Serpent and the Seed

0 Comments | November 18, 2008 at 12:10 am by mahud
Filed under Christianity, Judaism, Biblical Mythology

This post contains an extract from my current book project titled The Cosmic Double-Death (And Cyclic re-creation through the Dying God). The bibliography for this post is too extensive to include here, but may be available on request.

The Proto-Gospel

And I will put enmity between you and the woman,
between your seed and her seed.
He (or it/they) will strike your head
and you will strike his (or its/their) heel.

Genesis 3:15

Serpent and the Seed

According to the Hebrew Massoretic text, the masculine singular pronoun is hu, which is translated as ‘it’ or ‘they,’ while its antecedent, translated as ’seed,’ is the masculine zera, which can be understood as referring to either a singular or collective. In the Greek Septuagint (LXX: dating to the 2nd or 3rd century B.C.), hu is translated literally using the masculine singular pronoun autos (’he’), while ’seed’ is translated using the antecedent neuter noun sperma. While the Septuagint attempts to translate the masculine pronoun literally, it cannot do so without doing violence to its relationship with its antecedent, which should properly be translated in Greek using auto (’it’).

Massoretic

Hebrew pronoun: (masculine singular) hu
Hebrew antecedent: (masculine collective or singular) zera

Septuagint (LXX)

Greek pronoun: (masculine singular) autos
Greek antecedent noun: (neuter) sperma

…between your seed (or offspring zera; sperma’) and her seed.
He (or it/they ‘hu; autos’) will strike (’sup’) your head
and you will strike (’sup’) his (or its/their) heel

Genesis 3:15

R. A. Martin in The Earliest Messianic Interpretation of Gen 3:15 (published in the Journal of Biblical Literature: 1965), points out that where this relationship between pronoun and antecedent exists in Genesis (over 100 times), the Septuagint translates the Hebrew using the grammatically correct Greek neuter or feminine pronoun, making the translation of Gen 3:15 unique. Martin argues that the translator’s decision to break this rule on this one occasion is deliberate, and therefore evidence of a Messianic interpretation of the woman’s seed (offspring), or at least, as Joseph A. Fitzmyer points out, it is “the earliest Jewish evidence of an individual personal or male interpretation of the offspring.”

Despite this early date for a possible Messianic interpretation of Genesis 3:15, the verse still remains a controversial issue among theologians. According to Victor P. Hamilton, a Christian interpretation of Genesis 3:15 is divided into two theological camps: Those who accept the Messianic implication, while critical theologians interpret the Protevangelium exclusively in etiological terms, as a mythical explanation of the hatred between Humankind and the snake world.

The enmity between the seed and serpent is clearly more than just an etiological “explanation of the hatred between Humankind and the snake.” It is a dynamic mythological symbol, explicitly linked with a new cosmic-chaotic order of reality. In the verses that follow (16-19) we have a clear and direct depiction of this new order of things, describing the new human condition in a world of perpetual suffering and death. A corresponding Patriarchal myth known to Hesiod (Works and Days 90-105), has Pandora (the first woman) lift the lid of Zeus’ terrible jar (like Eve who ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), thereby unleashing all suffering upon humankind, but whereas hope was said to remain for humankind inside the box, in these verses of Genesis there is only the prophetic message of hopelessness for the whole of humanity.

This is also the continual fate of the seed and the serpent, perpetually engaging each other in battle, with neither combatant inflicting the winning blow.

He (or it/they ‘hu; autos’) will strike (sup’) your head and you will strike (’sup’) his (or its/their) heel

Genesis 3:15

The Hebrew verb sup is used both times, when the ‘it’ (the seed) ‘wounds’ (sup) the serpent’s head, and the serpent ‘wounds (sup) its heel. In more modern translations of the text, as pointed out by Victor P. Hamilton, there is a tendency to translate the verb sup differently, so as to suggest that the seed (i.e., Christ) is not mortally wounded by the serpent (i.e., Satan), rather it is the seed of the woman that strikes the definitive blow. Hamilton comments that due to a lack of any evidence in the Hebrew readings, sup should be translated the same way both times.

The ultimate victory of the seed is not the meaning here intended, but rather a simultaneous double-death, where the fate of the seed and the serpent are inextricably bound together, perpetually wounding and wounded in a kind of cosmic-chaotic symbiosis. The serpent-seed conflict is symbolic of a new and terrible reality of perpetual suffering and death, manifested via the consequences of the primordial parent’s disobedience, beyond the paradise of Eden.

If there was any message of hope relating to these verses, secretly known to the first storytellers of the serpent-seed conflict, as far as the written record is concerned, it remains hidden. Historically and theologically, it is a puzzle that cannot be conclusively solved, unless earlier versions of the Genesis narratives are eventually discovered that reveal otherwise.

All that can be known for certain is that by the time of the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, there was possibly a Messianic tradition in circulation pertaining to Genesis 3:15 (though not explicit in the text itself), and certainly in later Christian and Jewish traditions the Messiah is explicitly guaranteed to achieve the ultimate victory over the serpent.