The Good and Evil Serpent (72 page)

E. “I said that you should eat human food and drink human drink. Now:
And dust you shall eat all the days of your life”
(Gen. 3:14). [t.
Sotah
4:17]
¹⁰⁶

According to this interpretation of Genesis, the Nachash was not originally a serpent. He (not she in
Sotah)
was smarter than all cattle and wild beasts (cf. the LXX), desired to kill Adam and marry Eve (cf. Oedipus), had been promised kingship, walked upright like humans, and ate human food and drank human drink. While the tradition shows attentiveness to Genesis 3, it is also expansionistic and midrashic. Yet the Rabbis knew more about the snake than biblical scholars today; they knew, for example, that the pupil in the eye of animals is oblong, but round in humans and snakes (see
b. Niddah
23a).

In numerous ways, the Yahwist presents the serpent as “clever” and “intelligent.” Speiser misses the point, mentioned by Gunkel earlier, that the serpent is more clever than the human. According to Genesis 3:5, the serpent has mysterious knowledge known only to gods.
¹⁰⁷
He knows what God knows; the serpent says to the woman, “God knows [
] that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing [
] good and evil.” Perhaps the verb “know” provides an
inclusio
for the thought in this verse. The humans are to experience good and evil; that is what “to know” entails in Hebrew. As G. von Rad stated in his commentary on Genesis, the verb “to know” in Hebrew “never signifies purely intellectual knowing, but rather an ‘experiencing,’ a ‘becoming acquainted with’ (cf. at Gen 3:5).”
¹⁰⁸
The spotlight is cast again on the serpent as one who has godly knowledge. As J. F. A. Sawyer stresses, it is “thanks to the serpent that Adam and Eve
[sic]
came to resemble God, ‘knowing good and evil’ (3.22).”
¹⁰⁹

The supernatural knowledge of the serpent, reflected in Genesis 3, aligns it with the gods and reveals the world of mythology and lore focused on the serpent, which was central to worship and a grasp of the cosmos in ancient Palestine, especially at Beth Shan in the second millennium
BCE
and at Bethzatha in the Roman Period. In 1895 and in his influential
Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit
, H. Gunkel demonstrated the significance of the serpent motif in the history of religions and in Ancient Israel.
¹¹⁰

Since the Yahwist announces from the outset that the Nachash is one of God’s creatures, the Nachash cannot be a demonic being of chaos or represent a power or might opposed to God.
¹¹¹
Even though
nachash
is used to denote Leviathan (Isa 27:1) and a monster in the sea (Amos 9:3),
¹¹²
the serpent in Genesis 3 is not one of the mythical monsters. In contrast to Moses’ serpent staff,
¹¹³
the Genesis serpent has no magical powers.
¹¹⁴

The Yahwist understood what scholars have failed to grasp; he knew about the mysterious power and knowledge of the serpent. He possesses supernatural knowledge and knows about life and death.

The Yahwist may have known and been influenced by the Gilgamesh epic, since fragments of this epic were found at Megiddo and it antedates the Yahwist. According to this influential and well-known tale in antiquity, the serpent possesses supernatural knowledge and has obtained the secret of “everlasting life.” Only the crucial sections of the Gilgamesh saga of seventy-two poems may be excerpted now. The key passage for us is in Tablet 11, col. 6:
¹¹⁵

Utnapishtim said to him, to Gilgamesh:

“Gilgamesh, you came here; you strained, you toiled.

What can I give you as you return to your land?

Let me uncover for you, Gilgamesh, a secret thing.

A secret of the gods let me tell you.

There is a plant. Its roots go deep, like the boxthorn;

its spike will prick your hand like a bramble.

If you get your hands on that plant, you’ll have everlasting life.”

Gilgamesh … saw the plant.

He seized the plant, though it cut into his hand;

he cut the heavy stones from his feet;

the sea cast him up onto its shore.

“Urshanabi, this is the plant of Openings,

by which a man can get life within.

I will carry it to Uruk of the Sheepfold; I will give it to the

elders to eat; they will divide the plant among them.

Its name is The-Old-Will-Be-Made-Young.

I too will eat it, and I will return to what I was in my youth.”

The words “return” to “my youth” are a foreshadowing of who will finally possess the secret of being made young again. Thus, a snake takes the secret knowledge, and can now be seen everywhere to have the power to regain its youth. Note how the saga continues:

Gilgamesh saw a pool of cool water.

He went down into it and bathed in the water.

A snake smelled the fragrance of the plant.

It came up through the water and carried the plant away.

As it turned it threw off its skin.

Few would deny the similarity between Genesis and the earlier myths to the East. As H. and H. A. Frankfort pointed out, in such ancient myths as Genesis 3 and Gilgamesh, “the assimilation of a concrete substance would have made the difference between death and immortality.”
¹¹⁶
Most experts, thus, rightly conclude that the Yahwist was influenced by the Sumero-Babylonian literature,
¹¹⁷
perhaps via Canaanite culture.
¹¹⁸

We find in Genesis 3 and the Gilgamesh saga the sacred plant or tree that brings eternal youth, a woman, and the special garden. The serpent also plays a prominent role in both stories, and he obtains what is offered by the tree of life in Genesis 3.
¹¹⁹
Note this passage regarding the huluppu-tree:

On that day a tree, a huluppu-tree, a tree—

On the bank of the pure Euphrates it had been planted …

A lady walking in fear at the word of Anu …

Seized the tree in her hand and brought it to Uruk …

The tree grew large, but she could not cut off its bark.

At its base the snake who knows no charm had set up for itself a nest;

In its crown the Zu-bird had placed his young.

A major part of the Eden Story is missing from the Babylonian myths. There is no Fall and the serpent does not mislead or cause the woman to eat from the forbidden tree. There is no myth of temptation and expulsion from a paradise in the East. There are no etiological concerns and cures as in Genesis 3. Thus, Cheyne turned to see an influence on Genesis 3 from elsewhere. He was convinced that the origin of the Eden Story is with the North Arabian kinsfolk of the Israelites; these had infiltrated Canaan, although most remained in Arabia. They had a “Paradise story on which the Israelitish tale is based;” indeed they “became to a large extent the religious tutors of the Israelites.”
¹²⁰
If ultimately a Babylonian origin is more attractive for the Yahwist, Cheyne drew attention to Ea, the lord of wisdom, who appears frequently as a serpent; he was especially interested in human affairs.

The issue is not if influences came from Gilgamesh to the Yahwist, but how, and through which media. Most likely the Yahwist knew the Gil-gamesh saga and many other similar tales about serpents from Canaanite culture that was still present, though waning in influence, near Jerusalem. The purpose of the Gilgamesh saga for us is the ways in which it helps us understand serpent lore prior to the Yahwist and the link between serpent symbology and the concept of renewed life, a return to one’s youthful-ness. This perennial search for youth and immortal life is embodied by the serpent that does not seem to grow old and renews its skin or, as the Gilgamesh saga states, the snake “threw off its skin.”

A ceramic tablet—perhaps from the first half of the first millennium
BCE
—seems to depict a scene reminiscent of the Eden Story, the Gilgamesh epic, and the description of the Hesperides. The tablet, now in Madrid and allegedly Phoenician, shows from left to right a winged upraised serpent with a white face (perhaps human), a tree full of fruit, a woman with “milk” flowing from her exposed breast, a fire at her feet, a man with a phallus out of which pours “semen” highlighted by what appears to be a scorpion (a symbol of fertility), a second tree, and a winged upraised serpent having a dark animal’s head.
¹²¹
A fish (most likely part of the zodiac),
¹²²
the sun, and three stars are depicted overhead. Something seems to be flowing between the mouths of the man and the woman—is it language? If the scene is primarily sexual, why are both humans clothed?
¹²³
The scene with serpents and trees may have many meanings; one is fertility. The serpents are prominent and standing upright, as the position of their wings shows. The one on the left seems to have feet.
¹²⁴

The ongoing study has opened our eyes to the complexity of serpent imagery preserved in a refracted form in Genesis 3.
¹²⁵
As we probe deeper, we observe that the genre of Genesis 3 helps one grasp this insight. Genesis 3 is an early example of Wisdom literature. In it the Yahwist explains how to live in a world sometimes filled with pain and death: the excruiating pangs of the woman while giving birth and the extended burdens of the man while working in the field. And there he confronts hostile snakes who threaten death.
¹²⁶

In “Serpent Imagery in Ancient Israel,” Le Grande Davies offers these sane reflections:

The serpent of the garden appeared—not as the malevolent, diabolical serpent, but the loving, kind, powerful, benevolent serpent. He appeared as the serpent of glory, “one of the divine beings” who saved and imparted wisdom to the world. The serpent of the Garden appeared as one of the benevolent “anthropomorphical gods” who placed Adam and Eve in the Garden.
¹²⁷

For those who read this story and believed that the God of Israel was symbolized as a serpent, then we have a dualism. The first story recorded in the Bible seems to inherit the concept of two serpents: the obvious serpent who imparts wisdom but also initiates “the Fall” and the apparent serpent who is elusive, sometimes absent, but related to the wise Creator.
¹²⁸

In this context, one should observe how the Yahwist portrays the relation between the serpent and the woman. The woman seems to be confused. She knows supposedly only what the man had told her. She has no reason to doubt the sagacity of the serpent, who has the power of speech (the serpent is unlike Balaam’s ass whose mouth was opened by God). Apparently, she thinks the serpent is attractive and knowledgeable because she talks with the Nachash. To her, the serpent appears to have secret knowledge that was seductive and would make one like God. This means that she knew God was greater than she was, or at least had something she desired. Thus, the serpent is an agent of wisdom and was most likely intended to appear wise and conferring wisdom, or at least knowledge of good and evil, on humans.
¹²⁹
This claim may shock many scholars who are familiar with the usual approach found in commentaries on Genesis.