October 9, 2008
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Question 99 – Does Genesis 3:15 refer to Mary or Christ?
Question 99 – Does Genesis 3:15 refer to Mary or Christ?
Hello Dr. Sungenis, it's Ulysses again. Thanks for the answer in regards to the Q question, but now I have another question. It is about Genesis 3:15. I have book entitled "Mariology: A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons." It has an imprimatur from Archbishop Raymond Burke and it is a great guide on what the Church teaches about Marian Dogma. My question has to do with the feminine/masculine pronoun of Genesis 3:15. Here is an excerpt from the book about that passage:
There is a need, indeed an obligation once again to return to the adoption of the feminine version which has presided over Old Testament biblical study from the days of Philo and Josephus Flavius, i.e., from the first century after Christ. That adoption, moreover, was celebrated in luminous texts of the poet Prudentius, of the apologist Tertullian, of the great teachers, the Fathers of the Church such as St. Ambrose, St. Jerome and St. John Chrysostom, cited in his day by Cornelius a Lapide, the great exegete of the seventeenth century, who wrote the Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram (Paris, 1948). He also resolved the problem of the verb in the masculine (yashuph, conteret, or crush) citing the "frequent exchange" of gender in Hebrew: the masculine being used in place of the feminine and vice-versa, especially when there is present some cause or mystery, as is the case here. .. This observation is also confirmed by more recent grammatical studies. In support of these arguments in favor of the validity of ipsa, one should also keep in mind the great antiquity of the Vulgate in relation to the MT and the use made of it by the Church for about 1600 years.
Anyways, I just wanted get your thought on this passage. BTW, when is your commentary on Genesis coming out? JMJ, Ulysses
R. Sungenis: Ulysses, thank you for your question. As for the commentary on Genesis, it is ready, but the translation and grammatical notes are awaiting an imprimatur. Hopefully it will be out before the year ends.
As for Genesis 3:15, I do not, at this point in my studies, favor the feminine. Although I would like to give as much honor to the Blessed Virgin as possible, grammatically and theologically, I don’t think she fits in Genesis 3:15 as the one who crushes the devil’s head. The Blessed Virgin is an intercessor. That is why we ask her to pray for us in the Hail Mary. Because she was immaculately conceived and thus without sin, she serves as the most powerful intercessor we can have. But She has no power of her own to crush the devil’s head, unless, of course, we are counting on her great power of intercessory prayer before the Father so that the Father, and his Son, will effectuate the destruction of the devil. Further, there is no Scripture that speaks of Mary as having the role of an avenger, not even Apocalypse 12. Instead, Christ is pictured as the avenger against the devil in numerous places in Scripture. It is saturated with that theme. Conversely, the Woman of Apocalypse 12 is a picture of someone being chased by the devil, not one who vanquishes him. My personal opinion is that some of Catholic theology has carried the attributions of Mary much farther than they are warranted. Mary’s role was to bear the Christ so that He could vanquish the devil. This was not Mary’s job, unless, in the general sense, it could be said that we all have the spiritual job of vanquishing the devil by being holy before God and praying for his intervention.
As for the book “Mariology: A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons” having an imprimatur from Archbishop Burke, that really doesn’t mean anything in the case of Genesis 3:15, since either view, the feminine or the masculine, is possible, and thus not heretical. As for Philo and Josephus, neither of them are authorities on Christian doctrine, much less how the Hebrew pronoun is to be interpreted. Philo was not even a Christian. The same can be said of Prudentius. Tertullian was certainly not chief among the Fathers for his theological conclusions. As for Ambrose, Jerome and Chrysostom, unless there is a consensus among the Fathers, it doesn’t really add a lot of weight to citing just three Fathers. You can find Church Fathers on either side of many issues. As for Lapide, his argument that there is a “frequent exchange of gender in Hebrew: the masculine being used in place of the feminine and vice-versa, especially when there is present some cause or mystery,” that is not really true in historical texts that are seeking to give factual information. As far as I know, the exchange between masculine and feminine only occurs in poetical texts where there is much “poetic license” to change parts of speech from their normal usage. Even the Jewish Encyclopedia agrees, since under the section for Hebrew poetry it says: “the masculine ending is sometimes used where the older language has the feminine, and vice versa.” (Jewish Encyclopedia.com at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=H&artid=485). As for the idea that the feminine is “confirmed by more recent grammatical studies,” I don’t know what “grammatical studies” Mariology: A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons is referring to. My recent grammatical studies show just the opposite. The author would need to cite the grammatical studies he has in view instead of merely claiming them. As for the antiquity of the Vulgate, it may be old, but that does not prove that its rendition of Genesis 3:15 is correct.
For what it’s worth, I’ll give you the grammatical notes that are contained in the Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Volume IV: Genesis 1-11 for Genesis 3:15. Here you go (the Hebrew words will probably not come out as Hebrew letters when you read this):
“he”: Controversy concerning this word is ongoing. Haydock notes: “Ipsa, the woman, so divers of the fathers read this place, conformably to the Latin; others read it ipsum, viz., the seed. The sense is the same, for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent’s head.” [NB: the Latin ipse = he; ipsa = her; and ipsum = it]. Quoting Sigonius: “The Hebrew text, as Bellarmine observes, is ambiguous. He mentions one copy which had the ipsa instead of ipsum; and so it is even printed in the Hebrew interlineary edition, 1572….The fathers who have cited the old Italic version, taken from the Septuagint, agree with the Vulgate, which is followed by almost all the Latins; and thus we may argue with probability that the Septuagint and the Hebrew formerly acknowledged ipsa, which now moves the indignation of Protestants….H. Kemnitzius certainly advanced a step too far when he said that all the ancient fathers read ipsum. Victor, Avitus, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, etc., mentioned in the Douay Bible, will convict him of falsehood” (op. cit., p. 17). The problem centers on the Hebrew words for “he” (aוּh, pronounced “hu” or “hua”) and “she” (ayh3, pronounced “hiy” or “hia”). Although these words are distinguished by the middle letter (וּ as opposed to y), the problem is that the feminine ayh3 is written as awh3, which is very similar to the masculine form, throughout the Pentateuch in all but eight cases (Gn 14:2; 26:7; Ex 1:16; Lv 5:11; 11:39; 13:6; 16:31; 21:9), and the reason is uncertain. Even in Gn 3:12: “The woman whom you gave to me she (awh3) has given me…” uses the modified form awh3 instead of ayh3. Some verses even use both forms, as noted in Gn 26:7 which addresses Rebecca as both awh3 and ayh3 (BHS, p. 39, although BHS footnotes a variant in the Samaritan Pentateuch that inserts ayh for both cases). The problem is compounded because ancient Hebrew did not use vowel pointing (the dot beneath the h in awh3 or the dot inside the w of aוּh), thus making the modified female pronoun awh identical in consonant form to the male pronoun awh. Because of this ambiguity, neither form can be discounted but preference should go to the masculine pronoun because the following verb and nouns, “you shall bruise his” (וּnpwvt) and “the heel” (bqe) are masculine. The NABC holds: “since the antecedent for he and his is the collective noun offspring…a more exact rendering…would be ‘They will strike…at their heels’” (op. cit., p. 10), but the pronoun and the noun are Hebrew singulars, not plurals. The LXX also contains masculine singular pronouns (sou and auvtou:). NABC correctly concludes, however: “…the passage can be understood as the first promise of a Redeemer for fallen mankind. The woman’s offspring then is primarily Jesus Christ” (ibid).
“crush”: ]pwvy, from [wv, appears 4 times in OT, twice in Gn 3:15 (as “crush” and “lie in wait”), the other two in Jb 9:17 (“for he crushes me with a tempest”) and Ps 139:11 (“darkness shall cover me”). Other meanings include: bruise, seize, gape upon, fall upon, break. LXX uses thrhvsei, from threvw, meaning “keep, guard, keep in custody, keep back, hold, reserve” (e.g., Jd 6, 13, 21). The sense of the word does not carry the idea of immediate destruction but of subduing or controlling. Hence, the antagonism between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed will be ongoing. The intensity of the subduing is determined by the metaphors of “head” and “heel,” respectively. As such, the woman’s seed will have the power to overcome the serpent’s seed and gain spiritual victory (“crush your head”) as will be seen in its heroes of faith (e.g., Abel - Hb 11:4; Enoch - Hb 11:5; Noah - Hb 11:7, and many others), but the serpent’s seed will have power to disrupt, agitate or harm the woman’s seed (e.g, Cain kills Abel, cf. 1Jn 3:12; Jd 1:11). Although “her seed” will eventually produce the Christ who will further the “crushing” of Satan (cf. Jn 12:31; 16:11; Hb 2:14), Satan will not be totally defeated and vanquished until the end of time (cf. Ap 20:11-15). The NT also refers to the temporal and ongoing “crushing” of Satan at intermittent times during the Church age (e.g., Rm 16:20), which in this case uses the Greek suntribw, meaning “to crush, bruise, break in pieces, shatter” (e.g., Mt 12:20; Mk 5:4; Lk 9:39). As St. Gregory notes: “We crush the serpent’s head when we extirpate from our heart the beginnings of temptation, and then he lays snares for our heel” (Moralia, 1, 38).
