One Again, Biblical Confusion: Genesis 3:15 (church, priests, gospel, Israel)

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

There were no pronouns in the Hebrew. In fact, there were no helpful grammatic elements at all. There were just 9 Hebrew characters (words) that if we simply put their typical translations together in the same order they appeared it would simply read:

Put enmity woman seed seed bruise head bruise heel

You get to decide how to make that an English sentence including pronouns.

Originally Posted by Richard1965

Ya got that wrong...

Don't nitpick me, Richard. The words have different gender . . . but it has nothing to do with the point I am making about the lack of any of the grammatical verbiage added in the English transliterations.

[thrillobyte]

So if there are no pronouns in the Hebrew language then how in the hell do the translators know who the "he" or "she" or "they" is????

Which leads to the question, "Who came up with this idiotic notion that the "he" is the first promise by God of a coming Messiah that will save mankind from their sins and that Messiah is Jesus Christ?" Wait, don't tell me: Christian apologists!

To quote Javert from Les Miserables when he saw Jean Valjean's confession in the newspaper: "I knew it! I knew it!! I KNEW IT!!!"

[nateswift]

I'm no scholar, but the resource I have indicates that the word is third person singular and context would indicate sex.
The point remains that all that is immediately indicated in the passage is that men in general would have it in for snakes and snakes would be responsible for some damage to men. Typical mythology.

The application of the passage to Jesus as prophecy comes later.

[Vizio]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

There no end to the messiness found in Biblical translations. Take for example Genesis 3:15 which Christians love to tout as the first promise God made to send Jesus to save mankind. But does it really refer to Jesus, or is it just some vague obscure mumbo-jumbo that nobody but a Hebrew scribe could dream up?

Here are three translations:







A fourth translation which I found quoted but cannot get a reference to reads:



So we have three and possibly four different pronouns for who the offspring of the woman is. Any experts in Hebrew in here? What Hebrew word is used for the bolded pronoun referring to the woman's offspring? Is it properly translated as "he", "she", "it" or "they"?

I would suggest staying away from the bad translations like Douay-Rheims. Things clear up a bit when you read it as it was supposed to be.

[Hawkins]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

So if there are no pronouns in the Hebrew language then how in the hell do the translators know who the "he" or "she" or "they" is????

Which leads to the question, "Who came up with this idiotic notion that the "he" is the first promise by God of a coming Messiah that will save mankind from their sins and that Messiah is Jesus Christ?" Wait, don't tell me: Christian apologists!

To quote Javert from Les Miserables when he saw Jean Valjean's confession in the newspaper: "I knew it! I knew it!! I KNEW IT!!!"

Basically the word is either 'he' or 'it'. However, it seems to be a very flexible term in Hebrew that it can be used as 'they', 'this', 'these', 'who' and so forth. It depends on how you hook it up with the rest of the texts. As long as the verse itself is prophetic, different persons may have different ideas about how it should be put.

[TheDusty]

Originally Posted by Vizio

I would suggest staying away from the bad translations like Douay-Rheims. Things clear up a bit when you read it as it was supposed to be.

In Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic? It's amazing that you speak all three of those languages.

[thrillobyte]

So it seems we have a two-fold "cancer" growing here. The passage starts out as gibberish---totally unintelligible far as trying to attach something meaningful. I mean God could have simply said, "And I will send you my servant, a man born of a virgin who will be God incarnate, and he shall free mankind from the sin you have inflicted on all future generations." I mean true? Is that too much to ask of God so that we can get an unmistakable interpretation of whatever the hell he was supposed to be telling us?

But NOOOO! God has to word it so obscurely that rabbis have been scratching their heads for a millennia reading that saying, "What the f..........?" until some Einstein during the Babylonian captivity comes along and says, "I've got it! This has to refer to a Messiah, a savior who will free us from the Babylonians."

That anointed turned out to be Cyrus, I suppose but the idea had to have reignited when Israel fell under Roman rule. Then after the Romans demolished Jerusalem in 70 AD the early Christians needed to attach a savior label to Jesus and make him a god, although Paul rebelled against calling Jesus God with 1 Timothy 2:5

1" For there is one God: there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, (NRSV)

although we have Philippians 2:6

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

So once again we have Paul talking out of both sides of his mouth, which I suppose is what left the Council of Nicaea with one big headache. So they invented the concept of the Trinity to resolve the issue. Jesus was a man AND he was God. How?

"It's a divine mystery!" they replied. "Who can know the ways of the Almighty?"

I love the analogy every minister under the sun uses to wiggle out of this conundrum. "Well, I am a husband, a father, and a son. I'm three separate people even though I'm only one man."

[GoCardinals]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

There no end to the messiness found in Biblical translations. Take for example Genesis 3:15 which Christians love to tout as the first promise God made to send Jesus to save mankind. But does it really refer to Jesus, or is it just some vague obscure mumbo-jumbo that nobody but a Hebrew scribe could dream up?

Here are three translations:







A fourth translation which I found quoted but cannot get a reference to reads:



So we have three and possibly four different pronouns for who the offspring of the woman is. Any experts in Hebrew in here? What Hebrew word is used for the bolded pronoun referring to the woman's offspring? Is it properly translated as "he", "she", "it" or "they"?

Even if agree with the theme of this promise and ignore the error in translation - how will those hundred and millions of people be saved who lived in a pre-Jesus era and never heard of Jesus?

Did God create those people to burn in hell?

The whole "promise" doesn't make sense as it seems to have come too late for many humans.

[whoppers]

The passage in Genesis 3:15 has been frequently used as an example of a prophecy, but this really does distort the plain sense meaning of the text. The Hebrew word in question is zera', and can be understood in either a singular or collective sense usually depending on that old reliable method of context. In contrast to what a poster stated, there is a pronoun involved and it is hūw'. It is a third person masculine singular pronoun. However, it can be used to refer to a collective. I understand what Mystic was trying to say, but there are grammatical indicators that can assist us. The readers and writers of Biblical Hebrew did not speak like cavemen, even though looking at the BH words may appear to us that way.

At it's very core, the stories in Genesis 2-3 are etiological, they attempt to explain why things are the way they are. As such, a plain sense reading will see an etiological explanation for why humans have a fear of snakes. To look past this sensible reading and read into it some sort of Christological prediction is reading much more into the text than is actually there. A few examples of translations (with notes) can demonstrate this:

I will plant enmity between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and hers;
They shall strike at your head,
And you shall strike at their heel.
(Gen 3:15, Anchor Bible 1, Speiser)

The note Speiser appends to the verse reads: 'Heb. literally "seed", used normally in the collective sense of progeny. The passage does not justify eschatological connotations. As Dr. [S.R. Driver, The Book of Genesis, 1926] put it, "We must not read into the words more than they contain." '

And Yahweh God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, cursed are you among all cattle and among all animals of the field; you shall crawl on your belly, and you shall eat dust your whole life long.
Enmity I am putting between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; it will crush your head and you will snap at its heel.
(Gen 3:14-15, Genesis 1-11, Westermann)

Westermann includes the previous verse to help ascertain the meaning of the current one when he writes: 'The meaning of "all the days of your life" in v. 14 (i.e., as long as there are serpents) is given in 15ai with the mention of the descendants of both parties. The parallelism makes it clear that "seed" refers to a line of descendants and not to an individual' (ibid., p. 259)

I put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed:
they will bruise you on the head, you will bruise them in the heel.
(Gen 3:15, Shocken Bible, Fox)

I place enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He presses you (at the) head, and you press him (at the) heel.
(Genesis 3:15, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?, Zevit)

As Zevit notes concerning "her seed" and the grammar involved, 'the noun [zera'] can refer to plant seed or semen. When it is applied to people, with the meaning of "progeny", it is sometimes used with a singular sense and sometimes with a collective sense. English words demonstrating the same linguistic behavior are sheep, head, and fish - and, indeed, offspring, progeny, and seed. Usually context suffices to determine how it is to be understood..... When ["her seed" is] applied to the serpent's seed, however, the term could theoretically refer to a number of crafty crawlers. Unfortunately, the single reference leaves the matter of number unresolved.' (ibid., p. 204). Though, in contrast to Zevit, see Westermann's comment on 3:14 above and the parallelism he notes.

In the end, the linguistic features of Biblical Hebrew appear to point to a collective sense of the noun. Even if we were to ignore this and favor a singular understanding, this does not in any way legitimize an attempt to read into it some sort of eschatological prophecy concerning Jesus Christ. We should probably struggle with the text, rather than explain it away to something that suits our personal beliefs.

[Richard1965]

Originally Posted by Hawkins

Basically the word is either 'he' or 'it'. However, it seems to be a very flexible term in Hebrew that it can be used as 'they', 'this', 'these', 'who' and so forth. It depends on how you hook it up with the rest of the texts. As long as the verse itself is prophetic, different persons may have different ideas about how it should be put.

What were the authors intentions?...