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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Who or what was the serpent in the garden of Eden?
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Steve H
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# 17102
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Posted
Following a suggestion from Matt Black on the 'Prayer Battle' thread, here is a new thread about the serpent. Let me make clear first of all that I'm emphatically not a creationist of any kind - I don't think anyone who's read any of my posts would imagine that I was. The story has value as a fanciful allegory of how humanity got into the mess it's in (Adam to Eve: "Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into!"), but obviously a story of talking snakes, magic fruit, trees with names, and just-so stories of why women have a hard time giving birth and snakes have no legs is comparable to 'The Pilgrim's Progress', which no-one imagines to be true.
Anyway, that's beside the point, and let's not get into a debate about creationism versus evolution. The question is, who or what is the snake? It's widely assumed, and I admit that I've always assumed, that it's Satan, either taking on the appearance of a snake, or possessing the body of one, but Satan, and fallen angels generally, are hardly mentioned elsewhere in the OT, and Genesis simply talks about "the serpent", with no suggestion that it is anything other than a serpent (albeit a talking one).
What do people think?
[Title spello edited]
[ 04. June 2012, 11:13: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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Waterchaser
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# 11005
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Posted
I've always taken the snake to be a metaphor for Satan. If this isn't what the original author intended I would still take this to be a case of them writing more than they "knew" through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It would be interesting however to understand what the original author intended.
I would take the statment about Eve's offspring crushing his head to be a prophecy about what Jesus would achieve "Christus Victor" rather than merely a statment that snakes hurt people and people kill snakes.
Satan is referred to in Revelation a couple of times as "that ancient serpent" which I would assume is the writer of Revelation referencing back to Genesis.
Posts: 310 | From: Luton, UK | Registered: Feb 2006
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
If you consider the story to be a piece of fiction, then asking who the snake is is a fruitless question. * The snake is a snake is a snake is a snake. The question only makes sense if you grant some larger, truer narrative that stands behind it and gives it additional meaning, such as history itself, or divine inspiration.
* Or the narrative of a single author's intention in telling the story--for example, you could enquire as to the identity of Aslan based on what you know of Lewis' life and writing. But this doesn't work when the author is either totally unknown or else collective (with conflicting threads of intention and meaning being woven together).
Now you could ask what meanings hearers/readers have found in it, but that will give you opinion, not truth--still interesting but different.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Nicodemia
WYSIWYG
# 4756
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Posted
I've always assumed, and maybe been told, that the serpent in Genesis represented deception, or trickery, as he/it got Eve to take that apple by persuading her that (a) God wouldn't strike her dead and (b) more importantly, she would have God's knowledge or wisdom.
Adam and Eve were presumably originally naive and could see that God had all wisdom, or was Wisdom, but they couldn't make out why he was so much better than they were.
Serpent or snake comes along, whispers in Eve's ear and hey presto, sex was discovered and the world went wrong!
Wikipedia gives a great deal of information about serpents and their part in our spiritual lives.
Anyway, it was probably the originator of snake oil. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posts: 4544 | From: not too far from Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
The snake was Satan's agent if not Satan himself .
I say this because of the emphasis of temptation in the story of the Fall ( though the word used is 'beguiled').
Eve was encouraged to rebel against God's instruction , was thereby deceived and ended up worse off . Sounds pretty much like the work of the old devil to me.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Steve H
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# 17102
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Posted
Well, I'm glad you all more or less agree that it is, or represents, Satan, but someone on the 'Prayer battle' thread suggested that that was a very naive and untheological view, though they didn't say what the correct view, in their opinion, was.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
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footwasher
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# 15599
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Posted
The Bible uses different terms to describe phenomena.
Men have powerful drives which are necessary for survival. When those drives are allowed free reign, men are no different from the beasts of the field , controlled by the law of the wild. This temptation /desire to allow natural drives free reign against better judgment is called yetzer ha ra. When men allow their better side to decide choices, this better inclination is called yetzer ha tov. The concept of Original Sin is hellenistic in origin.
The serpent is a personification of yetzer ha ra. It's curse of being relegated to crawling on its belly is the low rung it occupies in human thought whenever it is subjected to analysis.
PS Personification leads to strange outworkings, they take on a life of their own. The yetzer ha ra that created problem for the Israelites end up nailed to a pole!
Tons of stuff in Jewish commentaries on the subject, some rather fanciful. Judicious choice of reading material advised!
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Ship's crimp
Posts: 927 | From: pearl o' the orient | Registered: Apr 2010
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Gee D
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# 13815
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Posted
Read Paradise Lost . I don't agree with much of Milton's Theology, but his learning of the OT and the various other books of Jewish Tradition is very, very thorough. It will answer this and many other similar questions.
The serpent is a serpent into which Satan enters as a disguise, and the successful temptation is that of Stan, not of the serpent.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
This temptation /desire to allow natural drives free reign against better judgment is called yetzer ha ra.
Very interesting comment.
Never heard of yetzer ha ra, but it is evidently important enough to merit a full article in Wikipedia:
quote:
In Judaism, yetzer hara (Hebrew: יצר הרע for the definite "the evil inclination"), or yetzer ra (Hebrew: יצר רע for the indefinite "an evil inclination") refers to the inclination to do evil, by violating the will of God. The term is drawn from the phrase "the imagination of the heart of man [is] evil" (Hebrew: יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע,yetzer lev-ha-adam ra), which occurs twice in the Hebrew Bible, at Genesis 6:5 and 8:21.
The yetzer hara is not a demonic force, but rather man's misuse of things the physical body needs to survive. Thus, the need for food becomes gluttony due to the yetzer hara. The need for procreation becomes sexual abuse, and so on. The idea that humans are born with a yetzer ra (physical needs that can become "evil"), but that humans don't acquire a yetzer tov ("a good inclination") until an age of maturity—12 for girls and 13 for boys—has its source in Chapter 16 of the Talmudic tractate Avot de-Rabbi Natan.
What I like about this is the concept that this is not a demonic force but simply the natural extension of physical needs when they are allowed to take precedence.
This is almost what I believe the serpent to be about. Maybe close enough that it is not worth distinguishing, but here is what I would say.
The serpent stands for our senses, or the part of us that is involved in and driven by our physical senses. In our spiritual life, listening to the serpent is about our tendency to want to rely on the evidence of our senses, as opposed to that of the spirit. It is about our reluctance to believe in what we cannot see and our tendency to trust what seems obvious to us, rather than what God tells us.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Adeodatus
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# 4992
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Posted
It's a talking snake.
It's a snake that talks.
It's like, there's this snake. It talks.
I've always thought it's the Bible's first attempt at comedy. People will make up anything to get out of a tight situation, even a story about a talking snake. (Note that when Eve says, "The snake made me do it," the snake doesn't pipe up and say, "No I bloody didn't!")
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
Well according to Milton, sex predates the Fall, Nicodemia. It only becomes sinful and lustful and so on AFTER Adam and Eve have fallen.
One of the torments Satan endures is the sight of Adam and Eve innocently canoodling in Book IV. He can't abide the idea of them 'getting it' whilst he remains unloved, loveless and unable to have a stable and loving relationship of his own.
Worth a read.
Better still, get a CD of the whole thing - Anton Lesser reads it well - and sit back with a nice bottle of wine or a whisky and listen to it all unfold ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556
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Posted
The snake is nothing more than temptation personified.
As someone pointed out elsewhere the concept of Satan only came into Hebrew thought post Exile and via Persian influence.
Even then ( as in Job which is post-exilic) Satan was no more that Accuser,/ Prosecuting Counsel than the embodiment of evil
[ 04. June 2012, 11:10: Message edited by: shamwari ]
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Read Paradise Lost . I don't agree with much of Milton's Theology, but his learning of the OT and the various other books of Jewish Tradition is very, very thorough. It will answer this and many other similar questions.
I've read it five times so far, with notes. However, though Milton was fiendishly brainy, and incredibly learned - probably the last person in history who knew just about everything that there was to be known in the world at the time, before the expansion of knowledge made that impossible - he was also questionably orthodox, if not downright heretical: he was a subordinationist, which is a sort of semi-Arian. Still, if old Johnny M. says it was Satan, that's good enough for me. quote:
The serpent is a serpent into which Satan enters as a disguise, and the successful temptation is that of Stan, not of the serpent.
"Stan"?!
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
It's a biblical "Just So" story. How did the serpent end up crawling around? Well.. it's a detail in the far bigger story of "how did humanity get so screwed up?".
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin ...
Creation stories (myths for the less sensitive) are a genre all of their own. I particularly like this observation by Terry Pratchett.
Whether you see the Genesis Creation stories (after all there are two) as mythical poetry or something else will probably determine your answer to the OP question.
"We're screwed up and that bloody talking snake had something to do with it. What does it mean? Well, you know what I think ..."
And off we go, telling our own stories about the story.
My short version. "You know, the Jews knew that the human race was screwed without God. That's why they liked this story. We still are, you know. Let me tell you about Jesus .." And off I go.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
I've wondered for some time what the correct technical term for 'Just-so' stories, purporting to explain features of the world, was, and now, thanks to your first link, I know: they're 'pourquoi' or 'etiological' tales. Thanks!
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
quote:
[Title spello edited]
Thanks! I was going to ask a host to edit that annoying typo, but you anticipated me. Memo to self - check posts carefully before hitting the 'Add reply' button. (Like just now - I nearly posted "...aks a host...".)
[ 04. June 2012, 11:45: Message edited by: Steve H ]
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
My OT teachers were always adamant that "a snake is a snake is a snake"; that assigning the snake an identity as Satan was going beyond the scope of the text as well as the mindset of the authors/redactors, if we accept that this story was a written version of a much earlier oral tradition...the idea of the devil being a fairly recent import into Judaism.
If you want to argue that the snake is a lower-case satan -- simply an "adversary" as the term originally meant, someone/something who acts as a sort of prosecuting attorney (see the Book of Job) reminding God of what weak and faithless yutzes we are...well, you have more traction there, I think.
I've read lots of Ojibwa origins stories from my part of the world, and to me the Genesis story is very similar to their folklore. There's a story of a very greedy, stingy, unfriendly old woman who refused to give a stranger any of her food even though she had plenty stored away -- the visitor was Nanabush, a sort of part Christ-figure, part trickster in Native American mythology -- and as punishment for her greed and lack of hospitality the woman was turned into the first woodpecker, she and her descendants fated to spend all day crying and hammering wood for her sustenance. To me that's reminiscent of the Genesis account of how snakes lost their legs.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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IconiumBound
Shipmate
# 754
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Posted
Is it possible that the originators of the Genesis myth anticipated the research into brain development and were expressing a view of what is now known as the limbic system or "reptilian" brain?
Posts: 1318 | From: Philadelphia, PA, USA | Registered: Jul 2001
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Polly
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# 1107
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Posted
I'd agree the serpent represents satan just like Adam represents mankind and Even womankind.
Just because satan isn;t mentioned by name in much of the OT doesn't mean he didn't exist.
The same goes of the Angel Gabriel. I'm sure he existed before he visited Mary.
Posts: 560 | From: St Albans | Registered: Aug 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
Reptiles are not evil, of course, they are just reptiles. They are no more evil than kittens.
The serpent represents evil. If you have ever seen the eyes of a sociopath, in an unguarded moment, you will have seen that reptile evil. It is completely void of empathy or compassion.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Johnny S
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# 12581
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
"Stan"?!
Eminem is Satan.
(Your biggest fan, this is Stan.)
Posts: 6834 | From: London | Registered: Apr 2007
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
The question is, who or what is the snake?
The snake is the creation of God.
The snake is the truthteller.
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a theological scrapbook
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
quote:
Is it possible that the originators of the Genesis myth anticipated the research into brain development and were expressing a view of what is now known as the limbic system or "reptilian" brain?
Interesting hypothesis.
The late physicist/populizer of science-for-the-masses Carl Sagan -- not a religious believer, to my knowledge -- pointed out in his book "The Dragons of Eden" that the text in Genesis in which God curses Eve with pain in childbirth correlates to the evolutionary development of the human brain; that our craniums have to be so large to support our brains that they're almost too large to pass through the human pelvis; and that if women's pelvises were any wider than they are now, we'd be unable to walk upright. Again, Sagan is in no way an apologist for the Bible in general, let alone a literalist interpretation of same, but he found a sort of poetic coincidence between this scene in Genesis and our advanced ability to reason, which we all know can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
I'm not sure that "serpent" in Rev 12:9,20:2 is conclusively a back-reference to Genesis, but if so, then that settles that. That the devil was directly involved is also suggested by Wis 2:24.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
No, it doesn't settle that. It simply indicates that believers with a developed idea of Satan (which, again, was a relative innovation in Jewish thought from Exilic times) saw a parallel between their idea of Satan and the behavior of the serpent in the Genesis story.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
quote:
Serpents are good in other religions, notably in hinduism when a snake is a god.
Ditto the non-Hebrew Middle East/Mediterranean. Which may be another reason why the snake got cast as the baddie in the Genesis story -- i.e., "Anything our pagan neighbors/enemies venerate is ipso facto BAD." (This could also explain some of the more head-scratch-provoking Levitical prohibitions.)
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
No, it doesn't settle that. It simply indicates that believers with a developed idea of Satan (which, again, was a relative innovation in Jewish thought from Exilic times) saw a parallel between their idea of Satan and the behavior of the serpent in the Genesis story.
You say 'conceptual speculation in a theological narrative', I say "Divine revelation', let's call the whole thing off.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Genesis 3:15 "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.", if this is not about Satan and Jesus, the obvious interpretation, we haven't the faintest idea.
Ezekiel is exilic, Isaiah is pre. They refer to Satan. Satan was alive and well further back - 1000 BCE - at the time of David - I Chronicles 21 - and of course the oldest book in the bible, Job, with characters dating from before Moses c 1800 BCE, including Satan - all edited post-exilically certainly.
As Jack Lewis says somewhere, they are His myths. The Devil serves as the ultimate bad example that so far repudiates universalism: the wind changes and your face can be set.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
The Satan of Job is not the Satan of later Jewish or still later Christian understanding.
Which is not to say that there isn't such a thing as progressive revelation. Progressive revelation is what moved the Hebrews from a henotheistic, "My tribal god can whip your tribal god" religion to a monotheistic one with a fairly sophisticated and universalized understanding of who God is.
I'm not saying that the traditional Christian understanding of Satan is a mistake, or that it was a mistake for the Hebrews to appropriate ideas about Satan from other cultures. What I am saying is that the snake in the Garden of Eden story was...a snake. That's the story told. If later believers read back into it their concept of Satan, that's fine; NT authors do that all the time with OT texts; but it's not what the text says.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
It may be worth mentioning that there is a school of scholarship that says the appearance of angels including a fallen angel - in the text is very ancient. Certainly there are scattered references, though often just references to the hosts of heaven. They point to the reforms of Josiah and the deuteronomic "cleanup", which even by the evidence of the canonical texts went well beyond the ejection of pagan cultic practices. In this way of thinking, the extra-canonical writings, such as the "Enochian" literature, the Qumran writings, and indeed some of the Wisdom literature are all acting to preserve the lost myths. This should be interesting for Christian history, as these were also people who regarded the Jewish religious elite as corrupt and fraudulent.
There is quite a lot more to say on this, though I am far from certain about it myself. Nevertheless, I mention it for completeness sake.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556
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Posted
Who says Job is the oldest book in the Bible? Apart from Martin.
It is post exiliic in its poetry section ( which just happens to be the main section).
The Prologue incorporates an ancient Edomite folk tale. Perhaps this is what Martin is thinking of.
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Shamwari: That was what I was thinking as well. It's an old story, but it's been redacted over the years. And, again, Satan is certainly a different personage in Job than he is in his appearances in the New Testament or in the popular Christian imagination. In Job he and God remind me of two former employers of mine, partners who approached business in two entirely different ways -- a cautious, analytical way and a spontaneous, intuitive, experimental way. They called themselves the "brake" and the "accelerator," and maintained that their business would not have been successful without that ongoing tension.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IconiumBound:
Is it possible that the originators of the Genesis myth anticipated the research into brain development and were expressing a view of what is now known as the limbic system or "reptilian" brain?
Pretty cool of them to have not only anticipated a theory that wouldn't be thought up till the middle of the 20th century, but one that would have been discarded as nonsense before the end of it.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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footwasher
Shipmate
# 15599
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
Shamwari: That was what I was thinking as well. It's an old story, but it's been redacted over the years. And, again, Satan is certainly a different personage in Job than he is in his appearances in the New Testament or in the popular Christian imagination. In Job he and God remind me of two former employers of mine, partners who approached business in two entirely different ways -- a cautious, analytical way and a spontaneous, intuitive, experimental way. They called themselves the "brake" and the "accelerator," and maintained that their business would not have been successful without that ongoing tension.
Absolutely! Satan is a pitbull, but he's Gods pitbull!
In the crash test dummy scenario creation is the car and Satan is the immovable concrete block.
Romans 3:2May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written, "THAT YOU MAY BE JUSTIFIED IN YOUR WORDS, AND PREVAIL WHEN YOU ARE JUDGED."
[ 04. June 2012, 17:40: Message edited by: footwasher ]
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Ship's crimp
Posts: 927 | From: pearl o' the orient | Registered: Apr 2010
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
Like various other Shipmates, I do not read the story as literal truth. It does seem necessary to have some interpretation.
If you say "a snake is just a snake", a problem arises as follows: The snake is himself misbehaving--notice that he is also punished. Why is the snake misbehaving? Did someone tempt him to do so? This simply pushes it back a level.
If you say the snake was possessed by Satan, then it seems unfair to punish the snake.
If you say the snake is an embodiment of Satan, then you must wonder how he got into the garden.
I think there are interesting parallels to the story of Job.
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
HCH: I think that, like many other folktales, the originators don't attempt to tie up all the loose strings...because it's not the point of the story. You can't analyze a folk story the way you'd analyze a news story.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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footwasher
Shipmate
# 15599
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Posted
Oh! Satan will do God's bidding, but he still gets punished!
Israel is the apple of God's eye, but gets spanked for her sins. But the spanker gets spanked for touching God's blue eyed boy!
Exodus 9:16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
Jer 51:23 And with you I shatter the shepherd and his flock, And with you I shatter the farmer and his team, And with you I shatter governors and prefects.
24 “But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes,” declares the LORD.
Jer 50:17 “Israel is a scattered flock, the lions have driven them away. The first one who devoured him was the king of Assyria, and this last one who has broken his bones is Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. 18 “Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I am going to punish the king of Babylon and his land, just as I punished the king of Assyria.
There's a pattern...
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Ship's crimp
Posts: 927 | From: pearl o' the orient | Registered: Apr 2010
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WhateverTheySay
Shipmate
# 16598
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Posted
I have always believed the snake to be a representation of Satan, or if not then a demon.
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I'm not lost, I just don't know where I am going
Posts: 872 | From: Lost in Space, without a map | Registered: Aug 2011
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
LutheranChik: I agree with you about folktales, but some people want to find theological meaning in the Garden of Eden story, and "theological" requires "logical". As a folk tale, this is just the story of why the snake has no legs (as someone commented earlier). If you want a deeper meaning, then you need to work differently.
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
The Bible uses different terms to describe phenomena.
Men have powerful drives which are necessary for survival. When those drives are allowed free reign, men are no different from the beasts of the field , controlled by the law of the wild. This temptation /desire to allow natural drives free reign against better judgment is called yetzer ha ra. When men allow their better side to decide choices, this better inclination is called yetzer ha tov. The concept of Original Sin is hellenistic in origin.
The serpent is a personification of yetzer ha ra. It's curse of being relegated to crawling on its belly is the low rung it occupies in human thought whenever it is subjected to analysis.
PS Personification leads to strange outworkings, they take on a life of their own. The yetzer ha ra that created problem for the Israelites end up nailed to a pole!
Tons of stuff in Jewish commentaries on the subject, some rather fanciful. Judicious choice of reading material advised!
I really like this interpretation. [Although I wonder what it means for women ![[Biased]](wink.gif) - seriously, is it that hard to type "humans" instead of "men"?]
I like that this takes seriously the fact that the Genesis myths are ancient Hebrew in origin, not Christian or even Jewish. And that the story continues to have a life of its own, speaking to later generations and faith traditions. The prophecy, then, that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent's head points to a moral development over time, as human cultures and religions help us to recognize the yetzer ha ra and reject it. All of this fits well with a faith that embraces evolution - and it fits well with Irenaeus' idea that the humans in Eden represent humanity's infancy, not a perfection we've fallen from.
Once we've been bitten by our animal nature/ yetzer ha ra, we lose that childlike "innocence" which is really ignorance, and begin a struggle of growth toward an innocence which is a hard-won virtue.
It should be remembered that this myth probably had a long life of being orally told, re-told, embellished, and fine-tuned before it was ever set down in writing. There's probably no one "author." In all likelihood, the serpent symbol was pretty vague at first, as it may have come from a very visceral place - humans are naturally afraid of snakes, and snakes are naturally dangerous to humans.
When you're working with metaphor, often (as poets and other artists will attest) you intuitively grasp a metaphor or image that you can then explore to extract meaning. In other words, the analysis comes later. It is not necessarily the case that an author knowingly chooses a metaphor or image because it contains all the information or meanings s/he wants to convey. That would assume s/he could have written in straight prose to communicate some pretty static ideas.
And as any poet or other artist can attest, it's surprising to the author of a work to hear what meanings others have derived from it - not because they're wrong, but because they exceed the artist's own vision.
That's how metaphor works. If you can put it in a story, e.g., that has internal cohesion, then you might be able to explore the story itself to discover something about the world outside the story. The more that happens, the more people will preserve and pass on the story.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Ahleal V
Shipmate
# 8404
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Posted
One theory is that the serpent was merely the shadow of a highly advanced, supernatural race called the Grigori. True fact.
Read Andrew Collins' 'From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race.'
AV
Posts: 499 | From: English Spires | Registered: Aug 2004
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ahleal V:
One theory is that the serpent was merely the shadow of a highly advanced, supernatural race called the Grigori. True fact.
Read Andrew Collins' 'From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race.'
AV
Pffft! The Grigori is what 2 Enoch calls the "Sons of God" or fallen ones in that mysterious passage in Genesis 6. It's been cited as part of the evidence for very early "fallen angel" beliefs.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
Once we've been bitten by our animal nature/ yetzer ha ra, we lose that childlike "innocence" which is really ignorance, and begin a struggle of growth toward an innocence which is a hard-won virtue.
I really like the way you put that. Some may object to the idea of characterizing a virtue as "hard-won" as though we win it for ourselves by our own effort, but I think God allows us to feel as though that's the case as a way for us to freely and fully commit ourselves to our choice, as long as we recognize that the real transformation is actually something God accomplishes for us.
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
Posts: 1565 | From: U.S.A. | Registered: Nov 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Evensong, the snake LIED. The snake is a liar - slanderer, "across-thrower", diabolos, devil - from the beginning. Is Satan. The Adversary. Ours. The Muslims have it right, a scintillation in their facet at least, Satan is not God's enemy, God can have none, he's ours. Satan is as real as it gets as the most powerful possible freely evil person in creation. And therefore inevitable. If he did not exist it would be necessary to invent him ... but creation ALWAYS goes as bad as it can.
And shamwari, it isn't just Martin and hasn't been for ooooooh 3500 years.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Evensong, the snake LIED.
What about?
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
The snake is a liar - slanderer, "across-thrower", diabolos, devil - from the beginning. Is Satan. The Adversary.
No. The devil wasn't around in Genesis. God created. And it was GOOD.
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
You shall not surely die. And there is no contradiction in the fallen angelic realm predating ... Eden's perfection by millions of years.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I'm sorry? I don't see them around.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
And (sorry, I know, double post, bad form) of COURSE I'm aware of all the Salon des Glaces echoes (yeah, yeah) of Satan telling the truth if one wants to make the resurrection implicit in certain death.
He lied. They died. They're dead.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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