[gypsigirl]

I confess that I am not a scholar by any means, but do we not have to look at the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin before we can understand what God has written through men? The Hebrew is nueter/ masculine depending on whom you wish to believe. The Greek is masculine. The Latin is feminine. Is it possible that God had a trifold meaning in this verse? In the Hebrew, "they" meaning the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. In Greek "he" meaning our Lord Jesus Christ. In Latin "she" meaning our Blessed Mother, for from her womb came the Incarnation. Perhaps Mel was vague on purpose, for all these things are taught by the Church.
I believe there are many places in Holy Scripture where our Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary are prefigured in this very way. For instance Jonah (Jesus) in the whale (tomb) for three days. The Ark of the Covenant (our Blessed Mother) containing the Holy of Holies (our Lord's body). Judith (our Lady) beheading Holofernes (satan). Hannah (our Lady) crushing the head of the evil King(satan). In both of the last two examples the women have been given this special power by God, they are His instruments of righteousness, as is our Lady.
As for the disdain for the D-R Bible, I guess this isn't the right place for a "which Bible is best" discussion. It will suffice to say that Sacred Scripture didn't just drop down from Heaven wrapped in velvet and I submit myself to Christ's Church as to the canon of Scripture (all 72 books). For when one denies the authority of the Church one denies the Bible itself which came from that God-given authority.
Again, I write this in all charity and I very much respect your knowlege. I thank you for discussing these matters because through them I feel God brings us to a deeper understanding of our faith.

Yours in Christ,
Rita

[BibChr]

Thanks for the thoughts, Rita.

To approach it differently, I think the root lies in two fundamentally irreconcilable approaches to truth. I use the analogy of the game of "telephone." The Roman Catholic Church (RCC) assures its adherents that the message indeed changes in the process of transmission, but it changes for the better: richer, fuller, deeper, more wonderful. The Bible itself, by contrast, commands God's children to keep going straight to the original message itself (cf. Matthew 15:1ff., etc.) as the only touchstone of spiritual truth (2 Timothy 3:15-17). So the Christian, while listening to the re-transmissions of past generations, always judges them by the original message, to which he has daily access.

So here it isn't a matter of overly arcane scholarship, and I make no effort to browbeat you. The Hebrew text IS the Word of God; it is the language in which God spoke His Word. Everything else is a translation, and therefore secondary at best. And there is NO ambiguity in the Hebrew text; in fact, as I've shown you, it is emphatically NOT what far-later theorizers have tried to import (Mary, rather than the Seed of the Woman).

So it really is rooted the irreconcilable difference between two vastly different religions: that coming from Rome, saying "Trust us, we alone have the right to tell you what to believe," and that based on Scripture, the living and abiding Word of God (Hebrews 4:12, etc.).

Dan