The Good and Evil Serpent (50 page)

Ignorant of ophiology and eager to stress that the snake is the bearer of damnable knowledge, the fifth-century Spanish poet Prudentius claimed that the female snake was impregnated by “oral union.” This culminated with her devouring her “lover.” Proceeding uninformed about biology, Prudentius claims that human sin is like the offspring of a viper:

For because there is no passage to give them birth, the belly is tortured and gnawed by the young as they struggle into light, till a way is opened through the torn sides … and the young creep about licking the corpse that bore them, a family of orphans at their very birth. [The
Origin of Sin
, 584–608]
⁹⁹

Intent on explaining the origin of sin, Prudentius reveals the hatred and ignorance he has of vipers that, he assumes, transmit knowledge to humans that damns them.

Liar

The bifid tongue of the snake symbolized duplicity, and thus lying (cf. 2.8). Many early Jewish texts interpret Genesis 3 so that the serpent is the liar and the source of lies. Paul interprets Genesis 3 by placing the blame on the serpent’s lying: “The serpent
deceived
Eve by his cunning
(2 Cor 11:3). Thus, Paul perceived the serpent to be the Deceiver or Liar. The same interpretation of serpent symbolism was expressed in the early first century
CE
by Philo of Alexandria. He claimed that the serpent “deceives by trickery and artfulness.”
¹⁰⁰
Sometime before 70
CE
, the author of 4 Maccabees called the serpent “deceitful” (18:8). One can readily understand why many scholars, especially E. Williams-Forte, are convinced that in Genesis 3 the serpent symbolizes evil and cunning, and that the serpent is primarily the Deceiver or Liar.
¹⁰¹

Geryon, the Monster of Falsehood, is imagined to resemble a serpent. His face may be that of a pious man, his feet those of a bear, but his body is a serpent with a long poisonous tail. Virgil spoke of him. Dante put him in the eighth circle of Hell. This scene appears in vivid colors in a fifteenth-century manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice (Cod. It. IX, 276 [= 6902]).
¹⁰²

Often the symbol of the serpent as the “Liar” appears when one castigates an adversary. A good example is found in
The Genuine Acts of Peter
. The author labels Arius a snake. Note this excerpt: “Nearly about the same time Arius, armed with a viper’s craft, as if deserting the party of Meletius, fled for refuge to Peter, who at the request of the bishops raised him to the honours of the diaconate, being ignorant of his exceeding hypocrisy. For he was even as a snake suffused with deadly poison.”
¹⁰³

In
To the Bishops of Egypt
, Athanasius also likened the teaching of Arius and those with him to the poison of a snake. He urged the bishops in Egypt to “condemn them as hypocrites, who hide the poison of their opinions, and like the serpent flatter with the words of their lips. For, though they thus write, they have associated with them those who were formerly rejected with Arius, such as Secundus of Pentapolis, and the clergy who were convicted at Alexandria.”
¹⁰⁴

Much earlier, but sometime after 135/36
CE
, the author of the
Apocalypse of Elijah
records a tradition that “the son of lawlessness … will perish like a serpent which has no breath in it.”
¹⁰⁵
In both Judaism and Christianity, the tradition that the serpent denotes lying escalates after the time of Bar Kokhba (132–35/36). One example must suffice. A sage teaching is recorded in a Baraita in the Babylonian Talmud: “They said to him, ‘It is not possible for a man to dwell (safely) with a snake (V)ro) in a basket’ “
(Ketubot
72a). This use of serpent symbolism was directed against a woman who habitually breaks her marriage vows. The meaning is not in doubt; a man who continues to live with a wife (like that) is like a snake. It cannot be trusted with true behavior, since it will eventually bite and kill.
¹⁰⁶
The Arabic saying “The serpent does not bring forth [anything] except a little serpent” is used to denote someone who purveys mischievous or malignant information.
¹⁰⁷
In his
Finitude et culpabilité: Le symbolique du mal
, Paul Ricoeur explains why the serpent is the symbol of lying and distortion.
¹⁰⁸

Duality

The two penises (hemipenes; cf. 2.7) and the bifid tongue (cf. 2.8) helped the snake to symbolize duality. This concept is reflected in the caduceus (two serpents facing each other, sometimes in opposite ways). We have seen the amazing ability of the serpent to symbolize two things at once (cf. the discussion of double entendre in
Chap. 2
). In Euripides’
Ion
, two drops of the Gorgon’s blood—equal to the viper’s poison—can either bring death
or heal sicknesses
.
¹⁰⁹
The snake in
The Shipwrecked Sailor
is, on the one hand, frightening; but, on the other hand, it is kind.
¹¹⁰

Duality, not dualism, can be a negative concept, as in the duplicity or the uncanny ability of politicians to be like a snake. When one labels politicians snakes, one means that such persons are guilty of duplicity. They have been speaking words that appease or mollify a constituent; they have not been seeking to report objectively and with integrity the true situation or possibilities.
¹¹¹
In antiquity and modernity, the serpent symbolized such duplicity.

Self-made One

The deafness (cf. 2.2) and social independence of the snake (cf. 2.8 and 2.32) helped placard the serpent as the self-made one. The evil serpent cannot hear God because it can only detect earthborne low-frequency vibrations, and so will not (and cannot) acknowledge that it was created by God. Its rebellion alters its memory, at least from the perspective of the biblical writers. The classic passage in which the serpent is depicted as the self-made one is Ezekiel 29:3,

Thus declares the Lord God:
“Behold, I am against you,
O Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
O great dragon
who dwells in the midst of his rivers,
¹¹²
Who has said, ‘My river is my own;
And I made [it] for myself.’ “

We should expect reference to the serpent within the Hebrew Bible, since the uraeus of Pharaoh’s sun casts shadows on it and within it.
¹¹³

Tempter

The snake’s bifid tongue helped make the serpent the symbol of the tempter (cf. 2.8). In the Garden of Eden the serpent tempts the woman to disobey God. The author of
Pseudo-Philo
, in a review of the Fall, stated that the serpent “deceived” the first man’s wife (13:8). According to the author of
Jubilees
3:23, God cursed the serpent and remained forever angry with the creature. In the Middle Ages, and especially in art beginning in many circles in the late nineteenth century, the snake is the tempter. Often it is shown with the dark, bewitching temptress.

Friendless One

The social independence of the snake (cf. 2.11), its inability to wink, laugh, or talk (cf. 2.23), and above all its antisocial nature (cf. 2.32) helped make it a symbol of the Friendless One. The snake does not seem capable of any type of affection, not even paternal love. The parents abandon their offspring. Some ophiologists claim that the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake stays with its hatch to protect and mother the offspring. I would think that perhaps she remains with her hatch because she is too exhausted to move, after suffering through nine hours of labor. Since the mother snake shows no affection for her young (as do most animals), she seems unfriendly to them, and is perhaps the most unmotherly of creatures.