JaronK

So, we all know of the biblical snake that tempts eve in regards to the forbidden fruit. But who was this character? He seems very out of place. Some have claimed he's the devil, but God curses him to always slither along the ground, and the devil doesn't do that later on. So, it seems like it's not the devil (or God's command didn't exactly hold up well).

If God is omnimax, then God must have created the snake knowing exactly what he'd do, making the snake just an agent of God. In that case, why would God get mad? Then again, there are two Genesis stories and the snake only features in the YHWH story, which seems to be full of God making mistakes (as opposed to the Elohim story, where the gods are always satisfied with their actions). But still, the idea of a talking snake who is the beginning of all later snakes sounds a lot more like Native American tradition than Abrahamic tradition... yet that's impossible as there was no contact between these traditions until far later than the writing of this story.

So what's going on here? What is this snake, and does he (or anything like him) feature anywhere else, either in the bible or in other ancient religions?

JaronK

arnoldo

From an evolutionary perspective it could be an leftover from our arboreal origins. To a primate, equating a serpent with danger must've been imprinted instinctualy on the psyche. Either that or it's a Jungian archetype for wisdom (or the danger thereof) in the collective unconscious.

ApostateAbe

My theory is that the snake is a snake. Not far from Judah, there were the Tigris-Euphrates marshlands, or the Arab Marshes. The Jews were tribal desert nomads. To them, the Arab Marshes must have looked idyllic--it was lush with green vegetation and water, stuff you don't see in the desert--but they could not live there because of tribal territoriality. So, they used it as a model for the Garden of Eden. The actual residents of the Arab Marshes would have had a far different opinion--it was a struggle for survival no better than any other environment, and one of the many dangers was poisonous aquatic snakes. Therefore, the snake becomes an evil character in the Garden of Eden.

mountainman

Research the ubiquity of the Graeco-Roman temples, gymnasia and shrines to the healing god Asclepius, son of Apollo, son of Zeus. The New Testament was written for the conversion of the Greek gentiles, away from this "snake god of healing". The ample archaeology will not go away.



In the epoch when the first christian bibles were widely and lavishly being published and distrubuted to the "churches of the christians", the military machine of Constantine had been given its orders to utterly destroy these temples to Asclepius, the snake, and to torture its chief priests. Christianity was spread by the sword, with great victories over the traditional snake of Asclepius.

The patron saints of medicne and healing were then invented by later 4th century christian fiction writers with the names of Cosmas and Damian. By then all the Asclepian temples (of the snake) had been destroyed and new structures --- christian basilicas --- had been erected over the top of their foundations.

Cosmas and Damian were kicked out as the patrons of medicine during the Rennaisance, and Asclepius was reinstated. Today, a large percentage of medical letter head and embemage depicts the "snake" - twisted about the staff of Asclepius. All students of medical history start with Galen, personal physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and one of the therapeutae (temple assistances, assistant physicians) of Asclepius.



Constantine's Christian Soldiers destroyed the Asclepian snake quite literally in archaeological terms.

arnoldo

It seems besides deconstructing the Grecko/Roman gods these Pauline writers were attempting to assimilate the jewish "snake healer" known as Moses.

mountainman

The cult of Asclepius was originally from Egypt where medical knowledge was ammassed under the cult of Imhotep/Asclepius. Egyptian ideas were imported to the Greek civilisation via Egyptian physicians in the epoch BCE.

(580 - c.490 BCE) Michael Grant, in his well-respected 'The Rise of the Greeks' makes note that the cult of Thoth/Hermes and its equivalent 'Imhotep/Asklepios' was the main intellectual belief during the time of Pythagoras.

jgreen44

The Genesis myth was written in part to compete against the rival Sumerian/Akkadian mythology which featured a serpent god. By cursing the Sumerian/Akkadian god to eternal limblessness, the Hebrew writers were insulting the Akkadian religion.

http://www.bibleorigins.net/ningishzida.html

vipertaja

Sometimes a snake is just a cigar. At other times...

gdeering

Let us not forget that the serpent becoming a snake is part of the larger "Just So Story" that includes why women have difficult labors. Luckily Eve did not meet Anansi the spider. Plus the serpent (dinosaur?) is a useful device to get the story moving. As to the motivations of god - who can know??????????? (cue flash of light and clap of thunder)

The snake loses the ability to talk, could it at least grumble as it slinked away (maybe it wasa rattler)?


Gregg

spamandham

Genesis was never meant to be taken at face value. The two trees (though not explicitly stated) are the fig tree and the olive tree, which have deep symbolism in Jewish mythology.

The serpent represents that faction of Judaism that awaits a messiah and tempts those who simply want to live a spiritual life (olive tree, tree of life, and represented by Judah) toward messianic dreams (represented also by Israel), and the nation that must be built (via sweat of the brow) to attain it.

The tree of knowledge is the fig (the leaves used by Adam and Eve after they ate from it), which is also the messianic symbol. (hence when Jesus whithers the fig tree, this is a message that the spiritual messiah has already come, so quit waiting for an earthly messiah you silly Jews!).