The Good and Evil Serpent (49 page)

The author of
3 Baruch
, in the Greek recension, records a tradition that depicts the serpent’s belly as Hades. The Slavonic recension has these words: “As great as its [the serpent’s] stomach, so great is Hades.”
⁷⁷
The author of 4 Maccabees called the serpent “the deceitful serpent” and “the destroyer” (18:8). Perhaps the bronze dragons from east of Jerusalem denoted or connoted the destroyer (
Fig. 16
).

Reviewing the portrayal of the serpent or snake as the destroyer reveals that this meaning is carried along with the opposite: the serpent as the protector. A good example is found in
Tanhuma
, which reached its present form after the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud in the sixth century:

There is a story about a certain snake who came hissing from the field. He entered someone’s house on the Sabbath eve at nightfall, and saw a bowl of crushed garlic placed on the table. He put his mouth over it to eat the garlic. After he had eaten it, he vomited it into [the bowl]. Then he covered the bowl just as it had been at first. Another house snake saw it. What did he do? He went and uncovered the bowl. When they found it uncovered, they emptied it out. Who caused this householder not to die? The snake who uncovered [the bowl].
⁷⁸

From this parable we learn either that some Jews had pet or household snakes or that Jews could relate positively to a story about house snakes.

As with Numbers 21, and in light of our comments earlier, the snake can represent opposites (the caduceus and the double entendre of serpent sym-bology).
⁷⁹
As mentioned earlier, the caduceus was esteemed—and perhaps intermittently conceptualized—by first-century Palestinian Jews, since it appears on coins minted by Herod the Great (73–4
BCE
[reign: 37–4]) in Jerusalem, Archelaus (4
BCE
-6
CE
), and Valerius Gratus (15–26
CE
).
⁸⁰

As G. St. Clair points out, the “serpent bites, and the serpent heals.… People worship the serpent, or they worship Apollo for destroying it. It is the serpent who tempts Eve, yet Eve herself is the serpent.” Is the final sentence an example of rhetorical language living on itself? St. Clair never again mentions Eve or substantiates his claim.
⁸¹
Yet there is linguistic evidence that suggests the author of Genesis 3, or some of his readers, thought of Eve as, or in light of, the snake, who may have been female (see
Appendix I
).

About 1600
BCE
the Minoans created models and gems of women with snakes. We have already seen the early Roman depictions of Venus or Aphrodite with a serpent on her thigh (see
Fig. 23
). Not all images of women with snakes are positive. For example, in the Middle Ages women were imagined with serpents sucking their breasts. The
femme-aux-serpens
may denote lust or, more likely, as A. Luyster has suggested recently, bad mothers.
⁸²
The author of the
Vision of St. Paul (Apocalypse of St. Paul)
envisioned in Hell the women who killed their infants and were bad mothers (cf.
ApVir
[Greek]). These were tortured by “dragons and fire and serpents and vipers.”
⁸³
The juxtaposition of images of these bad mothers in chiseled porches of churches opposite Mary, the perfect mother, supports Luyster’s argument. It is further bolstered by the study of the
“virgin ecclesia”
contrasted on the opposite side of a church porch by the wayward
“female synagogue.”
⁸⁴

In Leviticus 11:29–38 numerous “creeping things” are judged to cause impurity. While none of the eighteen nouns for “snake” in the Hebrew Bible (
Appendix I
) appears in these verses, some snakes are included in the list of creeping things mentioned in verses 29–30. These “creeping things” bring danger and make one impure. Snakes are found in caves whose floors are piles of bat dung, and caves can be perceived as the entrance to the world beneath: Sheol and the abode of the dead. The snake frequents graves and tombs, bearing the pollution of death and danger. Thus, the snake can denote impurity.

Chaos and Darkness

The snake sometimes has a tail that is indistinguishable from its head; this characteristic suggests undifferentiated chaos (cf. 2.30). The snake’s deafness (cf. 2.2) to God’s creative word and its ability to scale barriers (cf. 2.16) helped stimulate perceptions, especially among Jews and Christians, that the serpent symbolized chaos.

In
Purity and Danger
, Mary Douglas rightly points out that negative valence is assigned to whatever animal escapes space or place.
⁸⁵
The creature, par excellence, that is the great barrier breaker is the snake (as we indicated at the outset). Thus, the serpent, which disappears beneath the horizon of the water and below the earth (a chthonic creature), and leaves its skin behind, is dangerous because it seems to have no assigned place, as do, for example, dogs, horses, cattle, and sheep. The snake invades our dwellings and habitually comes through apertures we cannot use. The snake has the uncanny ability to slide over or around barriers and remain undetected. This habit helps explain why the serpent was chosen by many to symbolize monsters that represent or reflect chaos and the rebellious one in creation.

The Hittite text known in second-millennium Anatolia called “The Storm-God and the Serpent” relates how “the serpent smote the Stormgod.”
⁸⁶
The Ein Samiya cup depicts serpent monsters that seem to denote the chaos defeated by the gods or god at creation (see
Fig. 19
). The mythical monsters, the Tanninim, personify chaos in Isaiah and the Psalms (see
Appendix I
). Note, especially, Psalm 74:13 (14 in English):

You divided the sea by your strength;
You broke the heads of the dragons
upon the water.

Note that the dragons may have more than one head (as in Ugaritic, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek mythology). The serpent symbolizes chaos in most world cultures and myths; he is Azi-Dahaka in Persia, Tiamat and Labbu in Babylon, Apophis in Egypt, and the Python in Greece.
⁸⁷

The Old Testament Apocrypha contains an expansion of Daniel called
Bel and the Dragon
. In it, a large dragon-serpent is described; it is worshipped by the Babylonians. Daniel feeds it its final meal: a mixture of pitch, fat, and hair. The idolatrous dragon-serpent devours the meal and bursts asunder. Such rhetoric is polemical and reduces an enemy’s religiosity to falsehood; far too many scholars are thereby misled to imagine that serpents are demonic.
⁸⁸

In
From Chaos to Enemy: Encounters with Monsters in Early Irish Texts
, J. Borsje discussed the serpent monsters that are prevalent in early Ireland.
⁸⁹
The serpent monsters include Apophis, Behemoth, Cerberus, and Leviathan.
⁹⁰

In a Ugaritic text, Baal claims to have “crushed Tannin,” and “shattered the wounded snake,” which had “seven heads.”
⁹¹
The text is reminiscent of Isaiah 27:1 in which “the twisted serpent” appears as a monster of chaos.

In 1817, chaos was created by the alleged sightings of a sea-dragon. General David Humphreys, formerly on George Washington’s staff, interviewed “eyewitnesses” who believed it was over 18 meters long. A research committee claimed to have discovered evidence of a new genus dubbed
Scoliophis Atlanticus
. In the South, William Crafts, a Charleston playwright, composed a play that lampooned the monster; the play was entitled
The Sea Serpent; or, Gloucester Hoax: A Dramatic Jeu d’Esprit in Three Acts.
⁹²
Accounts of seeing a sea serpent appear intermittently in the United States, beginning in 1641 and continuing until the present.
⁹³
The monster symbolizes great confusion (which to the ancients meant chaos).

From the third century
BCE
until the second century
CE
, the Jewish apocalyptists talk about the order of creation. One repetitive note in their symphony of perceptions is that all that is created runs according to its assigned task. The lone exception is the moon, which, failing to rule only the night because it wanders into the light of day, periodically suffers by losing some of its light and wanes each month. The authors of the Jewish apocryphal works never could describe the snake as one who follows the order of creation; it was sometimes a symbol of chaos.
⁹⁴

As one might imagine, the image of a snake that is so closely linked with chaos serves as a symbol of darkness. The snake can burrow deep into the earth or delve into the depths of the sea—each of these, in contrast to the heavens, is perceived as the realm of darkness. The snake is the only animal damned to eat dust (perhaps a symbol of chaos and darkness). As J. Chevalier and A. Gheerbrant state in
The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols:
“Throughout the world … [the] great god of darkness … is a serpent.”
⁹⁵

Figure 65
. Bronze Stamp, a Serpent with Bifid Tongue. Jerusalem. JHC Collection

A good example of the serpent as a symbol of darkness is found in Egypt, after the Eighteenth Dynasty. The god Horus is portrayed as an eagle, representing good and light, and is set over temples. He has defeated Set, the monster who symbolizes evil and darkness—and who is represented by a snake (often as two uraei).
⁹⁶
We shall see that the uraeus symbolized not only evil and darkness but also power, royalty, life, and divinity—especially on the crowns of the pharaohs.

Bearer of Corruptible Knowledge

The snake’s bifid tongue (cf. 2.8)
⁹⁷
and deafness (cf. 2.2) lie behind the serpent’s ability to symbolize the one who brings corruptible knowledge. Since it represents duplicity and cannot hear the Word, it symbolizes corruptible knowledge. Many Ugaritic incantation texts mention serpents, and even sorcerers being attacked by them.
⁹⁸
In the Garden of Eden, the serpent was depicted as intelligent and clever; he (or she) could talk with the woman. The serpent was not a liar; he (or she) did point the way to knowledge, but it was a knowledge that ultimately separated the created from the Creator. What the human pair received was not wisdom; it was corruptible knowledge.

A Baraita preserved in the Babylonian Talmud
(b. B. Bat
. 17a) warns of the evil knowledge one can derive from a snake. According to this text, Rabbis taught that four people died “because of the counsel (or advice) of the serpent”
.