ??????????????
(be·shal·le·chet)
The holy   ???????
(ko·desh)   
seed   ??????
(ze·ra)
is its stump.

Yup. That tenth portion remaining bit and it being burned again doesn't make sense. But when you compare Asherah ????????? which would more likely have been Ashratah with "a·si·ri·yah" and "a·sher", and consider the "Asherah" in the temple was the image of a tree which was indeed burned, you're presented with a text that begins to make perfect sense, and when you start thinking about the Tree of Life imagery surrounding Mary and Jesus as the holy seed and fruit of her womb, and that le·va·'er can also refer to consuming by eating, you'd better get ready to take a trip down the rabbit hole. But I don't want to speculate, and thanks to the New Testament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ resotred ot the temple, I don't need to.

If they falsified things AFTER Jesus, and before him  they "corrected" things like Genesis 18:22 on record, what else did they do to the texts? A jot here. A little there. Vowels and single letters were absolutely fair game as per the Temple Scribes' own rules. But who even knows, and who knows the full story of what went on with Hezekiah, the reforms of Josiah, and the disappearance of the kings and political ascendancy of the Levitical priest caste.

Padraig

Quote from: Maximilian on January 26, 2019, 09:40:43 PM
Here is a fascinating video:



It has lots of interesting information on a range of Biblical subjects. I learned a lot.

But most of all it points out that there were good motives for the Jews to corrupt the Masoretic text. St. Paul refers to Jews in his own day who were falsifying genealogies in order to discredit Jesus as the new High Priest.

That was one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. It's always incredible when something that never would have crossed your radar completely changes your view on a subject.

Xavier

Beautiful Video from Sensus Fidelium: "She shall Crush your Head"

Bible verses on walking blamelessly with God, after being forgiven from our former sins. Some verses here: https://dailyverses.net/blameless

"[2] He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice:[3] He that speaketh truth in his heart, who hath not used deceit in his tongue: Nor hath done evil to his neighbour: nor taken up a reproach against his neighbours.(Psalm 14)

"[2] For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man."(James 3)

"[14] And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; [15] That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world." (Phil 2:14-15)

Heinrich

Well, if this adds to the discussion:
Und Feindschaft setze ich zwischen dir und der Frau, / zwischen deinem Nachkommen und ihrem Nachkommen. / Er trifft dich am Kopf / und du triffst ihn an der Ferse.

I don't know if this is a modern German translation or a safe, i.e. Traditional (online) Bible. But the pronoun article in bold is masculine.
Schaff Recht mir Gott und führe meine Sache gegen ein unheiliges Volk . . .   .                          
Lex Orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.
"Die Welt sucht nach Ehre, Ansehen, Reichtum, Vergnügen; die Heiligen aber suchen Demütigung, Verachtung, Armut, Abtötung und Buße." --Ausschnitt von der Geschichte des Lebens St. Bennos.

aquinas138

Quote from: Heinrich on December 01, 2019, 01:47:44 PM
Well, if this adds to the discussion:
Und Feindschaft setze ich zwischen dir und der Frau, / zwischen deinem Nachkommen und ihrem Nachkommen. / Er trifft dich am Kopf / und du triffst ihn an der Ferse.

I don't know if this is a modern German translation or a safe, i.e. Traditional (online) Bible. But the pronoun article in bold is masculine.

This appears to be from the modern Einheitsübersetzung, which is authorized for liturgical usage in the German-speaking Church; I assume it must be translating from Hebrew. If you're interested, it's interesting to see an older German version; Martin Luther translated this way:

Und ich will Feindschaft setzen zwischen dir und dem Weibe und zwischen deinem Samen und ihrem Samen. Derselbe soll dir den Kopf zertreten, und du wirst ihn in die Ferse stechen.

Still masculine, which is not surprising, given that he consulted Hebrew and would have been inclined to distrust a peculiarity of the Vulgate, though he was not entirely hostile to Marian devotion.
What shall we call you, O full of grace? * Heaven? for you have shone forth the Sun of Righteousness. * Paradise? for you have brought forth the Flower of immortality. * Virgin? for you have remained incorrupt. * Pure Mother? for you have held in your holy embrace your Son, the God of all. * Entreat Him to save our souls.

Heinrich

Aquinas138, is there a Vulgate to German Bible(traditionally used by German speaking Catholics)?
Schaff Recht mir Gott und führe meine Sache gegen ein unheiliges Volk . . .   .                          
Lex Orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.
"Die Welt sucht nach Ehre, Ansehen, Reichtum, Vergnügen; die Heiligen aber suchen Demütigung, Verachtung, Armut, Abtötung und Buße." --Ausschnitt von der Geschichte des Lebens St. Bennos.

aquinas138

Quote from: Heinrich on December 02, 2019, 02:45:05 PM
Aquinas138, is there a Vulgate to German Bible(traditionally used by German speaking Catholics)?

I am not really sure; I mean, surely there must be such a thing, I just don't know what it's called! The famous 14th-century Wenzelsbibel was translated from the Vulgate. This Wikipedia page has a bit of interesting info.
What shall we call you, O full of grace? * Heaven? for you have shone forth the Sun of Righteousness. * Paradise? for you have brought forth the Flower of immortality. * Virgin? for you have remained incorrupt. * Pure Mother? for you have held in your holy embrace your Son, the God of all. * Entreat Him to save our souls.

Kreuzritter

#42
Biblical Hebrew is polysemic. People on both sides need to get over it. But these texts not only have "multiple meanings" in the normal sense of polysemy, but here those "multiple meanings" are only projections of the full meaning. Translating this sublime language into our inferior Greek, Latin, English or whatever is like projecting a 3-dimensional object onto a 2-dimensional surface.  No translation which forces it into "she" or "he" or "it" will ever suffice.

Xavier

Happy impending feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to all Catholic Christians. Guadalupe literally means, She (feminine!) Who Crushes the Serpent! How marvelous is the wonderful Providence of Almighty God, in thus explicitly and visibly fulfilling a prophesy made some 6700 years before it!

"Pope Pius XII gave Our Lady of Guadalupe the title of "Empress of the Americas" in 1945. Since December 12 is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it seems like a propitious moment to recall how she reigns over our nation from Heaven, protecting and guiding us with motherly solicitude and tenderness. The constant miracle memorialized on Saint Juan Diego's tilma and the context of the apparitions remind us that Our Lady is victorious over the serpent, she intervenes in history and is eager to intercede for those who seek her intersession in this vale of tears." https://americaneedsfatima.org/Our-Blessed-Mother/our-lady-of-guadalupe-she-who-smashes-the-serpent.html

"The ancient temples of the Aztecs, interesting archeological sites of the past, have been replaced by the new temples of materialism, secularism and consumerism. On their altars the poor, the unborn and the elderly are forgotten, neglected and sacrificed by knives driven by greed, power and narcissism.  Mary will lead humanity back to her Son.  Mary will free us from the sins of our modern times.  Mary, Our Lady of Quatlasupe - She who crushes the head of the serpent, is leading the new evangelization." https://www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=44004

"In this little paper I would like to deal primarily with Holy Scripture. The theological arguments for Our Lady Co-Redemptrix from Tradition and the Magisterium have been more than adequately handled by Dr. Mark Miravalle in his excellent Mary Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, 1 and the marvelous The Mother of Our Saviour and Our Interior Life by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. 2 The reason that liberals such as René Laurentin, et alia have been so successful in blocking attempts to define the doctrine of Mary Co-Redemptrix is that they have first suppressed the correct reading of Genesis 3:15. Here is the correct reading from the Douay-Rheims, which is a faithful translation of St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate:

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 [3:15].

...
First Things First

So a first step, I think, in promoting the doctrine of Mary Co-Redemptrix is to show that the Douay-Rheims is the correct reading. I have done two studies of this text, one which I called The Woman of Genesis, in which I used the Hebrew and Greek script, and another in an unpublished book entitled Adam and Eve (a sequel to my The Six Days of Creation ), in which I give the Hebrew and Greek in italicized Roman script ...

In this chapter I would just like to concentrate on the pronoun of our passage: "...shall crush."

In Hebrew HU is "he," and HE "she," which is a little confusing to say the least. There is no "it" in Hebrew, both HU and HE can be translated "it" depending on the context.

In Greek "he" is autos , "she" aute , and "it" auto .

In Latin "he" is ipse , "she" ipsa, and "it" ipsum ...Cornelius C0 Lapide in his great Commentaria in Scripturam Sacrum says that the underlying mystery is even reflected in the Hebrew grammar.

Also HU is often used instead of HE especially when there is some emphasis on action and something manly is predicated of the woman, as is the case here with the crushing of the serpent's head.... It makes no difference that the verb is masculine yasuph , that is "(he) shall crush," for it often happens in Hebrew that the masculine is used instead of the feminine and vice versa, especially when there is an underlying reason or mystery, as I have just said. 3

The "underlying mystery" is, of course, that Our Lady crushes the head of the serpent by the power of Our Lord.

... The Council of Trent, therefore, did not wish to do for the Hebrew text what it did for the Latin text of the Vulgate: for the latter it declared authentic by presenting it as exempt from all error, at least in what concerns the faith and moral precepts. Hence, in his dissertation on the transmission of the Holy Scriptures, Xavier Matthei concludes that, there being given no-matter-what Hebrew passage or text, and the Vulgate not agreeing with it, one should keep the Vulgate. 'Not,' he adds, 'that this version is more authentic than the Hebrew text, but because it may be believed, on the one hand, that the passage in question is no longer to be found in the Hebrew as it was there primitively; on the other hand, that this primitive text is found exactly reproduced in the Vulgate — the only version that has merited to be approved by the Church. 5" From St. Benedict's Centre: https://catholicism.org/mary-co-redemptrix.html
Bible verses on walking blamelessly with God, after being forgiven from our former sins. Some verses here: https://dailyverses.net/blameless

"[2] He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice:[3] He that speaketh truth in his heart, who hath not used deceit in his tongue: Nor hath done evil to his neighbour: nor taken up a reproach against his neighbours.(Psalm 14)

"[2] For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man."(James 3)

"[14] And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; [15] That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world." (Phil 2:14-15)

Vetus Ordo

Quote from: Xavier on December 10, 2019, 12:40:31 PMGuadalupe literally means, She (feminine!) Who Crushes the Serpent!

Guadalupe is the name of a river in Spain, a tributary of the Guadiana. Its name comes from the Arabic ???? ???????, Wâdî al-Lubb, meaning either "hidden river" or "river of the wolf" in the local Andalusian Arabic dialect.

This river lent its name to the nearby town and to the renowned Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the second most important pilgrimage site in Spain after Santiago. It was in this river that a statue of the Blessed Virgin was found by a shepherd in the late 13th century, giving rise to the devotion of Our Lady of Guadalupe that would soon become the patroness of Spain and Queen of all Spanish-speaking peoples. As the crown of Castile pressed forward into the Americas, Guadalupe also lent its name to the Guadeloupe island in the Caribbean, as well as to many other places in Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Costa Rica, etc.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Spain is a medieval black Madonna, unlike that of Mexico which is mestiza. This devotion was surely imported to the New World by the colonizers.

Quote from: Francisco Montes González (2015). Sevilla Guadalupana. Arte, historia y devociónLa llegada a América de los primeros soldados y habitantes españoles produjo que se consagraran al cristianismo lugares que antes habían sido paganos como la región del Tepeyac donde antes se veneraba a la diosa madre Tonantzin. Este territorio fue entregado al conquistador Gonzalo de Sandoval, que provenía de Medellín, cerca de la comarca de las Villuercas, donde se encuentra Guadalupe. Las primeras noticias del culto a la Virgen de Guadalupe en esta región, situada a las afueras de Ciudad de México, provienen de Bernal Díaz del Castillo en su obra Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España.

The arrival in America of the first Spanish soldiers and inhabitants led to the consecration to Christianity of places that had previously been pagan such as the Tepeyac region where the mother goddess Tonantzin was once venerated. This territory was assigned to the Conquistador Gonzalo de Sandoval, who came from Medellín, near the region of Las Villuercas where Guadalupe is located. The first news of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe in this region, located on the outskirts of Mexico City, comes from Bernal Díaz del Castillo in his work 'True History of the Conquest of New Spain'.
DISPOSE OUR DAYS IN THY PEACE, AND COMMAND US TO BE DELIVERED FROM ETERNAL DAMNATION, AND TO BE NUMBERED IN THE FLOCK OF THINE ELECT.