Mariolatry (Pt. 5) Mary the New Eve?

Is Mary the New Eve from Gen. 3:15?

NO!

Pope Pius IX argued that Gen. 3:15 established the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. He said, “the most holy Virgin, united with him [Christ] by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was, with him and through him, eternally at enmity with the evil serpent, and most completely triumphed over him, and thus crushed his head with her immaculate foot” (Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, Interpreters of the Sacred Scripture, italics and brackets mine).

It’s ‘He’, Not ‘She’

As has been already explained in a previous post, the “she” and “her” in Gen. 3:15 of the Latin Vulgate is a mistranslation. In the Douay Rheims Bible, the verse reads as follows:

“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.” (DRB)

The DRB is a translation of the Latin Vulgate, which uses the Latin word “Ipsa”, that is, “she” in English. This is a complete error and mistranslation. It should have been “ipse”, masculine for “he”. The NRSVCE, a Catholic Bible, correctly renders the verse as follows:

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.

For a very long time the Roman Catholic Church knew very well of the Vulgate’s mistranslation. Romanist bishop Alphonsus Liguori (A. D. 1696 –1787), proclaimed Doctor of the Church, made mention of this problem prior to Pius IX’s definition of the Immaculate Conception:

“She will crush your head: some question whether this refers to Mary, and not rather to Jesus, since the Septuagint translates it, He shall crush your head. But in the Vulgate, which alone was approved by the Council of Trent, we find She.” (Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary, (adapted), [Catholic Book Publishing, 1981], p. 88.)

Even Modern Catholics themselves admit this mistranslation, as the New Catholic Encyclopedia states: “Much confusion has resulted from the fact that the second half of this verse [Genesis 3:15] was inaccurately translated in the Vulgate to read, “SHE shall crush your head.” This translation, which has strongly affected the traditional representations of the Blessed Virgin, is today generally recognized to be a mistake for “it [or “he,” i.e., the seed of the woman] shall crush...,” and consequently CAN NO LONGER BE CITED in favor of the Immaculate Conception.” (Volume VII, page 378)

And even the Catholic Encyclopedia, when talking about the Immaculate Conception, admits that, and I quote, “The translation "she" of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended critically. The conqueror from the seed of the woman, who should crush the serpent's head, is Christ …”

Morever, the Nova Vulgate, the revised Latin version which was authorized by the Vatican, corrected this mistake, changing it from ‘ipsa’ to ‘ipsum’, “it” in the Latin. And in the footnotes of the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, it states that the rendering “ipsa” could have been “due originally to a copyist’s mistake...”

All modern Bible translations which translate from the Septuagint and Masoretic Texts have correctly interpreted it as “He” or “it”, referring to the Seed of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head, which is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. As Rom. 16:20 testifies, “The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” (NRSVCE) Paul alludes to Christ’s anticipated Final victory over Satan in Rev. 20:2,10, while at the same time telling the church at Rome and to all believers that they will have victory over Satan and his schemes through our Lord Jesus Christ, NOT Mary. And as Is. 9.6 proclaims, Jesus is our mighty God, Father of Eternity, and “The Prince of Peace”.

Now, a Catholic might argue that the Hebrew word “hū”, used in Gen 3:15 to refer to the Seed, can also mean “she”. And that’s true, the word “hū” can mean “he”, “she”, or “it”, but that depends on the surrounding grammatical context being examined. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon confirms that “he”, NOT “she” or “it”, is the correct choice for Gen. 3:15 (Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, Charles A. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon Coded with Strong’s Concordance Numbers, [Hendrickson Publishers, 2010], p. 215). And since the Greek Septuagint (LXX, 3^rd-2^nd century B.C.) translates the Hebrew word  “hū” into the masculine “He” (“autos”, αὐτός), then “he” is certainly the accurate word to describe the Seed of the woman. This means that the Greek-speaking, pre-Christian Jews were expecting a single MALE person who would crush the Serpent’s head.

Furthermore, God’s Word reveals to us in Gen.  4:1 that Eve was expecting a MALE child to crush the serpent’s head: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD’” (Gen. 4:1).

This is a clear and definite remark from Eve who believed that the promise of Gen. 3:15, in which a future seed would destroy Satan, was fulfilled with Cain’s birth. Though she was wrong about Cain, this proves to us that even Eve knew that Gen. 3:15 refers to a male offspring crushing Satan’s head, NOT a female. Therefore, there is a powerful, well-founded case grammatically, historically, and biblically for the rendering “he will crush your head”. No other case can be made for the rendering “she” as the Greek grammar has shown. No honest and serious scholars or modern translations can nor will make such a case.

Therefore, Pope Pius IX, expressing Jerome’s false translation, was in error when asserting that Mary crushed Satan’s head.  His biblical arguments in his very own encyclical culminating in his supposedly infallible dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception were misleading and deceptive. Still, Rome wants people to believe the dogmatic definition itself is infallible. The many evidences reveal that Gen. 3:15 does in fact mean that God puts enmity between Satan and Eve, and between Satan’s seed and Eve’s seed. Jesus, as Eve’s offspring, will crush Satan’s head and Satan will bruise Christ’s heel. Mary is not the one who crushes Satan’s head.

Yet, Catholics still want to say that Mary crushed Satan’s head through Jesus. The problem is that, One, Mary was not sinless. And Two, she did not die for our sins. Only Jesus was sinless and only Jesus died for our sins. Mary was merely the blessed instrument by which Jesus would become human.

The ‘Woman’ is Eve, Not Mary

Since it is clearly obvious Mary is NOT the one to crush the serpent’s head, Romanism has recently devised another argument in order to somehow say that Mary is in Gen. 3:15. Now they say that although Mary is not the one who crushes Satan’s head, she is instead the woman who is at enmity with Satan and bears a seed (Christ) who crushes Satan’s head. Thus, according to this argument, one might interpret the text as follows:

“and I will put enmity between Satan and Mary and between Satan’s seed and Mary’s seed: Jesus shall crush Satan’s head, and Satan shall bruise his heel.”

For instance, Roman scholar Stephano M. Manelli gives his thoughts:

“the Mariological dimension in reference to the ‘woman’ must be also understood literally to be exclusive to that ‘woman,’ to Mary, that is, to the Mother of the Redeemer, and not to Eve” (Stephano M. Manelli, All Generations Shall Call me Blessed: Biblical Mariology, [Academy of the Immaculate Conception, 2005], pp. 23-24).

On the contrary, the context is plainly clear that Eve is the “woman” (Hb. hā·’iš·šāh) of Gen. 3:15, NOT Mary. The reference to “woman” is evidenlty Eve all through the chapter in the context of the same ‘fall of man’ event with Adam, Eve and the serpent in the garden (e. g. vv. 1-2, 4, 6, 12-13, 16). Therefore, when v. 15 mentions the “woman” in the same story, in God’s address to the serpent that had just deceived Adam and Eve, it is misleading and deceptive to claim Mary is all of a sudden in view. Furthermore, Eve’s assumption in Gen. 4:1 that her son Cain fulfilled what God promised in Gen. 3:15 (i.e., that her seed would crush the serpent’s head) confirms it was instantly known that the woman here is Eve, NOT Mary.

And yet the Catholic will respond saying: Jesus is Mary’s seed, not Eve’s. Hence, Catholics assert that Mary has to be this ‘woman’. As Roman scholar Mark I. Miravalle contends, “Since the ‘seed’ of the woman is Jesus Christ, who is to crush Satan victoriously in the Redemption, then the woman must in fact refer to Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, from whom the seed of victory comes” (Mark I. Miravalle, Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Doctrine and Devotion, [Mark I. Miravalle, S.T.D., 2006], pp. 64-65).

Contrary to this argument, it is contextually wrong to limit the word “seed” (Heb. zera‛) to a recent descendant and rule out the broader sense of a future descendant. The word zera‛ can denote the seed of a person many generations in the future. For instance, we read in 2 Sam. 22:51, “He is the tower of salvation for his king: and sheweth mercy to his anointed, unto David, and to his seed for evermore.” Hence, David’s seed does refer to future descendants until the end of time, and thus, it’s not restricted to his immediate descendant. Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words indicates the word can pertain to “‘offspring’ or ‘descendents’ of an individual. At times zera‛ designates a single descendent” (William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, [Zondervan, 2006], p. 625 italics mine). The word isn’t limited to immediate offspring, but can also refer to future children.

Moreover, the New Testament uses the term “seed” (Gk. spermatos) to extend further than an immediate descendant. For instance, 2 Tim. 2:8 reads, “Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel”. It cannot be said that Jesus was David’s literal and immediate seed (i.e. his biological son). Yet, that is exactly what Catholic reasoning assumes because the Catholic apologists completely disregard the fact that the term can refer to future offspring.

To sum up, there is no basis for denying that the ‘seed’ in Gen. 3:15 refers to Eve’s future descendant, that is, Jesus. To claim that the ‘seed’ must refer to the woman’s immediate offspring is recklessly rash. That does not accord with the facts according to the Hebrew and Greek languages. The context is absolutely clear that the enmity is between Satan and Eve, between Eve’s ‘seed’ (Jesus) and Satan. The enmity is not between Satan and Mary, for Mary is not the ‘woman’ of Gen. 3:15. The Catholic’s attempt at forcing Mary into Gen. 3:15 in order to try to prove the false doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, regardless of being disproven on their first argument, also fail to prove their point.

For Catholics to keep pressing the issue that Mary must be the ‘woman’ of Gen. 3:15 simply because Jesus is her ‘seed’ is just eisegetical desperation, for it rips the first half of Gen. 3:15 out of its surrounding context (Gen. 3:14-16) and does not correlate with the exegetical facts that the context of Gen. 3:15 speak of the Serpent’s hostile relation with Eve, and thus, mankind’s hostile relation with Satan in its prophetic completion by Jesus Christ, the Woman’s (Eve’s) ‘Seed’ who will crush the Serpents’ head. And since the context clearly demands the ‘woman’ to be Eve, especially because the next verse (v.16) clearly speaks of Eve’s punishment as the ‘woman’ who will experience birth pangs, desire her husband, and be under his authority, in no way can it be said that Mary is somehow the New Eve. (Keep in mind that Catholics claim that Mary did not experience birth pangs nor had any desire/sex with her husband. This is another reason why Gen.3:15 cannot be applied to Mary since it contradicts these Catholic beliefs) Mary’s connection to Eve is only that she is the instrument by which she would give birth to the Seed, Jesus Christ, who will crush the Serpent’s head, and nothing more. Mary’s blessedness as recorded in Luke 1:28,42 was her childbearing of the Promised Messiah, NOT her supposed sinlessness as the New Eve.

Besides, the Catholic analogy that Mary is the New Eve fails miserably because Eve was Adam’s earthly WIFE. Mary is Jesus’ earthly MOTHER, not His wife. Scripture teaches that Jesus is the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45), but NOWHERE does it teach that Mary is the last Eve. And even if Mary was the New Eve, It would be more of an insult than a respectable title for Mary, since it would give the blasphemous impression of an incestuous relationship between Jesus and his mother Mary. The fact is that Mary is NOT the New Eve, but rather she is part of the Church of Christ, and the Church collectively as a whole is spiritually called the “bride” of Jesus Christ (Eph. 3:23-33; Rev. 19:7-9).

Hence, no one else but Jesus alone fulfilled the magnificent prophecy of Gen. 3:15 and He alone conquered our greatest enemy, Satan. As 1 John 3:8 testifies, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil”. It’s through Jesus Christ’s death on the Cross, NOT Mary, that He destroyed “him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release[ed] those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Heb. 2:14-15) Therefore, we should trust in Jesus alone to give us victory over Satan, sin, and death, so that He alone may be glorified.