My wife is not a fan of Indiana Jones, which I find ironic since they share a deep-seeded hatred of snakes. Not only will she hyperventilate if she sees one in real life, she’ll shriek and shut her eyes if one comes on television. Actually, that may explain her lack of interest in the exploits of Dr. Henry Jones Jr.
So I was surprised one day when my wife brought up Genesis 3:15, one of the snakiest passages in Scripture. This in the context of Genesis 3, the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve have already eaten of the fruit, they already realized they were naked ("I didn't know I was streaking, honest!") and God is now giving out punishment. In this punishment though God also gives hope... it is the protoevangelium, or first prophecy, and as most Christians understand it, a foretelling of the destruction of Satan and the coming of the Savior, making it a precious prophecy to millions. When my wife mentioned the verse I knew immediately that it read:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
I didn’t know why she was bringing it up and I would have never guessed what she was about to ask me: “Do you agree with the Catholic teaching on this verse?” I had no idea that there was a specific Catholic teaching on that verse! And considering the fact that my dear, loving wife doesn’t quite see what I see in Catholic teaching (not yet at least ;)... love ya babe! ) I was just hoping this verse wouldn’t put enmity between me and my woman!
My wife then shared a footnote from a book she was reading where the author comments on a Catholic translation of Genesis 3:15 that reads:
“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.”
Instead of snakes, she heard crickets. I had never heard this before and I had no answer. In case you didn’t notice it, the Catholic translation that she read to me used the word “she” to describe who would crush the head of the serpent (aka Satan, as far as most Christians are concerned). In spite of several years researching and talking with Catholics I had never encountered this translation. This post is an attempt to answer this ...
So I was surprised one day when my wife brought up Genesis 3:15, one of the snakiest passages in Scripture. This in the context of Genesis 3, the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve have already eaten of the fruit, they already realized they were naked ("I didn't know I was streaking, honest!") and God is now giving out punishment. In this punishment though God also gives hope... it is the protoevangelium, or first prophecy, and as most Christians understand it, a foretelling of the destruction of Satan and the coming of the Savior, making it a precious prophecy to millions. When my wife mentioned the verse I knew immediately that it read:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
I didn’t know why she was bringing it up and I would have never guessed what she was about to ask me: “Do you agree with the Catholic teaching on this verse?” I had no idea that there was a specific Catholic teaching on that verse! And considering the fact that my dear, loving wife doesn’t quite see what I see in Catholic teaching (not yet at least ;)... love ya babe! ) I was just hoping this verse wouldn’t put enmity between me and my woman!
My wife then shared a footnote from a book she was reading where the author comments on a Catholic translation of Genesis 3:15 that reads:
“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.”
Instead of snakes, she heard crickets. I had never heard this before and I had no answer. In case you didn’t notice it, the Catholic translation that she read to me used the word “she” to describe who would crush the head of the serpent (aka Satan, as far as most Christians are concerned). In spite of several years researching and talking with Catholics I had never encountered this translation. This post is an attempt to answer this ...
Fun with a Footnote
What brought this to my wife’s attention was a book she was reading for her masters in counseling, Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity by David Entwhistle. In his footnote the author says:
“Catholics and Protestants differ on how to translate this verse... The Catholic position comes from Jerome’s translation of the Latin Vulgate in which he he rendered the phrase “ipsa conteret”, and the corresponding English translation thus becomes “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and the thy seed and her seed: she shall crush they head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” Prior to Jerome, Latin texts differed in whether it was “ipse” (he), “ispa” (she), or even “ipsum” (it). The Hebrew rendering is in the masculine, but interpreters differ on the importance of that gender form. Evidently, a Hebrew feminine form may be rendered in a masculine verb to give it more force. Thus, Protestants feel correct in insisting on the masculine form (based on the Hebrew, the LXX and other Latin texts) and see it foreshadowing Christ defeating Satan through his work on the cross... Roman Catholics, most of whom adopt Jerome’s position, understand the verse as referring not to Christ but to Mary, and buttress Jerome’s translation with the literary parallelism of the enmity being between the snake and the woman, the seed of the snake and the seed of the woman, and the crushing of the snake;s head and the bruising of her heel. ...The translators of the Challoner Revision of the Douay-Rheims translation included an interesting footnote on “ipsa conteret”: “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.” [1]
Let’s see if we can break down this footnote and perhaps the fears it taps into for well-meaning Evangelicals like my dear wife.
For starters this comment plays on many fears (real or imagined) that Evangelicals have in regards to Catholics (I do believe this is unintentional on the author's part). While there are many differences between the two sides there are also many similarities. Understanding each other is a good first step towards fostering charity. So it is important to understand if there is a division on this issue, and whether or not any divisions, in fact, confirm these fears.
In my limited and fallible experience there are no two more mortifying Evangelical fears of Catholicism than these: 1) that Catholics ignore or outright twist Scripture to their own ends and 2) the end most feared is that of idolatry of Mary. This difference in the translation of Genesis 3:15 could easily be taken by some Evangelical Christians as the Catholic Church changing Scripture to promote the worship of Mary instead of Christ. As I stated earlier, I do not think it was the author’s intent to scare anyone or to propogate any untruths; however the way this note was written does lend itself to some misunderstandings and to the fears all too present to the many Evangelicals unfamiliar with Catholic theology.
I will do my best to show how this difference of translation happened and how the common fears of Catholics (which are not true) are evidently not true in relation to this issue.. There are several bits of information compiled, archived, researched and laid out by people far smarter than me so don’t take me as some arrogant know-it-all. I’m just passing this along. I’m the waiter, not the chef.
Answering Fear #1: A Look at the Translation
As I said earlier there is a fear among many Evangelicals that Catholics will twist, mangle or outright change the Scriptures to suit their fancy or invent new doctrines on a whim. While this is not a truth, it does remains a fear. So... how did this difference of translation in Genesis 3:15 happen? Did the Catholic Church change this verse to read the way it wanted to? Well, no, it did not. But it is far more complicated than that, and the footnote my wife read makes mention of this complicated backstory.
Most modern Christian translations of the Old Testament into English are based on texts written in Hebrew. Hebrew is an orignal language of the orignal Old Testament, which was (largely, we believe) written in Hebrew, the language of Israel. So far, so good... The problem is, we don’t have any of the original Hebrew documents of the Old Testament. None. Nada. And it isn't like you can hire a giant to threaten the Church with the tearing off of arms to produce a gate key... errr... original copies. They aren't there. We have some very ancient sets and copies, but not the originals.
To make things even more complicated when most people look at the “origanl language” (ie go back to the Hebrew) they aren’t reading the most ancient form of that language but a newer version of it. The most commonly used Hebrew versions of the Old Testament used today are called the Masoretic Text (abbreviated MT). This was compiled by a group of Jewish scholars called the Masoretes. They collected many different copies of the Old Testament; some of the copies had some differences in them (these copies we call variants). The Masoretes consolidated the many different copies and formed one, consolidated edition of the Hebrew Old Testament... the MT.
They also transformed the Hebrew language. Ancient Hebrew did not have letters for vowels. If you had an ancient copy of the Old Testament all you would see would be the consonants; the vowels were pronounced when read but not written down. There were also no line spaces or punctuations. As you can imagine this makes it very difficult to interpret! Sometimes the difference between a word in ancient Hebrew hinged on one vowel or another. As a parallel in English, how would you translate the word "N-D" if you saw it? Node, nod, and, end... nude? The vowels play a key role. The vowel pronunciations, and the teachings they unlocked, were passed along by tradition and are considered far more reliable and consistent than you might imagine. Most ancients were illiterate; but that does not mean they were stupid.
The Masoretes took many copies of Scripture and the different traditions of vowel pronunciation (which impact translation and interpretation) and literally invented vowel markings, thus solidifying their pronunciation. These vowel markings are found in the Masoretic text used today. This process was done between the year 800 -1400 AD, so this was a long time after the Old Testament books had been written. So when modern Scripture students with some basic understanding of Biblical Hebrew talk about going back to the “original language” they are right, they are going back to the original language... but it isn’t the most ancient form of that original language, but a more recent version of it (but still, a highly accurate one).
Alright, you may ask, what does the Hebrew say about Genesis 3:15? Well that too is a bit complicated. It seems the Hebrew we currently have (which we believe to be more than a bit accurate) can be taken in a number of ways (I’m not a linguist so I’ll spare you my butchery of technical details). One of the two most common ways the word in question in Genesis 3:15 can be translated is, you may have guessed it, “he.”
The other way it is most often translated is, believe it or not, “they.” This is often a standard Jewish translation; the Jewish publication society translations of the Old Testament, both the 1917 and 1985 editions, the word is rendered as “they.” However it is not just Judaism that notes this, but even Catholicism acknowledges this; in the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible a note says “The Hebrew could be read individually (“he shall”) or collectively (“they shall”).” [2] The “they” is most often taken by Christians as a reference to “the Church” being the one referred to (but also including Israel).
So... the word can be translated "he" or "they." Where does the "she" come from them? Is the Catholic Church changing Scripture? To further complicate matters, contrary to the way the footnote made it sound, not every Catholic translation of the Old Testament render it “she.” It is not "the Catholic position" but "a" Catholic position to translate it as she. Two modern Catholic translations render the verse accordingly:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” (New American Bible)
and
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)
These two translations are more modern and they are based (partly) on the Masoretic Texts, but also on other sources including the Septuagint (a pre-New Testament translation of the Old Testament into Greek - often abbreviated LXX) and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered only within the last 70ish years.
The English Catholic translation that is most often quoted as rendering the word "she"is called the Douay-Rheims... think of it as the King James of Catholic Bible translations. The Douay-Rheims is a much older English translation of the Old Testament based off of a different set of texts other than the Masoretic texts. The text it is most based off of is called the Vulgate.
The Vulgate is not an "original language" of the Old Testament, but is itself a translation of the Hebrew (and Greek) Old Testament into Latin. The Vulgate was composed largely due to the work of St. Jerome beginning in the year 382 A.D. And this is where the author of our footnote makes a slight mistake saying, “The Catholic position comes from Jerome’s translation of the Latin Vulgate.” While he is not wrong, he is only partially right. According to Jimmy Akin (a Catholic apologist):
Modern translations follow what the original Hebrew of the passage says. The Douay-Rheims, however, is following a manuscript variant found in many early Fathers and some editions of the Vulgate (but not the original; Jerome followed the Hebrew text in his edition of the Vulgate). The variant probably originated as a copyist error...
...and also from the Catholic Orchard Commentary we find this note:
15b. It can hardly be doubted that the feminine pronoun had its origin in the error of an early copyist of Vg. In his Lib. Quaest. Heb. in Gen. St Jerome quotes the Old Latin version of this text with the masc. (ipse) and translates the Hebrew with the same [PL 23, 943], and ipse is the reading of various Vg MSS. It is therefore highly improbable that he translated ipsa here. As the word refers to the ‘seed’, it may be replaced in English by ‘it’.
In other words, this translation does not stem from the Catholic Church trying to twist and mangle Scripture. Remember that way back when, before the Masoretic text was written, there were many copies of the Old Testament in Hebrew circulating around. They were largely similar, but not all of them were 100% identical. There are some copies called ‘variants.’ A variant is, as you guessed it, a variant reading on some verse; while variants existed they were not as numerous as the standard, collaborated copies the Masoretes would work on centuries later.
We know that there was a variant of Genesis 3:15 floating around. We find that other Christian writers of the time when quoting Genesis 3:15 would quote from this alternative wording. In fact, some editions of the Vulgate even follow this wording... however Jerome’s original did not. The currently-used Douay-Rheims Bible is based off of one of those manuscript variants. There are variant versions of the Old Vulgate, and the New Vulgate makes corrections. Also, there are no original copies of the Vulgate, so there are textual problems with that as well. So all-in-all this is a very complicated issue.
So... I just spent a lot of time in front of a word processor to say... what exactly? The way I see it, at least three things...
Answering Fear #2: A Look at the Interpretation
There is another other common fear tapped into by the common Protestant accusations in regards to Genesis 3 and this deals not with the verse’s translation (which we have already dealt with) but the verse’s interpretation. This is the familiar fear that Catholics worship Mary or replace Christ with Mary or practice what has been termed “Mariolatry.” The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Catholic Catechsim explains that “Church’s devotion to Mary can be confusing to some non-Catholics. Mary is not worshipped and she is not adored as the Holy Trinity is worshipped and adored.” [3] In Catholic thought there is a major distinction between worship which is due to God alone (called “latria” in Latin) and the honor and dedication paid to the saitns (called “dulia” in Latin). So just because you see a Catholic spending time in prayer or meditatin in front of a statue (or kissing a crucifix or something like that) it does not mean they are “worshipping” it anymore than you might be “worshipping” the photo of a distant loved one if you honor it regularly, or if you place flowers on the grave of a departed loved one. There is an objective difference between honor and worship.
So, in official teaching and in popular apologetics we can see that, no, Catholics do not worship Mary. But how do we explain their interpretation of this verse? And why does the Catholic Church keep two very different translations at all if their interpretations might be so different? The short answer is that the Catholic Church believes that both translations are true. I think we can see what this all about by once again returning to our footnote.
Entwhistle states that “Protestants feel correct in insisting on... it foreshadowing Christ defeating Satan through his work on the cross.” This is true, most Protestants do interpret the verse this way. However if one is not careful (and does not understand Catholic thought) then the reader could come away believing that the Catholic Church, over-against this, does not believe that it foreshadows Christ and his victory on the cross.
That belief would be sorely mistaken for several reasons. The most obvious is that, as we’ve already seen, Catholics have translations rendering it as “he.” The Catholic interpretations of the translations that render it “he” do take that as a foreshadowing of Christ. This is not just the Protestant view... it is also the Catholic view. A quick look at a few Catholic sources will bear this out...
Jimmy Akin says: ... Christians have recognized (all the way back to the first century) that the woman and her seed mentioned in Genesis 3:15 prophetically foreshadow...Jesus...it properly applies to Jesus, given the original Hebrew.
and
The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The earliest known Jewish interpretation of this text takes the offspring of the woman to be an individual man (Gk. autos, “he” in the Greek LXX).… Christian tradition gives this text a messianic interpretation (Christ is the individual who tramples the devil underfoot: Heb 2:14; 1 Jn 3:8; St. Irenaeus Against Heresies 3, 23, 7), an ecclesiological interpretation (the Church is the offspring that shares in his victory: Rom 16:20; Rev 12:17), and a mariological interpretation (Mary is the promised woman who bears the Redeemer: Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 55). This passage has long been called the “first gospel” (Lat. protoevangelium) and stands out as the first revelation of God’s mercy in Scripture (CCC 410–11).
Alright, so this idea that Genesis 3:15, the protoevangelium, the first prophecy of our blessed Savior, is shared by Catholics and Protestants alike. I can sense you are still screaming at the computer screen, “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TRANSLATION DEALING WITH “SHE????? If this Catholic translation is based off of a variant reading then why doesn’t the Catholic Church just pull all of the unsold translations off of the shelves?” Okay, okay, okay... we’ve done enough homework. Let’s knock this out quickly.
Again, as I said earlier, the Catholic Church accepts them both as true. The translations that render it “she” are most certainly applied to Mary.
The Catholic Navarre Bible Commentary notes that: So, woman is going to have a key role in that victory over the devil. In his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, St. Jerome in fact reads the relevant passage as “she [the woman] shall bruise your head.” That woman is the Blessed Virgin, the new Eve and the mother of the Redeemer...
So, how does this not feed into the Protestant fears of Mariolatry? Doesn’t this smack of a blatant replacing of Christ with Mary? Well... no, it doesn’t. To say that Mary replaces Christ as the victor over Satan would be to misrepresent the Catholic thought. If one kept reading the Navarre commentary one would notice it said: That woman is the Blessed Virgin, the new Eve and the mother of the Redeemer, who shares (by anticipation and pre-eminently) in the victory of her Son.
She shares in the victory of her Son... she does not replace Him. She participates in it, but does not usurp it from Christ. The two ideas are not contradictory, but can both be true at the same time. Christ is our Redeemer but Mary did participate along with Christ in His victory. This is the Catholic “both-and.” (a subject which would take a whole other post to try to explain). There is more evidence that this is the case, for even the Dr. Entwhistle quotes a passage from the Challoner Revision of the Douay-Rheims (also appearing in the Haydock commentary) noting this interpretation, “Ver. 15. She shall crush. 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... hence we may argue with probability, that the Septuagint and the Hebrew formerly acknowledged [it was translated as “he”], which now moves the indignation of Protestants so much, as if we intended by it to give any divine honour to the blessed Virgin Mary. We believe, however, with St. Epiphanius, that “it is no less criminal to vilify the holy Virgin, than to glorify her above measure.” We know that all the power of the mother of God is derived from the merits of her Son.… Christ crushed the serpent’s head by his death, suffering himself to be wounded in the heel. His blessed mother crushed him likewise, by her co-operation in the mystery of the Incarnation.”
Jimmy Akin also notes: This does not mean that the idea cannot be validly applied to Mary as well. Through her cooperation in the incarnation of Christ, so that the Son of God (who, from the cross, directly crushed the head of the serpent) became her seed, Mary did crush the head of the serpent. In the same way, the serpent struck at Christ on the cross, and indirectly struck at Mary’s heart as well, who had to witness the death of her own Son (cf. John 19:25-27). As the holy priest Simeon had told her years before:
“Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against — and a sword will pierce through your own soul also — that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34b-35).
Thus Jesus crushed the serpent directly and was directly struck by the serpent; Mary, through her cooperation in the incarnation and her witnessing the sufferings and death of her Son, indirectly crushed the serpent and was indirectly struck by the serpent.
But if this “Marian interpretation” of Genesis 3:15 is based on a faulty translation, why not pull those translations off of the shelves? Well the Catholic Church doesn’t do theology the same way most Protestant groups do. In many Protestant groups theology must be proved from the Bible or its a no-go (or at least it isn’t required for strong faith). In Catholic theology, the Bible is one source of truth (the only one “inspired” of God though). The Church itself and its tradition work alongside Scripture. So somethings do not appear in Scripture explicitly (the Trinity for example) yet the Church teaches that it was believed in the beginning and through the centuries the thought of the Church has been further and further refined (not changed) and developed (not contradicted).
So, even if Genesis 3:15 does not expliclicity refer to Mary grammatically, Catholics belive that, through the Church’ ongoing, developing and refining theological thought, this can be implied theologically. This should not surpirse or offend Evangelicals, for there are many things that are not explicitly taught in Scripture that Evangelicals believe: that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are only symbols, that each individual congregation is independent, that the congregation gets to vote on things, what books belong to the Bible, etc. [The catch is that many Evangelicals teach one thing (that all required theological truth must be explicitly stated in Scripture) yet seem to practice another (they do many things and believe many things that are not explicitly stated in Scripture), while Catholics teach that not everything that should be believed is explicitly taught in Scripture and they live up to it.]
So, back to Genesis 3:15. Whether or not this verse grammatically refers to Mary, Catholics do believe that Mary participated in the victory of Christ. Their theological position does not depend on this one verse...or even any verse at all. It is a theological implication. However, in Catholic thought, it is not that Mary replaces or takes the place of or is somehow equal to our Savior.
In a similar way, how might we interpret Gensis 3:15 if the subject in question were grammatically translated “they?” Would that be interpreted as multiple Jesus’? No... it is applied to the people of God (for the Jews that would be Israel, and for Christians that would extend to the Church). Well how is that possible? Did each person in the people of God die on the cross? No! We are participating in Christ’s victory over Satan by following and recieving and worshipping Him; He allows us to be a part of His victory. It is a gracious offer on the part of God to not only redeem us but to allow us to be a part of our own redemption through Christ. So Mary’s role and participation (while different and unique among all of the people of God) is like that. She participates with Christ and is a part of our Redemption... but her “victory” is really tied up with her Son’s and only through Him. Same as us. A few silly illustrations may help.
I have thought of it like a pround parent of a star athelete when, say they are drafted in the 1st round of the NFL draft. It is the athelte’s victory to be sure, his moment of acheivement. The years of sweat, practice, dedication, preparation, performacne, doubt and success have all come to fruition in that moment; when he recieves that call to be an NFL player it is his achievement. But there is more there than just that athelete’s victory. The parents, over 15 years, have gone to sports meetings, bought football cleats, encouraged, watched games, done the dirty laundry, paid for sports programs, cheered, helped coach and been there for the highs and lows of that athelete’s amateur career. While they never, ever took the field, the victory is partly theirs. They have participated with the athelete’s... and this is visible at the tables of so many NFL draftees who are with their families on that day. They cry and weep and share in that moment as they have all won. But only a fool would confuse the two roles and the two achievements.
Another illustration, this from an online friend who is a Catholic: You're a hockey fan, right? If one player gets the goal and another gets the assist, you can certainly say that even though the player who put the puck in the net scored, nevertheless the player who got the assist played a vital, non-trivial role.... Even if you translated Genesis 3:15 as 'she'....we are STILL only asserting that Mary got an assist, no one thinks she's the one who put the puck in the net.” I think that about sums up the Catholic view.
So while the translation of "she" might not be correct according to our current understanding of Hebrew, according to Catholic thought... 1) that translation is not theologically untrue and 2) the Hebrew itself is a bit ambiguous, so chaining translation might be a bit problematic and 3) our understanding of the original texts is still changing. All in all, this translation is still a valid one for Catholics if you understand their interpretation of it
The Last Laugh
This has been a lot of typing and reading to reach this conclusion. The simplest answer yet is that of Jimmy Akin’s and I do recommend referencing that keeping it handy should you need it. The reason I spent so much time is threefold...
The length of this issue, I think, gives an outsider a chance to appreciate the Catholic Church even if they have no intention of joining it or working alongside it. The Catholic Church can at least be seen as something to be respected as a thinking, feeling Christian institution seeking to live and out it's faith. One final note should be added, this one more personal. Though I am no expert theologian or God’s gift to scholarly research, it has been my experience that this is often the case with many Evangelical disagreements with the Catholic Church. To be sure, one may study the issues and still disagree with the Catholic theaching (on this or other points) but there is also a lot of midunderstanding too. When one studies what is actually taught and thought (by orthodox, well-prayed) Catholics one finds much more there. Nuance, definitions, thought, balance. Again one can still disagree, but one finds that what they disagreed with was often not what they originally thought. I leave with the words of G.K. Chesterton: "When a man really sees the Church, even if he dislikes what he sees, he does not see what he had expected to dislike. Even if he wants to slay it he is no longer able to slander it; though he hates it at sight, what he sees is not what he looked to see; in that place he may gain a new passion but he loses his old prejudice. There drops from him the holy armour of his invincible ignorance; he can never be so stupid again." [5]
What brought this to my wife’s attention was a book she was reading for her masters in counseling, Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity by David Entwhistle. In his footnote the author says:
“Catholics and Protestants differ on how to translate this verse... The Catholic position comes from Jerome’s translation of the Latin Vulgate in which he he rendered the phrase “ipsa conteret”, and the corresponding English translation thus becomes “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and the thy seed and her seed: she shall crush they head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” Prior to Jerome, Latin texts differed in whether it was “ipse” (he), “ispa” (she), or even “ipsum” (it). The Hebrew rendering is in the masculine, but interpreters differ on the importance of that gender form. Evidently, a Hebrew feminine form may be rendered in a masculine verb to give it more force. Thus, Protestants feel correct in insisting on the masculine form (based on the Hebrew, the LXX and other Latin texts) and see it foreshadowing Christ defeating Satan through his work on the cross... Roman Catholics, most of whom adopt Jerome’s position, understand the verse as referring not to Christ but to Mary, and buttress Jerome’s translation with the literary parallelism of the enmity being between the snake and the woman, the seed of the snake and the seed of the woman, and the crushing of the snake;s head and the bruising of her heel. ...The translators of the Challoner Revision of the Douay-Rheims translation included an interesting footnote on “ipsa conteret”: “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.” [1]
Let’s see if we can break down this footnote and perhaps the fears it taps into for well-meaning Evangelicals like my dear wife.
For starters this comment plays on many fears (real or imagined) that Evangelicals have in regards to Catholics (I do believe this is unintentional on the author's part). While there are many differences between the two sides there are also many similarities. Understanding each other is a good first step towards fostering charity. So it is important to understand if there is a division on this issue, and whether or not any divisions, in fact, confirm these fears.
In my limited and fallible experience there are no two more mortifying Evangelical fears of Catholicism than these: 1) that Catholics ignore or outright twist Scripture to their own ends and 2) the end most feared is that of idolatry of Mary. This difference in the translation of Genesis 3:15 could easily be taken by some Evangelical Christians as the Catholic Church changing Scripture to promote the worship of Mary instead of Christ. As I stated earlier, I do not think it was the author’s intent to scare anyone or to propogate any untruths; however the way this note was written does lend itself to some misunderstandings and to the fears all too present to the many Evangelicals unfamiliar with Catholic theology.
I will do my best to show how this difference of translation happened and how the common fears of Catholics (which are not true) are evidently not true in relation to this issue.. There are several bits of information compiled, archived, researched and laid out by people far smarter than me so don’t take me as some arrogant know-it-all. I’m just passing this along. I’m the waiter, not the chef.
Answering Fear #1: A Look at the Translation
As I said earlier there is a fear among many Evangelicals that Catholics will twist, mangle or outright change the Scriptures to suit their fancy or invent new doctrines on a whim. While this is not a truth, it does remains a fear. So... how did this difference of translation in Genesis 3:15 happen? Did the Catholic Church change this verse to read the way it wanted to? Well, no, it did not. But it is far more complicated than that, and the footnote my wife read makes mention of this complicated backstory.
Most modern Christian translations of the Old Testament into English are based on texts written in Hebrew. Hebrew is an orignal language of the orignal Old Testament, which was (largely, we believe) written in Hebrew, the language of Israel. So far, so good... The problem is, we don’t have any of the original Hebrew documents of the Old Testament. None. Nada. And it isn't like you can hire a giant to threaten the Church with the tearing off of arms to produce a gate key... errr... original copies. They aren't there. We have some very ancient sets and copies, but not the originals.
To make things even more complicated when most people look at the “origanl language” (ie go back to the Hebrew) they aren’t reading the most ancient form of that language but a newer version of it. The most commonly used Hebrew versions of the Old Testament used today are called the Masoretic Text (abbreviated MT). This was compiled by a group of Jewish scholars called the Masoretes. They collected many different copies of the Old Testament; some of the copies had some differences in them (these copies we call variants). The Masoretes consolidated the many different copies and formed one, consolidated edition of the Hebrew Old Testament... the MT.
They also transformed the Hebrew language. Ancient Hebrew did not have letters for vowels. If you had an ancient copy of the Old Testament all you would see would be the consonants; the vowels were pronounced when read but not written down. There were also no line spaces or punctuations. As you can imagine this makes it very difficult to interpret! Sometimes the difference between a word in ancient Hebrew hinged on one vowel or another. As a parallel in English, how would you translate the word "N-D" if you saw it? Node, nod, and, end... nude? The vowels play a key role. The vowel pronunciations, and the teachings they unlocked, were passed along by tradition and are considered far more reliable and consistent than you might imagine. Most ancients were illiterate; but that does not mean they were stupid.
The Masoretes took many copies of Scripture and the different traditions of vowel pronunciation (which impact translation and interpretation) and literally invented vowel markings, thus solidifying their pronunciation. These vowel markings are found in the Masoretic text used today. This process was done between the year 800 -1400 AD, so this was a long time after the Old Testament books had been written. So when modern Scripture students with some basic understanding of Biblical Hebrew talk about going back to the “original language” they are right, they are going back to the original language... but it isn’t the most ancient form of that original language, but a more recent version of it (but still, a highly accurate one).
Alright, you may ask, what does the Hebrew say about Genesis 3:15? Well that too is a bit complicated. It seems the Hebrew we currently have (which we believe to be more than a bit accurate) can be taken in a number of ways (I’m not a linguist so I’ll spare you my butchery of technical details). One of the two most common ways the word in question in Genesis 3:15 can be translated is, you may have guessed it, “he.”
The other way it is most often translated is, believe it or not, “they.” This is often a standard Jewish translation; the Jewish publication society translations of the Old Testament, both the 1917 and 1985 editions, the word is rendered as “they.” However it is not just Judaism that notes this, but even Catholicism acknowledges this; in the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible a note says “The Hebrew could be read individually (“he shall”) or collectively (“they shall”).” [2] The “they” is most often taken by Christians as a reference to “the Church” being the one referred to (but also including Israel).
So... the word can be translated "he" or "they." Where does the "she" come from them? Is the Catholic Church changing Scripture? To further complicate matters, contrary to the way the footnote made it sound, not every Catholic translation of the Old Testament render it “she.” It is not "the Catholic position" but "a" Catholic position to translate it as she. Two modern Catholic translations render the verse accordingly:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” (New American Bible)
and
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)
These two translations are more modern and they are based (partly) on the Masoretic Texts, but also on other sources including the Septuagint (a pre-New Testament translation of the Old Testament into Greek - often abbreviated LXX) and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered only within the last 70ish years.
The English Catholic translation that is most often quoted as rendering the word "she"is called the Douay-Rheims... think of it as the King James of Catholic Bible translations. The Douay-Rheims is a much older English translation of the Old Testament based off of a different set of texts other than the Masoretic texts. The text it is most based off of is called the Vulgate.
The Vulgate is not an "original language" of the Old Testament, but is itself a translation of the Hebrew (and Greek) Old Testament into Latin. The Vulgate was composed largely due to the work of St. Jerome beginning in the year 382 A.D. And this is where the author of our footnote makes a slight mistake saying, “The Catholic position comes from Jerome’s translation of the Latin Vulgate.” While he is not wrong, he is only partially right. According to Jimmy Akin (a Catholic apologist):
Modern translations follow what the original Hebrew of the passage says. The Douay-Rheims, however, is following a manuscript variant found in many early Fathers and some editions of the Vulgate (but not the original; Jerome followed the Hebrew text in his edition of the Vulgate). The variant probably originated as a copyist error...
...and also from the Catholic Orchard Commentary we find this note:
15b. It can hardly be doubted that the feminine pronoun had its origin in the error of an early copyist of Vg. In his Lib. Quaest. Heb. in Gen. St Jerome quotes the Old Latin version of this text with the masc. (ipse) and translates the Hebrew with the same [PL 23, 943], and ipse is the reading of various Vg MSS. It is therefore highly improbable that he translated ipsa here. As the word refers to the ‘seed’, it may be replaced in English by ‘it’.
In other words, this translation does not stem from the Catholic Church trying to twist and mangle Scripture. Remember that way back when, before the Masoretic text was written, there were many copies of the Old Testament in Hebrew circulating around. They were largely similar, but not all of them were 100% identical. There are some copies called ‘variants.’ A variant is, as you guessed it, a variant reading on some verse; while variants existed they were not as numerous as the standard, collaborated copies the Masoretes would work on centuries later.
We know that there was a variant of Genesis 3:15 floating around. We find that other Christian writers of the time when quoting Genesis 3:15 would quote from this alternative wording. In fact, some editions of the Vulgate even follow this wording... however Jerome’s original did not. The currently-used Douay-Rheims Bible is based off of one of those manuscript variants. There are variant versions of the Old Vulgate, and the New Vulgate makes corrections. Also, there are no original copies of the Vulgate, so there are textual problems with that as well. So all-in-all this is a very complicated issue.
So... I just spent a lot of time in front of a word processor to say... what exactly? The way I see it, at least three things...
Answering Fear #2: A Look at the Interpretation
There is another other common fear tapped into by the common Protestant accusations in regards to Genesis 3 and this deals not with the verse’s translation (which we have already dealt with) but the verse’s interpretation. This is the familiar fear that Catholics worship Mary or replace Christ with Mary or practice what has been termed “Mariolatry.” The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Catholic Catechsim explains that “Church’s devotion to Mary can be confusing to some non-Catholics. Mary is not worshipped and she is not adored as the Holy Trinity is worshipped and adored.” [3] In Catholic thought there is a major distinction between worship which is due to God alone (called “latria” in Latin) and the honor and dedication paid to the saitns (called “dulia” in Latin). So just because you see a Catholic spending time in prayer or meditatin in front of a statue (or kissing a crucifix or something like that) it does not mean they are “worshipping” it anymore than you might be “worshipping” the photo of a distant loved one if you honor it regularly, or if you place flowers on the grave of a departed loved one. There is an objective difference between honor and worship.
So, in official teaching and in popular apologetics we can see that, no, Catholics do not worship Mary. But how do we explain their interpretation of this verse? And why does the Catholic Church keep two very different translations at all if their interpretations might be so different? The short answer is that the Catholic Church believes that both translations are true. I think we can see what this all about by once again returning to our footnote.
Entwhistle states that “Protestants feel correct in insisting on... it foreshadowing Christ defeating Satan through his work on the cross.” This is true, most Protestants do interpret the verse this way. However if one is not careful (and does not understand Catholic thought) then the reader could come away believing that the Catholic Church, over-against this, does not believe that it foreshadows Christ and his victory on the cross.
That belief would be sorely mistaken for several reasons. The most obvious is that, as we’ve already seen, Catholics have translations rendering it as “he.” The Catholic interpretations of the translations that render it “he” do take that as a foreshadowing of Christ. This is not just the Protestant view... it is also the Catholic view. A quick look at a few Catholic sources will bear this out...
Jimmy Akin says: ... Christians have recognized (all the way back to the first century) that the woman and her seed mentioned in Genesis 3:15 prophetically foreshadow...Jesus...it properly applies to Jesus, given the original Hebrew.
and
The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The earliest known Jewish interpretation of this text takes the offspring of the woman to be an individual man (Gk. autos, “he” in the Greek LXX).… Christian tradition gives this text a messianic interpretation (Christ is the individual who tramples the devil underfoot: Heb 2:14; 1 Jn 3:8; St. Irenaeus Against Heresies 3, 23, 7), an ecclesiological interpretation (the Church is the offspring that shares in his victory: Rom 16:20; Rev 12:17), and a mariological interpretation (Mary is the promised woman who bears the Redeemer: Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 55). This passage has long been called the “first gospel” (Lat. protoevangelium) and stands out as the first revelation of God’s mercy in Scripture (CCC 410–11).
Alright, so this idea that Genesis 3:15, the protoevangelium, the first prophecy of our blessed Savior, is shared by Catholics and Protestants alike. I can sense you are still screaming at the computer screen, “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TRANSLATION DEALING WITH “SHE????? If this Catholic translation is based off of a variant reading then why doesn’t the Catholic Church just pull all of the unsold translations off of the shelves?” Okay, okay, okay... we’ve done enough homework. Let’s knock this out quickly.
Again, as I said earlier, the Catholic Church accepts them both as true. The translations that render it “she” are most certainly applied to Mary.
The Catholic Navarre Bible Commentary notes that: So, woman is going to have a key role in that victory over the devil. In his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, St. Jerome in fact reads the relevant passage as “she [the woman] shall bruise your head.” That woman is the Blessed Virgin, the new Eve and the mother of the Redeemer...
So, how does this not feed into the Protestant fears of Mariolatry? Doesn’t this smack of a blatant replacing of Christ with Mary? Well... no, it doesn’t. To say that Mary replaces Christ as the victor over Satan would be to misrepresent the Catholic thought. If one kept reading the Navarre commentary one would notice it said: That woman is the Blessed Virgin, the new Eve and the mother of the Redeemer, who shares (by anticipation and pre-eminently) in the victory of her Son.
She shares in the victory of her Son... she does not replace Him. She participates in it, but does not usurp it from Christ. The two ideas are not contradictory, but can both be true at the same time. Christ is our Redeemer but Mary did participate along with Christ in His victory. This is the Catholic “both-and.” (a subject which would take a whole other post to try to explain). There is more evidence that this is the case, for even the Dr. Entwhistle quotes a passage from the Challoner Revision of the Douay-Rheims (also appearing in the Haydock commentary) noting this interpretation, “Ver. 15. She shall crush. 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... hence we may argue with probability, that the Septuagint and the Hebrew formerly acknowledged [it was translated as “he”], which now moves the indignation of Protestants so much, as if we intended by it to give any divine honour to the blessed Virgin Mary. We believe, however, with St. Epiphanius, that “it is no less criminal to vilify the holy Virgin, than to glorify her above measure.” We know that all the power of the mother of God is derived from the merits of her Son.… Christ crushed the serpent’s head by his death, suffering himself to be wounded in the heel. His blessed mother crushed him likewise, by her co-operation in the mystery of the Incarnation.”
Jimmy Akin also notes: This does not mean that the idea cannot be validly applied to Mary as well. Through her cooperation in the incarnation of Christ, so that the Son of God (who, from the cross, directly crushed the head of the serpent) became her seed, Mary did crush the head of the serpent. In the same way, the serpent struck at Christ on the cross, and indirectly struck at Mary’s heart as well, who had to witness the death of her own Son (cf. John 19:25-27). As the holy priest Simeon had told her years before:
“Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against — and a sword will pierce through your own soul also — that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34b-35).
Thus Jesus crushed the serpent directly and was directly struck by the serpent; Mary, through her cooperation in the incarnation and her witnessing the sufferings and death of her Son, indirectly crushed the serpent and was indirectly struck by the serpent.
But if this “Marian interpretation” of Genesis 3:15 is based on a faulty translation, why not pull those translations off of the shelves? Well the Catholic Church doesn’t do theology the same way most Protestant groups do. In many Protestant groups theology must be proved from the Bible or its a no-go (or at least it isn’t required for strong faith). In Catholic theology, the Bible is one source of truth (the only one “inspired” of God though). The Church itself and its tradition work alongside Scripture. So somethings do not appear in Scripture explicitly (the Trinity for example) yet the Church teaches that it was believed in the beginning and through the centuries the thought of the Church has been further and further refined (not changed) and developed (not contradicted).
So, even if Genesis 3:15 does not expliclicity refer to Mary grammatically, Catholics belive that, through the Church’ ongoing, developing and refining theological thought, this can be implied theologically. This should not surpirse or offend Evangelicals, for there are many things that are not explicitly taught in Scripture that Evangelicals believe: that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are only symbols, that each individual congregation is independent, that the congregation gets to vote on things, what books belong to the Bible, etc. [The catch is that many Evangelicals teach one thing (that all required theological truth must be explicitly stated in Scripture) yet seem to practice another (they do many things and believe many things that are not explicitly stated in Scripture), while Catholics teach that not everything that should be believed is explicitly taught in Scripture and they live up to it.]
So, back to Genesis 3:15. Whether or not this verse grammatically refers to Mary, Catholics do believe that Mary participated in the victory of Christ. Their theological position does not depend on this one verse...or even any verse at all. It is a theological implication. However, in Catholic thought, it is not that Mary replaces or takes the place of or is somehow equal to our Savior.
In a similar way, how might we interpret Gensis 3:15 if the subject in question were grammatically translated “they?” Would that be interpreted as multiple Jesus’? No... it is applied to the people of God (for the Jews that would be Israel, and for Christians that would extend to the Church). Well how is that possible? Did each person in the people of God die on the cross? No! We are participating in Christ’s victory over Satan by following and recieving and worshipping Him; He allows us to be a part of His victory. It is a gracious offer on the part of God to not only redeem us but to allow us to be a part of our own redemption through Christ. So Mary’s role and participation (while different and unique among all of the people of God) is like that. She participates with Christ and is a part of our Redemption... but her “victory” is really tied up with her Son’s and only through Him. Same as us. A few silly illustrations may help.
I have thought of it like a pround parent of a star athelete when, say they are drafted in the 1st round of the NFL draft. It is the athelte’s victory to be sure, his moment of acheivement. The years of sweat, practice, dedication, preparation, performacne, doubt and success have all come to fruition in that moment; when he recieves that call to be an NFL player it is his achievement. But there is more there than just that athelete’s victory. The parents, over 15 years, have gone to sports meetings, bought football cleats, encouraged, watched games, done the dirty laundry, paid for sports programs, cheered, helped coach and been there for the highs and lows of that athelete’s amateur career. While they never, ever took the field, the victory is partly theirs. They have participated with the athelete’s... and this is visible at the tables of so many NFL draftees who are with their families on that day. They cry and weep and share in that moment as they have all won. But only a fool would confuse the two roles and the two achievements.
Another illustration, this from an online friend who is a Catholic: You're a hockey fan, right? If one player gets the goal and another gets the assist, you can certainly say that even though the player who put the puck in the net scored, nevertheless the player who got the assist played a vital, non-trivial role.... Even if you translated Genesis 3:15 as 'she'....we are STILL only asserting that Mary got an assist, no one thinks she's the one who put the puck in the net.” I think that about sums up the Catholic view.
So while the translation of "she" might not be correct according to our current understanding of Hebrew, according to Catholic thought... 1) that translation is not theologically untrue and 2) the Hebrew itself is a bit ambiguous, so chaining translation might be a bit problematic and 3) our understanding of the original texts is still changing. All in all, this translation is still a valid one for Catholics if you understand their interpretation of it
The Last Laugh
This has been a lot of typing and reading to reach this conclusion. The simplest answer yet is that of Jimmy Akin’s and I do recommend referencing that keeping it handy should you need it. The reason I spent so much time is threefold...
The length of this issue, I think, gives an outsider a chance to appreciate the Catholic Church even if they have no intention of joining it or working alongside it. The Catholic Church can at least be seen as something to be respected as a thinking, feeling Christian institution seeking to live and out it's faith. One final note should be added, this one more personal. Though I am no expert theologian or God’s gift to scholarly research, it has been my experience that this is often the case with many Evangelical disagreements with the Catholic Church. To be sure, one may study the issues and still disagree with the Catholic theaching (on this or other points) but there is also a lot of midunderstanding too. When one studies what is actually taught and thought (by orthodox, well-prayed) Catholics one finds much more there. Nuance, definitions, thought, balance. Again one can still disagree, but one finds that what they disagreed with was often not what they originally thought. I leave with the words of G.K. Chesterton: "When a man really sees the Church, even if he dislikes what he sees, he does not see what he had expected to dislike. Even if he wants to slay it he is no longer able to slander it; though he hates it at sight, what he sees is not what he looked to see; in that place he may gain a new passion but he loses his old prejudice. There drops from him the holy armour of his invincible ignorance; he can never be so stupid again." [5]
[1] Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity: An Introduction to Worldview Issues, Philosophical Foundations, and Models of Integration. David Entwhislte, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004. Page 79.
[2] Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The Book of Genesis. Scott Hahn & Mitch Curtis. Ignatius Press, 2010.The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Catholic Catechism
[3] The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Catholic Catechism. Poust, Mary DeTurris; Fulton, STD, JCD, Theological Advisor David I. Penguin Group. Kindle Edition, 2004. (Kindle Locations 1836-1837)
[4] The Catholic Church and Conversion. G.K. Chesterton. Available online.
[5] Ibid.
[2] Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The Book of Genesis. Scott Hahn & Mitch Curtis. Ignatius Press, 2010.The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Catholic Catechism
[3] The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Catholic Catechism. Poust, Mary DeTurris; Fulton, STD, JCD, Theological Advisor David I. Penguin Group. Kindle Edition, 2004. (Kindle Locations 1836-1837)
[4] The Catholic Church and Conversion. G.K. Chesterton. Available online.
[5] Ibid.
Hey this is terrific. If you wind up Catholic I want you to be a catechist.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I'll add that another thing about the Church is that it may think about stuff like this for centuries before saying something definitive.