But it will not be the woman that crushes the serpent's head under her own heel, but was written to be the seed of the woman (which is chiefly Christ?) that shall bruise the serpents head, and the serpent bruise his heel.
http://bible.cc/genesis/3-15.htm
Check all the other versions there. The Douay Rheims has a slight problem...it stands lonely in it's choice of gender in this crucial passage, which so much has been attributed to;
The gentle RC apologist Jimmy Akin, notes;
and, here skipping a paragraph, he shares further;
The reason for the difference in the renderings is a manuscript difference. Modern translations follow what the original Hebrew of the passage says. The Douay-Rheims, however, is following a manuscript variant found in many early Fathers and some editions of the Vulgate (but not the original; Jerome followed the Hebrew text in his edition of the Vulgate). The variant probably originated as a copyist error when a scribe failed to take note that the subject of the verse had shifted from the woman to the seed of the woman.
As far as another modern RCC approved version, this from United States Conference of Catholic Bishops;
I don't know that there is true scholarly support for it anywhere, (outside of the RCC)
Why the persistence of the "copy mistake"? (or as here above, a sly change). Because so much of the past-times infallibly declared liturgy is dependent upon that one mistake!
Here's a calm discussion which makes some note of the old error, but more speaks of what can be wider seen of this verse. http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/stewart.cfm?id=756 though he skips over the "woman" can indeed be Mary, even as he makes it plain that Mary herself cannot be the seed herself, while it is also plain that it not precisely be her own foot doing the crushing. The silly art work spoken of previous is misleading. The old problems of mistaken identification I have been attempting to speak of here on this site for the last handful of days, once again coming to the forefront...
We can see the church triumphing, but not Mary's or any other particular singular woman's alone "heel" bruising the serpents head. It's just not there, for the seed of the woman in the verse, is a HE, not a she. Ask the Jews, they should know. It's THEIR language.
Here, from "Complete Jewish Bible" English translation now available online at http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3&version=CJB the passage;
Truly enough Mary can indeed be the woman, even as she herself is at the same time part of the bigger overall picture, (descended from the tribe of Levi), but to translate the text *Genesis 3:15* and change not just gender, but wider sense QUITE LITERALLY in that one passage for reason that the "seed" can refer to many or a line of descendants, is still translation by reasoning into the text itself both the word and concept "they". It can be argued, it is what one (the RCC in particular) needs desperately to find --- or proved cover for, to give wiggle room for the prior claims to infallibility in regards to various aspects of Mariology.
The gentle Akin again, offering solace in his conclusion;
Thus Jesus crushed the serpent directly and was directly struck by the serpent; Mary, through her cooperation in the incarnation and her witnessing the sufferings and death of her Son, indirectly crushed the serpent and was indirectly struck by the serpent.This has long been recognized by Catholics. The footnotes provided a couple of hundred years ago by Bishop Challoner in his revision of the Douay state, “The sense [of these two readings] is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent’s head.”
That verges on double-speak, as line of reasoning. Which sort-of underwhelms me, in light of the approach you yourself and some other Catholics here & elsewhere otherwise take...which seem so often if not go straight to Mary with her foot directly on the serpent, personally, her own self, then it protects the idea of that by whatever twist and turns can be brought through reasoning and argumentation/apologia, fortifying all the rest of the adoration/veneration which fairly well gallops towards being worship. Some go quite overboard with it.
What of the Jews? What of her linage? What of the promises given directly to them through the prophets? This is important too. Who was this sweet, innocent maiden named Mary? Though she was of Levi, she was no priestess, for she could not be formally a priest, at all. What was she but what that people, two thousand years removed from Abraham, produced from their own lives, their hope, perseverance & faith, not of the Law foremost, but of the Promise, the very promise the Lord Himself swore to keep.
He raised her up, saw her from far off, even as Moses, and then David, saw Christ from afar. She herself born more of that promise than the law (though again, of the tribe of the temple priests, who did what? -- prepared the sacrifice!), that plan, that intent, at that particular time & place, through the Spirit & Promise before the law, like a gentle lamb, or tender ewe herself, brought forth (for she was worthy) the Lamb Himself, she as vessel chosen by the most High.
That does not make her into later being or becoming "Queen of heaven", for she herself, like Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, all the rest, were and are merely created beings, not eternal God, not the Creator.
As Christ told the woman at the well, "Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews".
If we are to stay within the Judeo-Christian construct, let's not forget the Judeo part. Stick with the original plan, eh?
If Mary was born without sin and sinless throughout her whole life, why is she being referred to as redeemed? The following quote will explain, “Some influential Catholic Christians expressed reservations about this doctrine, because it appeared to imply that Mary did not need Christ as her Savior. The church seemed to be caught in a dilemma: it did not seem correct that the mother of God was stained by sin, but it was necessary to believe that Mary had been redeemed from sin by Jesus Christ like everyone else.
Even such a great figure as St. Thomas Aquinas could not fully accept the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception for this reason. Fr. Raymond Brown, S.S., explains…Duns Scotus was able to win the day because of his insight that the Immaculate Conception came through God’s application of the grace of Christ beforehand…she was the first Christian…the Lord applied the grace of Jesus’ salvation to Mary in advance to prepare her for her special role in his plan.”10
She was not saved from sin, she did not sin and so she needs no savior, how could she need to be saved from sin she never committed How could she be redeemed before she was in need of redemption.
With regards to Catholic dogmas we often see, as we do here, that the dogmas are not justified by Scripture or history, but rather by lawyer like tactics of semantic, technicalities and loopholes. For example the Church realize that their devotees have been accepting a very questionable belief and so when it comes time for the church to make this belief an official teaching they come up with a loophole. Can you imagine such a scene, the elite of the Church stating, “Good job Duns Scotus, your brilliant technical loophole will go down in history as an inspired revelation from God! As well as the cause of damnation to hell for those who do not come to Church on the feast day (and are not forgiven for that mortal sin)!” Please note that John Scotus Duns was a “FRANCISCAN philosopher and theologian who attempted to create a new synthesis of Christian belief with Greek and Arab philosophy.”11
Supposedly, Mary is not a saved sinner; she was saved from having ever sinned. Mary was saved from sin before she ever sinning, it was impossible for her to sin because she was born without a sin nature (original sin). Then she was not saved from sin, she did not sin and so she needs no savior, how could she need to be saved from sin she never committed? How could she be redeemed before she was in need of redemption?
Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. writes, “After the Fathers and up to the early Middle Ages we find explicit references to Mary’s freedom from sin from the moment of her life. Paschasius Radbertus (ninth century), for example, wrote that she was exempt from sin since the beginning of her existence. As early as the late half of the seventh century, a feast of the Immaculate Conception was celebrated annually in the East under the title ‘Conception of St. Anne.’ St. Andrew Crete (d. A.D. 720) composed a hymn with the inscription: ‘The Ninth Day of December, Conception of the Grandmother of God, St. Anne.’”12 Mary is thought to have died in 48 AD13 consider just how long after her death these teachings came to be. For more on this, see our article A Review of Marian Dogma and Apparition Chronology. Just because a belief is old, it does not make it true.
Pope Leo I wrote, “Alone therefore among the sons of men the Lord Jesus was born innocent, because alone conceived without pollution of carnal concupiscence.”14
Catholic Theologian Ludwig Ott wrote, “Neither the Greek nor the Latin Fathers explicitly teach the Immaculate Conception of Mary….individual Greek Fathers (e.g., Origen, Basil, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria) taught that Mary suffered from venial personal faults, such as ambition and vanity.”15
WRT the verse in Genesis and "who" would bruise the head of the devil, the site http://www.truefreethinker.com/articles/roman-catholic-maryology-mary-roman-catholicism-part-9-will-she-%E2%80%9Ccrush-your-head%E2%80%9D says:
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).
“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death’” (Revelation 12:10-11).
Justin Martyr wrote, “Christ is born of the Virgin, in order that the disobedience caused by the serpent might be destroyed.”10
Pope-Saint Leo the Great wrote, “at the beginning of the world [God], foretold the remedy his love had prepared for the restoration of us mortals, giving notice to the serpent that the offspring of the woman would come and, by his power, crush its baneful head as it was raised to strike.”
This link also goes on to explain that the ancient Targums and Midrashes - Jewish commentaries of the Bible - point to the Messiah being the SOLE one to crush the head of the adversary.
But SURELY John recorded her presence in Revelation chapters 4&5; right??