Genesis 3:15 and the Bible’s Big Story
JIM HAMILTON “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15) I well remember the questions. They reflected the very perspective I had been taught: If Genesis 3:15 is so important, why isn’t it quoted in the rest of the Bible? That’s what those bright students, who had heard the line from other teachers, fired at me. It took me back to my second year of a master’s program at an evangelical seminary, when in a first-semester Hebrew class I made the mistake of asking the professor whether Genesis 3:15 really was the protoevangelium—the first announcement of the gospel. “We’ve got to start getting rid of the myths somewhere,” the professor retorted with his customary disdain, “it’s just a snake in a garden!” My faith survived that professor, but I came out of that school having learned the warped view that seemed the standard line: “The only thing that justifies the way that...