Definition
The traditional name, "first gospel", for Genesis 3:15: God's promise of enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between the serpent's offspring and hers, ending with the serpent's head crushed. The Church reads it as the first announcement of the Messiah and of his mother (Catechism §§410–411), and ancient Jewish readers already took the serpent to be Satan and the seed to be an individual. It is the founding text of the New Eve typology and of the Immaculate Conception.
Start here
Begin with Mary as the New Eve, then what "enmity" actually means, then the Jewish readings of the verse.
From Jewish Roots of Mary
- 1.Mary as the New Eve — the founding text and its logic.
God sets enmity between the serpent and 'the woman,' whose seed will crush his head — fulfilled when Mary's Son conquers Satan by the cross. Ancient Jewish tradition already held that death came into the world through a woman; the New Eve reverses it, paired with Christ the New Adam.
- 2.Both sides strike — one Hebrew verb, and Genesis 4 as commentary on Genesis 3:15
The same Hebrew verb, shuph, describes both blows in Genesis 3:15: the seed crushes the serpent's head and the serpent strikes his heel. 'The mysterious thing about the battle is that both sides appear to lose.' Pitre's image: crushing a snake's head is the safe way to kill it, but 'if you try to step on its head, you take a fairly big risk of being struck on the heel before killing it.' The next chapter of Genesis reads the oracle spiritually: sin is a beast 'lurking at the door' waiting to strike Eve's son Cain, who must 'master' it.
- 3.What 'enmity' actually means in Genesis 3:15.
The Hebrew for 'enmity' denotes lethal hostility — the language of blood-feud and war. The verse sets up a four-party battle: the serpent and his seed against the woman and her seed, which ancient Jews read as the war with the devil. The woman's offspring crushes the serpent's head.
- 4.Ancient Jews said the serpent was Satan — and that Eve's sin was inherited
Genesis names only 'the serpent,' but Jewish writings of the first century identify him. The Book of Wisdom: it was 'through the devil's envy that death entered the world.' The Life of Adam and Eve: the devil spoke to Eve 'through the mouth of the serpent.' The same writings hold that the first sin is passed to all descendants who were not personally guilty — Sirach ('from a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die'), Pseudo-Philo, and 4 Ezra ('O Adam, what have you done?'). These texts 'lay the foundations for what would later come to be known as the doctrine of original sin.'
- 5.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.'
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