Protoevangelium

Genesis 3:15

"And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel."

The Protoevangelium, also known as the "First Good News" or "First Gospel," is found in Genesis 3:15, at the end of the first creation account. It is the first prophecy of a Messiah who will come to save the world from sin, and is the basis of Christianity.

Compare Romans 16:20, "And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen"

---

The concept of Genesis 3:15 being the Proto-evangel, or "First Gospel" 7 is attributed to St. Irenaeus of Lyons [135-202] from his work Against Heresies : "For this end did He put enmity between the serpent and the woman and her seed, they keeping it up mutually: He, the sole of whose foot should be bitten, having power also to tread upon the enemy's head; but the other biting, killing, and impeding the steps of man, until the seed did come appointed to tread down his head, - which was born of Mary, of whom the prophet speaks: 'Thou shalt tread upon the asp and the basilisk; thou shalt trample down the lion and the dragon [Psalm 91:13].'"
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Chapter 23, Number 7 22



"Christ has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head, as thou can perceive in Genesis that God said to the serpent, 'And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall be on the watch for thy head, and thou on the watch for his heel.' For from that time, He who should be born of a woman, namely from the Virgin, after the likeness of Adam, was preached as keeping watch for the head of the serpent. This is the seed of which the apostle says in the Letter to the Galatians, 'that the law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made [Galatians 3:19].' This fact is exhibited in a still clearer light in the same Epistle where he thus speaks: 'But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman [Galatians 4:4].' For indeed the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished, unless it had been a man born of a woman who conquered him. For it was by means of a woman that he got the advantage over man at first, setting himself up as man's opponent. And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned, in order that , as our species went down to death through a vanqushed man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm of victory against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death."
- St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V, 21, 1 23