mls@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Siemon) (06/26/89)
This note grew out of discussion in talk.religion.misc about Genesis 3:15,
and in particular about that as background for some statues where Mary
is shown treading on a snake. Beyond its original intent, the essay became
both long and very particularly Christian in its assumptions, so I felt it
to be inappropriate in t.r.m. and have sent it here.
Lurking behind the issue of interpreting Genesis 3:15 is the question
of typology. That is one of the main instances of what I had in mind when
I told Joe Applegate that it is worthwhile *knowing* what Christian biases
are in reading scripture and possibly stepping outside the tradition as an
exercise in making allowances for our biases. Joe Applegate wants to read
this passage as typological for the Messiah, Joe Buehler wants it to be
typological of Mary. There is no particularly good reason it can't be BOTH,
since typology is always an overlay of an "additional" meaning on top of
the text. Any good deconstructionist would allow either reading or both;
but the problem I face (not being fond of deconstructionism) is whether
there is justification for this outside the desire of the reader. I see
here the basic issue of interpretation: when you "find" something in a text,
what can you do to decide whether the meaning you find is really "there"?
There is a LOT of typological interpretation of the OT, much of it
developed in the earliest days of the church. Justin Martyr's (circa 150)
_Dialogue with Trypho_ is full of it. Some goes back to NT writings; there
is at least an implicit typology of Jesus as paschal lamb in the Passion in
John's gospel. The problem is whether this is anything more than a poetic
association of ideas, or perhaps more pointedly, whether poetic inspiration
in making such an association is attributable to the Holy Spirit and has the
status of "revealed truth." I will argue that there is truth there, but NOT
dogmatic, propositional truth; that attempts to cast poetic structures as
doctrinal statements are a "category mistake" and need to be resisted, even
as I (personally) accept the force of the poetic statement.
Joe Buehler's remarks form a reasonable entry into the question:
> I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between thy seed
> and her seed. He shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his
> heel.
> ...
> As for doctrinal points, whatever the passage might say theologically
> about our Lady is contained in the first half of the verse; if anyone
> wants to press it, the second half isn't necessary.
>
> This verse may indeed be a good example of a place where the Vulgate is
> flawed critically speaking, but theologically sound. Which, of course,
> is what is primarily claimed for the Vulgate.
>
> It would be interesting to check the other early Latin versions and see
> if St. Jerome was just retaining a traditional mistranslation. In his
> day, he caught flak for changing the Latin translations then in use;
> people were used to the translations already used in the liturgy.
Jerome was constrained by earlier translations mostly in the NT;
as I said earlier, I don't object to his translation as such. The passage
takes the situation (enmity between this woman and this serpent) and
projects that indefinitely into the future via their respective "seed."
The literalistic translations I have, as well as Jerome and Septuagint,
all give a 2nd person pronoun in the latter part of this verse ("and you
will snap at its heel") so that parallelism suggests that the "it" which
refers to Eve's seed might better be replaced by a pronoun referring to
Eve. That replacement has a valid poetic "point" -- it tightens the form
of the passage. The difficulty arises when readers take Jerome's "she"
as evidence supporting a typology in this passage (i.e. a reading that
takes the passage to be "mentioning" a specific female who will crush
"the" serpent in a future apocalypse.) The SAME difficulty arises when
Messianic typology reads "it" as referring to some future male "he."
Because the actual text refers to the (collective and neuter) seed and
NOT to any individual. And the verbs are in a form that indicate not one
future action but on-going, iterated action (I say this not of my own --
nonexistent -- knowledge of Hebrew, but following Westermann's commentary
(published in this country by Augsburg). Among other things, Westermann
says:
"From the time of Irenaeus [c. 200], Christian tradition has
understood the passage as a prophecy about Christ (and Mary)...
This explanation runs from Irenaeus right through the history
of exegesis in both Catholic and evangelical tradition... There
are two main reasons that do not allow such an interpretation:
First, it is beyond doubt that [seed] is to be understood collec-
tively. The text is speaking of the line of descendants of the
woman as well as of the serpent. The second reaon is form-critical.
The word occurs in the context of a pronouncement of punishment (or
of a curse). IT is not possible that such a form has either promise
or prophecy as its primary or even as its secondary meaning.
Note: Westermann is saying that the AUTHOR cannot have had any such
meaning. The problem when people start finding secret meanings slipped
in by God without the author's knowledge is that there is NO WAY AT ALL
to confirm the presence of any such meanings. What the Joe Applegates
of the world need to consider is why anyone should believe them that a
text has the meaning they give it, when the text itself leads in a totally
different direction. Joe Buehler has an "answer" to this question that
only begs the question -- interpretive authority is in the hands of the
Magisterium, so somehow magically Jerome's "critical flaws" turn into
theological soundness. In either case, readers outside the inner circle
are told that they *cannot* in principle read it correctly -- which to me
implies that it wasn't *written* correctly. If public reading informed
by the best available critical scholarship must fail, then *all* reading
must fail. I suppose what I am saying is a restatement of the Protestant
notion Mr. Hedrick has mentioned in this context, the "perspicuity of
scripture," and I will go along with the *weakest* formulation of that --
well-informed and well-intentioned readers will not go seriously astray
from the Truth embedded in scripture. (I might even go so far as to think
that ill-informed but well-intentioned readers will go astray mostly on
inessentials; but then I think most doctrine is inessential :-))
Form criticism is as much an obsession of our times as typology
was in Irenaeus' time; so I think one is entitled to give little weight to
the second of Westermann's objections above as he states it. But the nub
of the objection remains: all of the curses/punishments of 3:14-19 name
an ever-recurring ill of humanity (or serpents :-)), from one generation
to the next. It is quite alien to this context to take one verse as cryptic
reference to a unique future event. The overriding point in reading any
text is that if the author is competent, the meaning CAN'T be something
contrary to what he has written. If a secondary meaning is to be adduced,
there MUST be support in the text for this meaning. Otherwise, the reader
is projecting.
Some projections are unavoidable -- some are even desirable. No
Christian can read any passage of scripture cited by Jesus without seeing
it in the light of Jesus' use, regardless of whether Jesus played fast and
loose with the meaning. John's use of the paschal lamb image, or the use
the author of the Letter to the Hebrews makes of Melchizedek, are much
more subtle than saying "scripture says X but *really* means Y." They
work by analogy, by looking at something God has done before and saying
"now God has done something like the same thing but raised the stakes."
In fact, the NT use of scripture is rather like T. S. Eliot's notion of the
"objective correlative" in poetry -- a particular term placed in a very
particular NEW context carries a force that is partly association and also
partly an overloading of new meaning onto the old. Such a way of reading
is ALWAYS legitimate, in the sense that one is constrained only by one's
own associations, and poetic inspiration is the ability to convey these
beyond the merely idiosyncratic, to communicate a meaning to others.
By canonizing some New Testament instances of "creative" use of
scripture, we Christians have opened a Pandora's box of interpretation.
Only sober restraint, and a certain measure of self-doubt, can keep our
unruly imaginations under control. Because what is at issue is NOT our
"cleverness" in "finding" types for Christian interpretation in Jewish
scripture. The issue is recognizing the action of God in our own day,
when the terms of discussion are set by an authoritative language forged
in the past. When Jesus tells the synagogue "This text is being fulfilled
today even as you listen" he uses scripture to assist in giving meaning
to what was happening around him. But his intent is not to engage in
learned exegesis, but to call people's attention to that present reality.
Such connections between the past statements of God's acts and those
we witness in the present *are* a gift to us from the Spirit. But they
are *our* gift, not something to retroject into the past. In some odd
sense of the term, these connections are "potentially present" in the text
-- but that is like saying my thoughts were potential aeons ago since
the words I use go back for generations before me. You look in the wrong
place if want to find the Spirit speaking in the past; God is not the God
of the dead but of the living.
Returning to Genesis 3:15, Joe (Buehler) says:
> As for doctrinal points, whatever the passage might say theologically
> about our Lady is contained in the first half of the verse
And of course the point is that the first half of the verse says
NOTHING about our Lady -- it is about Eve and (all) her descendants. But
neither is Joe Applegate justified in mounting HIS hobby horse on this
verse. It says nothing about Christ either. A good Catholic might well
find a resonance here in tradition handed down from the time of Irenaeus.
And saying that it is Christ who tramples the serpent under foot *is* to
refer to Mary, since He is Mary's "seed" in an individualized parallel to
the Genesis 3:15 reference to Eve's "seed." There is no real conflict of
Messianic and Marian typologies here. The Catholic notion that Mary is
foreshadowed in this verse is a tradition that can enrich one's devotional
life (as in statues of Mary crushing a snake); as such I have no quibble
with it. But to insist on a reading like this makes me nervous, because
it seems to encourage misreading of ALL of scripture. If scripture is a
tissue of secret meanings not present in or maybe even contradicted by the
text, then "revelation" is a mockery, and God is not revealed but hidden
by what is claimed to be His word. What we project onto scripture must be
understood as OUR response to the Word, just as our works are a response
to grace. That's why I say typology is a "category mistake." We have
taken creative action by the human mind -- poetic reaction to the Word, the
forging of associations between scriptural verses and the actions of God in
salvation -- and pretended that this is a work of God that we "discover" in
scripture. But the locus of God's work is in us, not in the original texts
of scripture.
I think the point is best illustrated by my own favorite case, the
sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham in Genesis 22 as a type of God's sacrifice
of His only Son. The sacrifice is explicitly discussed in Hebrews 11:17ff
and in James 2:21ff, yet they clearly focus on Abraham's "faith" (as also
Paul does in Romans, without specific mention of Genesis 22) as a model
for Christians, not on Abraham and Isaac as types for Father and Son. Paul
probably intends a reference to Abraham's sacrifice in Romans 8:32, "He
did not spare his own Son, but surrendered him for us all." But the type
remains at most implicit -- Paul's intent is to lead up to the point that
not even death can separate us from the love of God. So, the earliest
Christian treatment here is connected with themes of faith, resurrection
and the righteousness that is God's gift to those with faith. There is an
overtone of the testing of Abraham when we pray in the Lord's Prayer: "do
not bring us to the test" (though that is obscured in the conventional
rendering "lead us not into temptation.) The NT writers point to Abraham
in order to clarify to their readers what faith is, and how it works.
But Genesis 22 was also placed among the texts of "salavation
history" read in the great Easter vigil; in this context Christian usage
almost *forces* the typology as we await the great reversal so much
more cosmic in significance than last minute substitution of a ram for
the boy Isaac. God has put HIMSELF to the test in His creation, a test
He will help us to avoid ourselves, yet we must be perfect as He is perfect
in order to deserve the Kingdom of Heaven. This interpretation should not
drive out the apostolic interpretation focusing on Abraham's faith; nor
should that reading deny the typology. Both are statements of truth, but
the truth is not one of obscure hints in ancient scripture; the Truth is
the Living God whom we recognize by the similarity to His actions in the
past. It is precisely to preserve the potential for such recognition that
we mustn't hide the original text with a myriad layers of recognition from
earlier generations -- that is commentary, vital perhaps to our spiritual
growth, but in the final analysis the commentary is NOT the text and must
not be confused with it.
--
Michael Siemon O stand, stand at the window
Big Electric Cat Public UNIX As the tears scald and start;
..!att!mhuxu!mls You shall love your crooked neighbor
..!uunet!dasys1!mls With your crooked heart.japplega@csm9a.uucp (Joe Applegate) (06/28/89)
[This is a response to a posting by Michael Siemon on Gen 3:15 "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his head." Michael argues that both the view that this refers to Mary and the view that it refers to Christ are legitimate uses of the passage, but that one must realize that these are creative uses of the passage and that the original meaning of the text could not have meant either. On the first point, that either typological use is legitimate: --clh] I actually will agree with this, since Mary was indeed the woman through which the prophetic seed did come... however, nothing in this passage elevates Mary to the position of redeemer, which after all is the work of bruising (crushing in the KJV) the head of the serpent. The word in question as I have pointed out in t.p.m. is daya which is not a personal pronoun but the word for "seed". No plausible interpretation can make the seed of the woman and the woman the same entity! And that is the nature of the dispute which continues in t.p.m.! [Michael argues that we can see Christ as the "seed" only by a typological argument. I.e. that in its original historical context the passage cannot have referred to Christ. >Because the actual text refers to the (collective and neuter) seed and >NOT to any individual. And the verbs are in a form that indicate not one >future action but on-going, iterated action citing a commentary by Westermann. --clh] Actually the word is not in the plural... it is the modern rabbinical interpretation that casts this as collective... This is not so clear in the writings of pre-Messianic rabban who hotly disputed whether this passage was Messianic or refered to the position of Israel as the promised seed. [quote from Michael omitted here --clh] And now finally we get to the gist of the matter... your contention is that this promise could not have possibly been taken as pointing to a Messianic redeemer by the author and by I would assume by our parents Adam and Eve... But my contention is that even they understood the significance of this promise... that God would provide through the seed of the woman a redeemer who would break the bondage of sin that their rebellion had placed upon their and their descendants head. To support that contention let us look at Genesis 4:1 "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD" Adam and Eve were not ignorant... they had no doubt seen the reproductive nature of the beasts of the field... to assume that they did not know where a child came from is rediculous... but Eve thought that this was the promised seed that would crush the head of the serpent, how sad that he was the first murderer instead! I will admit that they and possibly even Moses (the Author) did not fully realise the necessity that the seed be obtained by a virgin birth, lest it be the seed of the man, BUT the necessity of faith was in the promise of the redeemer not in the specifics of his birth. And it is this faith that saved the old testament saints, faith in the comming of haMeshiach to liberate them from the law of sin and death, and to lead their captivity captive. Seeing as how even Eve recognised the redemptive nature of this promise that accompanied the curse, why do you assume that this is a typology invented by later, Christian writers? - Joe Applegate - ======================STANDARD DISCLAIMER============================ All views and opinions are my own and do not represent the views or opinions of the Colorado School of Mines, whatever they might be. =====================================================================