Serpents in the Bible

The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in the religious traditions and cultural life of ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan.

[3] The narrative of the Garden of Eden and the fall of humankind constitute a mythological tradition shared by all the Abrahamic religions,[3][4][5][6] with a presentation more or less symbolic of Judeo-Christian-Islamic morals and religious beliefs,[3][4][7] which had an overwhelming impact on human sexuality, gender roles, and sex differences both in the Western and Islamic civilizations.

[8] Unlike Christianity, the other major Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, do not have a concept of "original sin", and instead have developed varying other interpretations of the Eden narrative.

[3][5][8][9][10][11] In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Genesis refers to a serpent who triggered the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden in Eden (Gen 3:1–20).

[15] The serpent replies that she would not surely die (Genesis 3:4) and that if she eats the fruit of the tree "then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

To prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Life and living forever, they are banished from the garden upon which God posts an angelic guard.

[17] Voltaire, drawing on Socinian influences, wrote: "It was so decidedly a real serpent, that all its species, which had before walked on their feet, were condemned to crawl on their bellies.

[21] According to Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament scholar, Lutheran theologian and University of Heidelberg professor, who applied form criticism as a supplement to the documentary hypothesis of the Hebrew Bible, the snake in the Eden's narrative was more an expedient to represent the impulse to temptation of mankind (that is, disobeying God's law) rather than an evil spirit or the personification of the Devil, as the later Christian literature erroneously depicted it; moreover, von Rad himself states that the snake is neither a supernatural being nor a demon, but one of the wild animals created by God (Genesis 3:1), and the only thing that differentiates it from the others in Eden is the ability to speak: The serpent which now enters the narrative is marked as one of God's created animals (ch.

[...] The mention of the snake here is almost incidental; at any rate, in the "temptation" by it the concern is with a completely unmythical process, presented in such a way because the narrator is obviously anxious to shift the responsibility as little as possible from man.

It is a question only of man and his guilt; therefore the narrator has carefully guarded against objectifying evil in any way, and therefore he has personified it as little as possible as a power coming from without.

[...] In the history of religions the snake indeed is the sinister, strange animal par excellence [...], and one can also assume that long before, a myth was once at the basis of our narrative.

According to Wilhelm Gesenius, saraph corresponds to the Sanskrit Sarpa (Jawl aqra), serpent; sarpin, reptile (from the root srip, serpere).

[26] The prophet Isaiah also sees a vision of seraphim in the Temple itself: but these are divine agents, with wings and human faces, and are probably not to be interpreted as serpent-like so much as "flame-like".

[28] A Christian interpretation would be that the bronze serpent served as a symbol for each individual Israelite to take their confession of sin and the need for God's deliverance to heart.

[26] The Israelites began to worship the object as an idol or image of God, by offering sacrifices and burning incense to it, until Hezekiah was made King.

Scholars have debated the nature of the relationship between the Mosaic bronze serpent and Hezekiah's Nehushtan, but traditions happen to link the two.

Jesus exhorted them, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16).

"[37][38] The serpent in Psalm 91:13 is identified as Satan by Christians:[39] "super aspidem et basiliscum calcabis conculcabis leonem et draconem" in the Latin Vulgate, literally "The asp and the basilisk you will trample under foot; you will tread on the lion and the dragon".

This identification redefined the Hebrew Bible's concept of Satan ("the Adversary", a member of the Heavenly Court acting on behalf of God to test Job's faith), so that Satan/Serpent became a part of a divine plan stretching from Creation to Christ and the Second Coming.

[47] Following the imagery of chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation, Bernard of Clairvaux had called Mary the "conqueror of dragons", and she was long to be shown crushing a snake underfoot, also a reference to her title as the "New Eve".

[50][51][52][54] In Gnosticism, the biblical serpent in the Garden of Eden was praised and thanked for bringing knowledge (gnosis) to Adam and Eve and thereby freeing them from the malevolent Demiurge's control.

[50][51][54][55] In the Archontic, Sethian, and Ophite systems, Yaldabaoth (Yahweh) is regarded as the malevolent Demiurge and false god of the Old Testament who generated the material universe and keeps the souls trapped in physical bodies, imprisoned in the world full of pain and suffering that he created.

Adam , Eve , and a female serpent at the entrance to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris , France . The portrayal of the image of the serpent as a mirror of Eve was common in earlier Christian iconography as a result of the identification of women as the ones responsible for the fall of man and source of the original sin . [ 3 ]
Medieval illustration of Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden . Folio from the Biblia pauperum , 14th–15th century.
Ivory of Christ treading on the beasts from Genoels-Elderen , with four beasts; the basilisk was sometimes depicted as a bird with a long smooth tail. [ 34 ]
A lion-faced, serpentine deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon 's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge.