More on "He" or "She" Will Crush...(Gen 3:15)

[Dave_Noonan]

Awhile back there was a thread on this topic that just sort of petered out…

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=564598

The thread was prompted by a video by Michael Voris which you can still see here:

youtube.com/watch?v=zMygWgRGw_Y&lr=1&feature=mhee

Here’s another little piece to add to the puzzle. While doing some research for a paper, I ran across St. Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis, which are Jerome’s translation notes on Genesis. Jerome states:

“3:15 It shall watch your head, and you shall watch its heel. More correctly, it has in the Hebrew, ‘it will crush your head, and you shall crush its heel.’ For our footsteps are indeed shackled by the serpent, ‘and the Lord shall crush Satan under our feet swiftly.’”

(From C.T.R. Hayward, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 33).

Notably, no mention of “she” here by Jerome.

But more interestingly, what I learned from this volume is that you can’t necessarily assume that Jerome followed his Hebrew source text when he was preparing his Latin translation, especially in cases where the Hebrew text deviates from the Septuagint. About 1/3 of the time in cases where there is a conflict which Jerome notes in the text of Genesis, he goes with his Greek rather than Hebrew sources (p. 11). For the particular verse that I was working on, Gn. 2:15, this was definitely the case.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Dave, are you criticizing Jerome if he followed a Septuagint text vs. a Hebrew text?

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Dave, are you criticizing Jerome if he followed a Septuagint text vs. a Hebrew text?

No, If you read his writings, it seems he does whatever he thinks best captures the meaning of the Biblical text (including various and sundry Jewish traditions) and probably did whatever he thought was “right”–but his work is more of what we would now think of almost as a paraphrase than a translation (see for example his preface to Eusebius’ Chronicles were he speaks a bit about his method.) But I think it was later assumed by Western readers that his Latin text was a straight translation of the Hebrew text that he had available, which I now realize that it clearly was not. And the people who were reading his text at the time just didn’t know any better.

Of course remember that the Septuagint in the case of Gen. 3:15 has “he” just to circle back to the broader discussion.

If I could critique Jerome for anything, it is in his continual use of the term Hebraica Veritas in terms of his work, which I think lead to many of these later misconceptions.

The interesting part of Hebrew Questions on Genesis is that in some instances we can actually tell what he is actually reading in Hebrew and we don’t have to guess based on a retrojection from Latin! And sometimes it’s just different.

I would encourage you to look at the book and you can see concrete illustrations of what I’m saying.

 

[ERose]

Awhile back there was a thread on this topic that just sort of petered out…

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=564598

The thread was prompted by a video by Michael Voris which you can still see here:

youtube.com/watch?v=zMygWgRGw_Y&lr=1&feature=mhee

Here’s another little piece to add to the puzzle. While doing some research for a paper, I ran across St. Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis, which are Jerome’s translation notes on Genesis. Jerome states:

“3:15 It shall watch your head, and you shall watch its heel. More correctly, it has in the Hebrew, ‘it will crush your head, and you shall crush its heel.’ For our footsteps are indeed shackled by the serpent, ‘and the Lord shall crush Satan under our feet swiftly.’”

(From C.T.R. Hayward, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 33).

Notably, no mention of “she” here by Jerome.

But more interestingly, what I learned from this volume is that you can’t necessarily assume that Jerome followed his Hebrew source text when he was preparing his Latin translation, especially in cases where the Hebrew text deviates from the Septuagint. About 1/3 of the time in cases where there is a conflict which Jerome notes in the text of Genesis, he goes with his Greek rather than Hebrew sources (p. 11). For the particular verse that I was working on, Gn. 2:15, this was definitely the case.

Question for you did you read the original Latin of the text you are referring to or a translation?

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Question for you did you read the original Latin of the text you are referring to or a translation?

Do you mean of the Questions or the Vulgate? I read and quoted the Questions in translation (i.e., I didn’t prepare my own translation), but would be happy to look at the Latin text, if that’s what you mean. Do you know if it’s on the web somewhere?

 

[bmullins]

The Vulgate is available online.

 

[ERose]

Do you mean of the Questions or the Vulgate? I read and quoted the Questions in translation (i.e., I didn’t prepare my own translation), but would be happy to look at the Latin text, if that’s what you mean. Do you know if it’s on the web somewhere?

No I don’t think so. I have looked for a translation online and have not found one.

I have listened to a few Latin, Greek, and Hebrew experts on this subject and there just seems to be some differences of opinion on this verse. I believe that most if not all Septuigint manuscripts use the “He” pronoun. In Hebrew if I remember correctly, the word being used here is kind of ambiguous in that it can be translated as “he”, “she”, or “they”. But I can be wrong on this for I am not an ancient language expert and must relie upon others.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

No I don’t think so. I have looked for a translation online and have not found one.

I have listened to a few Latin, Greek, and Hebrew experts on this subject and there just seems to be some differences of opinion on this verse. I believe that most if not all Septuigint manuscripts use the “He” pronoun. In Hebrew if I remember correctly, the word being used here is kind of ambiguous in that it can be translated as “he”, “she”, or “they”. But I can be wrong on this for I am not an ancient language expert and must relie upon others.

You can read all about it in the previous thread that I posted above. There’s some possibility that the pronoun is ambiguous (but only “he” or “she” as possibilities), but the verb (which also includes person) is unambiguous as “he” in Hebrew.

 

[frankpetrucci83]

as long as the head of Satan and his offspring is crushed that is good enough for me, sometimes the bible has duel prophecies

 

[ERose]

No I don’t think so. I have looked for a translation online and have not found one.

I have listened to a few Latin, Greek, and Hebrew experts on this subject and there just seems to be some differences of opinion on this verse. I believe that most if not all Septuigint manuscripts use the “He” pronoun. In Hebrew if I remember correctly, the word being used here is kind of ambiguous in that it can be translated as “he”, “she”, or “they”. But I can be wrong on this for I am not an ancient language expert and must relie upon others.

I think that one of the problems we have in understanding the translation of Jerome is that we don’t have the Hebrew manuscripts that he translated from. We do know that there was variations, albeit few, in the Hebrew manuscripts, which is the reason why the Jewish biblical scholars spent so much time on reconciling the multiple manuscripts.

Also to be honest we are not really sure that St. Jerome was the one that put “she” in this passage for we don’t have his original translation. So we are kinda at an empass here and I don’t think we will ever know unless we do find one of these sets of manuscripts.

Do you know what Hebrew school that St. Jerome’s Hebrew scholar friends were part of? Do we have that information? I would imagine that he would have had his Jewish scholar friends to review his translations, but maybe he didn’t. I don’t know.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

I think that one of the problems we have in understanding the translation of Jerome is that we don’t have the Hebrew manuscripts that he translated from. We do know that there was variations, albeit few, in the Hebrew manuscripts, which is the reason why the Jewish biblical scholars spent so much time on reconciling the multiple manuscripts.

Also to be honest we are not really sure that St. Jerome was the one that put “she” in this passage for we don’t have his original translation. So we are kinda at an empass here and I don’t think we will ever know unless we do find one of these sets of manuscripts.

Do you know what Hebrew school that St. Jerome’s Hebrew scholar friends were part of? Do we have that information? I would imagine that he would have had his Jewish scholar friends to review his translations, but maybe he didn’t. I don’t know.

Actually, from St. Jerome’s notes it seems fairly clear, at least to me, that he was NOT the one who inserted “she” in this passage. The reason that his notes on Genesis are so interesting is that he comments on the Hebrew text that he’s looking at, so it gives us some insight as to what this Hebrew source text looked like–we don’t have to simply guess.

No, I don’t think we know too much about St. Jerome’s Jewish collaborators. He seems to know about many midrashic interpretations that would have come from Jewish sources. My guess is that he’s working pretty closely with them, but it’s hard to say.