The Protoevangelium is Jewish soil — 1 Enoch and Targum Neofiti on Genesis 3:15

Christians call Genesis 3:15 the 'First Gospel,' the Protoevangelium; Pitre shows the reading is Jewish before it is Christian. 1 Enoch, 'very popular among Jews in the first century,' identifies the Messiah with the Son of Man and links him to the woman: 'For the offspring of the mother of the living was concealed from the beginning.' Targum Neofiti paraphrases Genesis 3:15 of the woman's sons who will 'make appeasement in the end, in the day of King Messiah.' So the Messiah was already being read as the 'offspring' of Eve, 'the mother of all living' — and the Christian tradition 'is actually rooted in Jewish soil.'

• Genesis 3:15 — the woman's seed crushes the serpent.
• Genesis 3:20 — 'the mother of all living' — the title 1 Enoch echoes.
• Revelation 12:17 — 'the rest of her seed' — the New Testament's own messianic reading.

The messianic reading of Genesis 3:15 is the signature of Pitre's method: the New Testament's Woman is not a Christian invention imposed on Genesis but the fulfilment of an expectation Jews already held.

• 1 Enoch — 48:2–10; 62:5–7 (pp 26–27) · read · read
• Targums — Targum Neofiti on Genesis 3:15 (p 27); the same reading in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 3:15, in Etheridge's public-domain translation · read · read