Protoevangelium

PROTOEVANGELIUM. - This is the customary designation for Gen. 3:15, because it contains the "first joyful announcement" of salvation for humanity after sin

(ibid. 3, 1-8). Eve, to clear herself of Adam's accusation, accuses the serpent; which, without interrogation, is struck by the condemnation (v. 14). Here is grafted the announcement of a ceaseless struggle between the two opposing groups of the serpent with its offspring, and of the woman with her offspring. The second group will emerge victorious.

Here is the text of the P. according to the Hebrew: "And hostility I will place between you and the woman, and between your lineage and her lineage. It will crush your head and you will strike it at the heel." Where the Vulgate has the plural inimicitias the Hebrew text has the singular 'ēbhāh, "hostility." The future "I will place" can indicate a fact that is already being realized from the moment it is announced. "It will crush" and "you will strike" are forms of the same Hebrew verb šīph, "to crush," "to shatter," softened in the Septuagint with τηρέω in both cases. The Vulgate translates first with conterere, then with insidiari; the Old Latin, reproducing the Septuagint, with servare. The difference in meaning seems to be suggested also by the context, which intends to contrast two actions of differing efficacy. The classic variant is hū' ("it"), to be referred to zar'āh ("seed" or lineage of the woman), translated with the masculine αὐτός, in place of the neuter αὐτό, by the Septuagint (concordance ad sensum with στέρυα) and by the Old Latin with ipse (referring to semen), while the Vulgate has ipsa. The versions, unlike the original, would therefore suggest that the one who conquers the serpent is an individual. This, for the Vulgate, is "the woman."

But one cannot doubt that, in the original, the masculine pronoun hū' supplies the noun zar'āh "her seed." Masculine is the verbal form jēšīphēhhā, and the pronominal suffix in tēšīphennū. It is not certain that the ipsa of the Vulgate is due to the Mariological interpretation, given from the time of St. Jerome, although not commonly, as is often said. St. Jerome himself (Liber quaest. Hebr.: PL 23, 943) noted both the identity of the verb in Hebrew and the difference of the pronoun.

The crushing victory over the serpent can be recognized only in a champion of humanity, who escapes every influence or power of the evil one. It is the Messiah. The Mariological meaning of the text rests above all on tradition, which in the ipsa of the Vulgate has found its classic expression.

The full meaning of the P. may not have been perceived by the first parents and by subsequent generations; but, however vague, it was a ray of hope in the dark picture of fallen humanity. In a wholly different sense, the best-known "infancy gospel" is called P. (v. GIACOMO, protoevangelo di).

Protoevangelii, in Verbum Dom., 27 (1949), pp. 33-43; P. Bonnetain, Immaculée Conception, in Dlls. IV, coll. 240-54.

Teodorico da Castel San Pietro