The Good and Evil Serpent (66 page)

We humans named animals. We also gave animated onomatopoeic names to snakes—like
nachash, seraph, eph’ee, sh
^e
phiphon
, and
ophis
(to bring out the hissing sound of these nouns; see
Appendix I
). Reading Numbers 21 aloud in Hebrew, as it was intended, brings to the attentive ear the sounds we have heard from snakes. With imaginative reflections on Genesis 3, we may hear from the animal world the remains of the serpents’ speech in the hissing vibrations that accompany their names as we mention them in Hebrew and Greek (the languages of the texts we are about to explore). With their ability to spirantize, the ancient Hebrews read the Torah, customarily aloud, with a better intuitive feeling of the language that originates in another world.

The research discussed here is a summary of what I have learned over the past six years of focused explorations into serpent iconography and symbology. I began with the fear that images have no set denotation because the viewer supplies any meaning. Erwin Panofsky offered this warning: “There is admittedly some danger that iconology will behave, not like ethnology as opposed to ethnography, but like astrology as opposed to astrography.”
⁴⁵⁰
We have seen that serpent symbology has a discernible denotation, even if it is multivalent. How, for example, can a uraeus be meaningful if it is a symbol of both evil and goodness?

We exegetes now have a guide to serpent iconology and symbology. Humans, virtually everywhere and from earliest times, have chosen a similar mass of limited images. It is now possible to reexamine the biblical texts in which serpent symbolism is prominent.

Why was it necessary to emphasize the polyvalent symbolic meanings of the serpent in antiquity? It was necessary in order to stress the rich varieties of meanings in ancient serpent iconography and symbolism and to repeat them from different vantage points because biblical scholars are systematically trained in the biblical languages, but not sufficiently introduced to the worlds of iconography and symbology. Moreover, it is clear from my conversations with colleagues that they almost always are eager to confess an abhorrence of snakes. These colleagues do not seem to comprehend that they also, as did the ancients, almost always possess in tension a fear of and a fascination with enchanting snakes. In fact, my associates are sometimes misled by fallacious reports that are taken as factual. Such antipathy to serpents prohibits a sensitive exploration of the symbolic meaning of the serpent in ancient literature, especially the Hebrew Bible and the Gospel of John. The authors and editors of the Bible were surrounded by serpent cults and images that appeared at the beginnings of human drawing and art.
¹

One example only must now suffice. It is taken from the prestigious and influential
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament
. Three entries in
TDNT
are devoted to the serpent. These three are SpaKtov, which appears only in Revelation (12:3, 4, 7, 9, 13, 16, 17; 13:2, 4, 11; 16:13; 20:2),
²
e/iSva, which is found only in Acts 28:3,
³
and
, which appears fourteen times in the New Testament.
⁴
W. Foerster contributed each of these three entries, and each is marred by his penchant to portray the serpent as a diabolical symbol. Note this excerpt:

Of all beasts, the serpent was regarded as demonic in antiquity, thereby revealing the duality of the ancient conception of demons. It plays a great part in Persian, Babylonian and Assyrian, Egyptian and Greek mythology and in essence this role is always the same; it is a power of chaos which opposed God either in the beginning or at the end of things, or both.
[TDNT
3 (1964) 281]

The quotation represents Foerster’s perspective. It does not accurately summarize the meaning of the serpent and serpent symbolism in biblical and parabiblical documents.

We have demonstrated that while the serpent can denote chaos (Neg. 3), the serpent does not “always” bear the same symbolic meaning. Foerster’s report is not only one-sided; it is simply inaccurate. His work is typical of the lack of careful, disinterested research that grounds biblical exegesis in archaeology, iconography, and symbology. It seems evident why generations of biblical exegetes have been misled regarding symbology, especially serpent symbolism. The whole enterprise of exegesis and theology is undermined if biblical symbology is misperceived, since all Scripture is symbolical. And, moreover, symbols are often presented in dynamic, even contradictory, ways, since it is in the tension they arouse cognitively that reality is pointed at, not displayed.
⁵

We must ever keep in mind what H. and H. A. Frankfort, and their colleagues, stressed long ago. Early humans did not distinguish between either the so-called objective and subjective or between the “real” and “appearance.” For the early humans who created the world of symbology, “thoughts are not autonomous.” We should try, as we proceed further, to comprehend “that our categories of intellectual judgment often do not apply to the complexes of cerebration and volition which constitute mytho-poeic thought.”
⁶

Foerster, in discussing
ophis
(Greek for “serpent”) claims: “[T]he snake is the sinister and peculiar animal
kat’ exochen.”
⁷
This judgment is not presented within a context, and it is not balanced by an equal stress on the positive symbolism of the serpent, even though Asclepius is mentioned (somewhat in passing and without perception).

BEING HONEST ABOUT HOW THE HEBREW BIBLE (OR “OLD TESTAMENT”) WAS “WRITTEN”

We now turn to the question, “How has ophidian iconography helped shape the formation of the Hebrew Bible?” That is, how has the image and symbol of the serpent affected narratives and stories, or been reflected (or refracted) in them?

When we pick up a bound book called the Hebrew Bible, we do not pick up one book.
⁸
We hold a library, as it were. The library is a collection of writings that were composed from about 950
BCE
to approximately 164
BCE
. On the one hand, these writings absorb and inherit many ancient stories that have a history of developing in oral traditions long before they were written down by the Israelites. On the other hand, these books were often edited by later authors. In antiquity, learned persons did not imagine they were independent authors; they (like Plato) stood within a cherished tradition and sometimes school.

The twenty-four books in the Hebrew Bible
⁹
originally circulated in separate scrolls. The earliest known copies are those found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Thus, when we read the “Bible,” we read a library of books that represent different centuries, contexts, and peoples (Hebrews, Israelites, and finally Judahites). The process of collecting these different works into one book, and arranging them into a canon, was preceded by oral traditions, writing, and expanding and editing the documents that were almost always separated into individual scrolls of varying lengths. Despite what is assumed far too often, no official body in Early Judaism (or Second Temple Judaism) ever promulgated what was to be in or out of a biblical canon. The myth of Jabneh (Jamnia) derives ultimately from Spinoza, was intimated by H. Graetz, and developed by H. E. Ryle and F. Buhl. No canon was defined by the Rabbis who met at Jabneh; this well-entrenched myth was exploded by D. E. Aune, and the latter’s contention was supported and confirmed by S. Talmon, and many others, especially L. M. McDonald.
¹⁰

In search of the influence of serpent iconography in the Hebrew Bible we need to remember how the writings took shape. Texts were shaped by “con-text”—the social and intellectual world of the writer. In that world, the serpent was a pervasive, and indeed a multivalent, symbol. Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews stand behind and within the books collected into the Hebrew Bible. They caused it to be written, to be expanded, and later to be edited and copied. Generations of Jews, long before the burning of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70
CE
, also showed us how to read some of the sections, as the scribal notations in the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially the Isaiah Scroll, help us comprehend.

In studying biblical serpent symbolisms, we appreciate more fundamentally that the Bible is not only from a culture of “the People of the Book.” It is also “the Book of the People.”
¹¹
That is, the book—the Bible—reflects a long and intricate process by which the words of humans to God became the Word of God to humans. The books in the Bible were written by people like you and me, but they sometimes claimed to be inspired; that is, as Mozart contended he was not composing music but recording what he heard, so Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and many others professed they were saying to Israelites what they heard God say to them. For many Jews and Christians today, the Bible is thus an intricate mixture of divine timeless revelations and human timely conceptions.

Symbolism belongs to both worlds: the eternal Word and human time-bound expressions. Serpent symbolism deeply colored the garments of ancient biblical societies. While “the serpent” appears in numerous passages in the Hebrew Bible,
¹²
three are outstanding. First, Genesis 3 is important because of the prominence attributed by the author (the Yahwist)
¹³
to the serpent in the so-called “Fall” (Sundenfall)
¹⁴
of the human from grace and a blessed life in Paradise and the beginnings of sin, pain, suffering, and death. Second, Numbers 21 is also exceptional because of the narrative according to which Moses made a copper (or bronze) serpent and placed it on a pole so that the Hebrews, who looked up to it as God’s sign, would not die. Third, 2 Kings 18 is chosen because its author reports that Israelites were worshipping a serpent (or through it),
¹⁵
Nechushtan,
¹⁶
in the Temple. All three texts are not only shaped by serpent symbology but are so singularly important that they have developed the understanding and explication of biblical theology or “Old Testament Theology” (i.e., the theologies preserved in the Hebrew Bible). Unfortunately, none of the three texts central for the present research has been found among the scrolls once preserved in the eleven Qumran caves.

After working through the commentaries on Genesis, Numbers, and 2 Kings, I was surprised by the lack of interest in the symbol of the serpent. Numerous scholars translated Genesis 3 so as to stress a negative image of the serpent; hence, the image of the serpent is presented from preconceived, and misleading, notions and not from interrogative investigations and research. This discovery was surprising to me because biblical scholars seek to be grounded in the world in which the scrolls and stories took shape. In that world, as is now clear to the reader, no symbol was so pervasive, so dynamic, and primarily so positive as the serpent.

As is well known to virtually all biblical exegetes, the serpent appears on the heads of the pharaohs, with Hermes (Mercury), on Asclepius’ staff, on the walls of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings, and on gems, jewelry, seals, and scarabs. Moreover, when coins were invented for commerce, one of the prevalent symbols was the serpent. As the caduceus, the serpent was found on the coins of the early Herodian dynasty, as discussed earlier. We have reviewed the evidence of the symbol of the serpent in the previous chapters. Now, we can ask, “How have the various symbolic meanings of the serpent helped shape the words and worlds of the biblical authors?” By entering the world of the biblical authors, we obtain controls and insight for exegesis. We thus will be guided away from uninformed, indeed foolish, pronouncements, and avoid such claims as René Guénon’s speculation that the tree of life
¹⁷
symbolized and in a way described the celestial Jerusalem.
¹⁸