Fwd: [b-hebrew] Genesis 3:15 and order of ideas
Peter Kirk
peterkirk at qaya.org
Tue Dec 21 18:30:07 EST 2004
On 21/12/2004 22:00, Revdpickrel at wmconnect.com wrote:
> ...
>
>>"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and
>>her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Since
>>when does the woman have the seed? The male provides the seed and the woman
>>provides the egg. ...
>>
This depends what you mean by "seed". The Hebrew word is zera`, and it
has several senses in English, the following according to BDB: 1. sowing
2. seed (of a plant) 3. "semen virile" 4. offspring 5. moral quality.
Sense 3 is of course produced by males only - but sense 2 only by female
plants. But here surely the word is used not in sense 3, for semen,
although a life-giving fluid, is not itself a moral agent and so unable
to show enmity or hurt another. So the sense of zera` here must be sense
4, offspring or descendant. And there is no reason why sense 4 should be
restricted to the descendants of a male. There is in fact at least one
other place where zera` in this sense is used of a woman, and in a case
where virgin birth is certainly not intended: Genesis 19:32,34.
Anyway, the idea that the male provides the "seed" and the female
provides the egg, in humans and other mammals, is utterly anachronistic
to the Hebrew Bible. It is a 19th century discovery.
>>... This, Genesis 3:15, is the first promise of a virgin
>>birth....a pregnancy where the woman provides both the egg and the seed???? ...
>>
So, if Mary provided the seed and only males provide seed, does that
make Mary hermaphrodite, both male and female?
>>
>>... Nothing is impossible with God.
>>
>>
Amen!
--
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
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