The Good and Evil Serpent (124 page)

Finally, more words for “snake” were probably known to the Israelites and Jews than those that we can now find in the Hebrew Bible.
²³⁹
First, the books collected into the Hebrew Bible are now heavily edited and reflect the needs of the exilic and postexilic Jewish community in Judea in which, as we have seen, an interest in snakes and serpent symbolism had already waned, especially from the period of the prophet Isaiah. Second, the lexicon of ancient Hebrew has been significantly increased due to the study of inscriptions and especially the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
²⁴⁰
Third, words known in public parlance do not always make their way into written records. For example, in the United States, Europe, and Israel, many people are familiar with the word “arachnophobia” (the fear of spiders), but this word is not found in the
OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
or in its supplement.
²⁴¹
Thus, it is conceivable, but nondemonstrable, that Din
(hawwdh)
meant “snake” in Old Canaanite (an ancestor of biblical Hebrew). This suggestion is not novel and has been offered by other scholars.
²⁴²
Perhaps this noun for snake,
hawwdh
, never made it into biblical Hebrew because it became established as the name of “Eve.” The mother of life cannot be confused with the source of temptation or evil, according to biblical theology.

This scholarly speculation is supported by a study of cognate languages.
²⁴³
In Arabic,
hayya
means “snake.”
²⁴⁴
In Persian the plural of
haiyat, haiydt
, indicates “serpents.”
²⁴⁵
In Aramaic,
,
(viz. in Onkelos), and
(viz. in Neophiti) denote snake,
²⁴⁶
and in Syriac
hewyd
denotes “snake.”
²⁴⁷

J. Wellhausen surmised that the striking similarity of the first woman’s name Din
(hawwdh)
with the Arabic and Syriac noun for “snake” should be explained by the assumption that the author of Genesis 3 or his source knew this noun and imagined the woman (Eve) in a serpent form.
²⁴⁸
Wellhausen’s insight is in line with Philo’s contrast between a dragon that is cunning and a friendly serpent that is called Eve: “[T]hat friendly serpent, the counselor of life, which is wont to be called Eve”
(Agr
. 95).
²⁴⁹

In 1904, R. G. Murison asked: “Is the name given to the woman
(Hawwah
, Gen 3:20) connected with the name for serpent in Arabic
(hayyat)
and in Syriac
(hewyd)?”
²⁵⁰
Despite the vast increase in our knowledge of West Semitic philology since 1904, we cannot answer Murison’s question with precise philological data. The name Eve,
hawwdh
, may well be related to “serpent,” Kin, but this relationship is no longer clear in Genesis because the editor of the myths behind Genesis 3 often shows signs of not fully comprehending them.

Unobserved evidence of a possible relation between “Eve,” the mother of all humans, and “Heva,” the name of a female snake in ancient nonbiblical Hebrew, is found in Clement of Alexandria’s
Exhortation to the Heathens
, as recorded by Eusebius in his
Preparation for the Gospel
. Clement reports that the Bacchanals celebrate Dionysus with eating raw flesh and being crowned with “wreaths of serpents.” Most significant for our present purposes, with these serpents representing a deity around their heads, they shout for help to “Eva, that Eva, through whom the deception crept in [and death followed in its train].” Clement adds the insight that “a consecrated serpent, too, is the symbol of the Bacchic orgies.” Having reported this aspect of the Bacchic orgies, Clement adds this impressive information: “[A]ccording to the exact pronunciation of the Hebrews, the name Heva, with an aspirate, is at once interpreted as the female serpent.”
²⁵¹

The eighteen nouns for snake in biblical Hebrew can be organized into three categories: specific terms, generic terms, and fundamentally mythological terms.
²⁵²
Here is a suggested categorization:

Specific Terms for Snake
1.	“sand viper”	Isa 30:6, 59:5	N
6.	“bronze serpent”	Num 21:4–9	P
7.	“asp”	Ps 140:3[4]	N
8.	“cobra”	Ps 91:13	N
9.	“pit viper”	Isa 14:29	P for Israel
10.	“viper”	Prov 23:31	N
11.	“arrow-snake”	Isa 34:15	N for Israel
13.	“burning-serpent”	Isa 14:29	P for Israel
14.	“fiery serpent”	Deut 8:15	N
15.	“flying serpent”	Isa 14:29	P for Israel
		Isa 30:6	N for Israel
16.	“winged-serpents”	Isa 6:2–6	P
17.	“adder”	Gen 49:17	P for Israel
Generic Terms for Snake
2.	“snake”	Deut 33:22	?
		Ps 68:23[22]	N
3.	“crawling things”	Mic 7:17, Deut 32:24	P for Israel