What is "protevangelium"

In Christian theology, the Protevangelium (also known as the protoevangelium, proto-evangelium or protoevangelion) is God's statement to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden about how the Seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head:

"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." (Genesis 3:15, KJV)

Strictly speaking, the protevengelium refers to the last part of Genesis 3:15, "it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." According to H. C. Leupold, this passage uses a zeugma in the word "bruise", which may be translated "it shall crush thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel."

Because of the grave nature of the context, the fall of man, this passage describes more than just a man stepping on a snake's head. In Romans 16:20, there is perhaps the clearest reference to the Protevangelium 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. From the masculine singular Hebrew pronoun in Genesis 3:15, we see that the seed of the woman is a man, and yet in Roman's 16:20 he is called the God of peace, which identifies him as the Lord Jesus Christ.

The reference to the seed of the woman as Christ is believed to relate to the Virgin birth of the Messiah, as well as the Hypostatic union of the Divine nature with the Human nature of Christ.

Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner describes the Protevangelium as "the first glimmer of the gospel." Several of the early Church fathers, such as Justin Martyr (160 AD) and Irenaeus (180 AD) regarded this verse "as the Protoevangelium, the first messianic prophecy in the Old Testament."