Genesis
The Protoevangelium: the First Gospel
Genesis 3:15 is God's sentence on the serpent after the Fall: enmity between the serpent and 'the woman,' and between their offspring, with her seed crushing the serpent's head. The Church reads this as the Protoevangelium, the first announcement of the Redeemer (CCC 410-411), fulfilled in Christ's victory over sin and death. Ancient Jewish and Greek readers, independently of the Church, already read a singular messianic figure into the same verse.
900 BC – AD 33
The Scepter Shall Not Depart from Judah
Jacob's deathbed blessing promises that rule will not depart from Judah until an awaited figure arrives and the nations obey him. The Qumran scroll 4Q252 already read this verse as naming a coming 'Branch of David' about a century before Jesus's birth, and the Church identifies Jesus, of the tribe of Judah and house of David, as that promised figure.
1000 BC – AD 70