A Closer Look at the Proto-Evangelium Controversy
The proper translation of Genesis 3:15 has been brought up in our weekly Catholic Study Group innumerable times, so I’d like to address it now. This controversy arose when comparing the Clementine Vulgate to the Nova Vulgata (New Vulgate) and other modern translations of the Scriptures. The Protoevangelium (Genesis 3:15), has garnered some particular attention. This verse in the New Vulgate differs in two ways from the Clementine Vulgate.
| Clementine Vulgate | New Vulgate |
| Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius. | Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tuum et semen illius; ipsum conteret caput tuum, et tu conteres calcaneum eius”. |
First, you might notice the “ipsa” (“she”) in the Clementine Vulgate is rendered “ipsum” (“he”) in the New Vulgate. In the first instance, both versions use “conteret” the third-person singular future active indicative of contero, a verb that means “to grind, bruise, pound, to crumble, separate into small pieces.”
Here is the same verse in the Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims, as compared to the Revised Standard Version – Catholic edition:
| Douay-Rheims American (Challoner) | Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition |
| “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” Genesis 3:15 DRA | “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 heel.” Genesis 3:15 RSVCE |
In both the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Greek Septuagint, the pronoun looks to its antecedent which is the masculine ‘seed’ and therefore, could never be translated as “she.”
St. Irenaeus, a second century bishop in Asia Minor who was a disciple of St. Polycarp who was a disciple of St. John the Apostle, confirms this rendering. Making use of the Septuagint, the Koine Greek translation of the Old Testament favored by the inspired authors of the New Testament, he wrote this in his “Adversus haereses (Against Heresies, Book 3, Chapter 23, Section 7):
For this end did He put enmity between the serpent and the woman and her seed, they keeping it up mutually: He, the sole of whose foot should be bitten, having power also to tread upon the enemy’s head; but the other biting, killing, and impeding the steps of man, until the seed did come appointed to tread down his head—which was born of Mary, of whom the prophet speaks: “You shall tread upon the asp and the basilisk; you shall trample down the lion and the dragon;” — indicating that sin, which was set up and spread out against man, and which rendered him subject to death, should be deprived of its power, along with death, which rules [over men]; and that the lion, that is, antichrist, rampant against mankind in the latter days, should be trampled down by Him; (Schaff 457)
In his notes to his revision of the Douay-Rheims bible, Bishop Challoner mentioned the controversy and admitted that while some Church Fathers preferred “ipsa”, there were ancient texts that read “ipsum”. He saw the resolution to the conflict in Jesus Christ:
Ver. 15. She shall crush. Ipsa, the woman; so divers of the fathers read this place, conformably to the Latin: others read it ipsum, that is, the seed. The sense is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent’s head. (Douay-Rheims Bible 3)
Lastly, St. John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, adopted the the “ipsum” translation, but resolved this controversy well:
The Book of Genesis attests to the fact that sin is the evil at man’s “beginning” and that since then its consequences weigh upon the whole human race. At the same time it contains the first foretelling of victory over evil, over sin. This is proved by the words which we read in Genesis 3:15, usually called the “Proto-evangelium”: “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 heel”. It is significant that the foretelling of the Redeemer contained in these words refers to “the woman”. She is assigned the first place in the Proto-evangelium as the progenitrix of him who will be the Redeemer of man.[34] And since the redemption is to be accomplished through a struggle against evil – through the “enmity” between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of him who, as “the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), is the first author of sin in human history – it is also an enmity between him and the woman. (Mulieris Dignitatem | St. John Paul II 11)
Another Difference
The second difference between the Clementine Vulgate and the New Vulgate with respect to Genesis 3:15 is the former’s use of insidiaberis “shall lie in wait” vs. the latter’s conteres “shall crush or bruise” (as I mentioned earlier). Insidiaberis is the second-person singular future passive indicative of the Latin verb insidio meaning “to sit at or on, or to lie in ambush“, while conteres is the second-person singular future active indicative of the Latin verb contĕro, meaning “to grind, to crush, or to bruise“.
Why the difference? Well, the Clementine Vulgate translates the Koine Greek word τηρήσει from the Septuagint as insidiaberis (“shall lie in wait”) while in the New Vulgate translates the Hebrew word שׁוּף from the Masoretic text as conteres (“shall bruise or crush”). Interestingly, if the η in the Septuagint’s τηρήσει is changed to ει, we get the word τειρήσει , “he will bruise”, suggesting that a copying error early in the history of the Septuagint could have resulted in this difference. (August 20) (Lust and Eynikel 1179) I cannot help but suspect that this influenced the choice of “conteres” by the translators of the New Vulgate.
Work Cited
“Challoner Revision.”Douay-Rheims-Challoner Bible, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, https://www.ccel.org/c/challoner/douayrheims/dr.html. Accessed 15 December 2024.
“Contero.” Wiktionary, 14 Jan. 2024, en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contero#Latin. Accessed 6 Feb. 2025.
“Contero.” Logeion, University of Chicago, logeion.uchicago.edu/contero. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.
Lust, Johan, and Erik Eynikel, editors. Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2003.
Mulieris Dignitatem | St. John Paul II. Apostolic Letter. 15 August 1988, Rome. The Holy See, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html. Accessed 24 December 2024.
“The New Vulgate.” Nova Vulgata – Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio, The Holy See, https://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_index_lt.html. Accessed 14 December 2024.
Schaff, Philip. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D., et al., vol. I, Hendrickson Publishers, 1885. 10 vols.
