Protoevangelium

In Christianity, Genesis 3:15 is known as the protoevangelium. This is a compound of two Greek words, protos meaning "first" and evangelion meaning "good news" or "gospel." Thus, the verse is commonly referred to as the first mention in the Bible of the "good news" of salvation. Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner describes the protoevangelium as "the first glimmer of the Gospel," and Victor P. Hamilton emphasizes the importance  of the redemptive promise included in the curse.

The reference to "the seed of the woman" is believed by Christians to be a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus. Elsewhere in the Bible, a child is referred to as the "seed" of his father, exclusively. For example, Jesus is called the "seed of David" at Romans 1:3, and the whole nation of Israel is referred to as "the seed of Jacob" at Jeremiah 33:26. For Jesus to be called "the seed of the woman," therefore, is interpreted to mean that he will have no earthly father. The phrase "seed of the woman" is sometimes counted as one of the titles of Jesus in the Bible.

Identification of the "seed of the woman" with Jesus goes back at least as far as Irenaeus (180 AD), who along with several other Church Fathers regarded this phrase as "the first messianic prophecy in the Old Testament." Serapion, the Bishop of Thmuis, wrote the following:

The woman does not have seed, only man does. How then was that [Genesis 3:,15] said of the Woman? Is it not evident that there is here question of Christ, whom the holy Virgin brought forth without seed? As a matter of fact, the singular is used, "of the seed," and not the plural, "of the seeds." The seed of the woman is referred to again in Revelation 12:17.

Among those who follow the Christological interpretation of the verse, the bruising of the serpent's head is taken to refer primarily to the final defeat of Satan, while the bruising of the heel of the seed of the woman is taken to refer to the crucifixion of Christ. Louis Berkhof, for example, wrote: "The death of Christ, who is on a preeminent sense the seed of the woman, will mean the defeat of Satan."

A tradition found in some old eastern Christian sources (including the Kitab al-Magall and the Cave of Treasures) holds that the serpent's head was crushed at Golgotha, described as a skull-shaped hill at the center of the Earth, where Shem and Malchizedek had placed the body of Adam. 

In Romans 16:20, there is perhaps the clearest reference to the Protoevangelium in the New Testament, "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen." Here the seed of the woman is identified as "the God of peace" and yet the Church is identified as the feet that will bruise Satan's head. 

Catholics often understand the "woman" of Genesis 3:15 to refer primarily to the Blessed Virgin Mary, rather than Eve. The text in Genesis is also seen as connecting to the sign the Lord gives to King Achaz through Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The English Douay-Rheims Bible 1609 onwards has "she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." This reading was supported in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of December 1854 and is defended by Anthony Maas in the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia.

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