The Woman of the Great Sign (Rev. 12) is the Mother of the Messiah (Mary) and is also the mother of her other offspring, "all those who keep the Commandments and bear witness to Jesus." That is, the Mother of the Believers. That makes her the sign of the Church, Mater Ecclesia, who as she give birth to Christ seen as the Mystical Body, the Church, is in great travail.
Mary is identified in the NT as "full of grace," not "full of sin." Her Savior, Jesus, has saved her from sin preemptively in view of her being predestined to be His mother in the Incarnation.
Your criticism of the Douay-Rheims translation is a little extreme. There is no doctrinal divergency: in every case, Christ is crushing Satan. As the Woman who is the enemy of Satan ("I will put enmity between you [Satan] and the Woman") she overcomes him by her "Seed," Christ.
Grammatically, the "one" who will crush the serpent's head is a Greek term which is reflexive, maybe best translated as "that one." It's hard to render in English, as can be seen by eminent Protestant translations, which often rendered it not "he" or "she," but "it" or "they":
King James Bible
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
JPS Tanakh 1917
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; they shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise their heel.'
American King James Version
...it shall bruise your head...
English Revised Version
...it shall bruise thy head... Webster's Bible Translation
... it shall bruise thy head...
Paul interprets this that God will crush Satan under YOUR (the Church's) feet:
King James Bible
Romans 15:20
And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
The Douay-Rheims translation emphasized that women's "enmity" finally triumphed via her Seed. This was better and clearer when replaced by the singular Seed ("He") triumphing, but the meaning is unchanged: the Woman's enmity to the Serpent culminates in her Seed defeating him.
All of the translations support this conclusion as their meaning.
Again, you are asserting the opinion of your religion’s leadership. The woman who gives birth in Rev is Israel, GOD’s chosen. As reinforced by Daniel’s prophecy, Messiah is cut off from the Jews ‘with nothing’. ANY opinion is as good as any other, unless the opinion has scriptural substantiation. You teach ‘an other religion’, not Christianity. You teach people to honor catholiciism and follow its ‘sacramental striving for salvation / eternal life, which is directly contrary to the Gospel of God’s Grace in / through Christ Jesus. You teach people to work for eternal life. You are working in the stealthy spirit of antichrist.
Yes, we see why you have promoted the Mother of Jesus to demigoddess status as ‘mother of god’ ... you must keep the lies afloat for the sake of your institutional org’s empowerment. You teach a perverted Gospel which inserts Mary as a mediator between man and God, which is not The Gospel as delivered.
Mary is the mother of Jesus. Yes. All Christians agree upon that.
Your criticism of the Douay-Rheims translation is a little extreme. There is no doctrinal divergency: in every case, Christ is crushing Satan. As the Woman who is the enemy of Satan ("I will put enmity between you [Satan] and the Woman") she overcomes him by her "Seed," Christ.
What you consider extreme is accurate however. The DR translation has lead to many problems with the Biblical understanding of Mary.
Mary is identified in the NT as "full of grace," not "full of sin." Her Savior, Jesus, has saved her from sin preemptively in view of her being predestined to be His mother in the Incarnation.
Again, another bad translation leading to bad theology. The text does not say what you want it to say.
The Greek renders it as "favored with grace". It does not indicate Mary was sinless. The Catholic Encyclopedia online concurs you cannot read Mary's sinlessness into the passage in Luke as I have posted countless times before but to no avail. The Catholic continues to ignore its own sources due to the steep indoctrination they've undergone.
No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture. http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=6056
That's a direct quote.
The salutation of the angel Gabriel -- chaire kecharitomene , Hail, full of grace ( Luke 1:28 ) indicates a unique abundance of grace, a supernatural, godlike state of soul, which finds its explanation only in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But the term kecharitomene (full of grace ) serves only as an illustration, not as a proof of the dogma.
Another direct quote. Same source.
there is nothing in that passage to support that interpretation. It doesn't fit in the context of the passage that her other offspring is the church.
Mary is identified in the NT as "full of grace," not "full of sin." Her Savior, Jesus, has saved her from sin preemptively in view of her being predestined to be His mother in the Incarnation.
ALL believers are endowed with that same grace. That word is used one other place in the NT and is in reference to all believers.
/b>
The word grace used in this passage in Luke is used in one other place in the Bible and that is Ephesians 1 where Paul tells us that with this same grace, God has blessed us (believers) in the Beloved. IOW, we all have access to that grace and it has been bestowed on us all.
http://biblehub.com/greek/5487.htm
Luke 1:28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”
Ephesians 1:4-6 In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
Greek word “grace”
charitoó: to make graceful, endow with grace
Original Word: χαριτόω
Part of Speech: Verb
Transliteration: charitoó
Phonetic Spelling: (khar-ee-to'-o)
Short Definition: I favor, bestow freely on
Definition: I favor, bestow freely on.
HELPS Word-studies
Cognate: 5487 xaritóō (from 5486 /xárisma, "grace," see there) – properly, highly-favored because receptive to God's grace. 5487 (xaritóō) is used twice in the NT (Lk 1:28 and Eph 1:6), both times of God extending Himself to freely bestow grace (favor).
Word Origin: from charis
Definition: to make graceful, endow with grace
NASB Translation: favored (1), freely bestowed (1).
If we all have the same grace bestowed on us, then God kept us all from sin before we were born.
Again, the Bible does NOT support the interpretation that Mary was born without sin. Therefore the Catholic church's interpretation is wrong.
No it isn't. It's perfectly reasonable.
The woman has nothing to do with crushing Satan's head.
That is the job of the Redeemer alone and only HE has the power to do it.
All of the translations support this conclusion as their meaning.
You did not post ALL translations of Scripture. You posted (essentially) three as King James is in there twice.
Here is a Catholic Bible that DOESN'T have your translation.
The New American Bible.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__P5.HTM
It has this...
Genesis 3:15 [3] I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel."
And the accompanying footnote.
3 [15] He will strike . . . at his heel: since the antecedent for he and his is the collective noun offspring, i.e., all the descendants of the woman, a more exact rendering of the sacred writer's words would be, "They will strike . . . at their heels." However, later theology saw in this passage more than unending hostility between snakes and men. The serpent was regarded as the devil (⇒ Wisdom 2:24; ⇒ John 8:44; ⇒ Rev 12:9; ⇒ 20:2), whose eventual defeat seems implied in the contrast between head and heel. Because "the Son of God appeared that he might destroy the works of the devil" (⇒ 1 John 3:8), the passage can be understood as the first promise of a Redeemer for fallen mankind. The woman's offspring then is primarily Jesus Christ.
Straight from the Vatican website. Vatican.va.