The Good and Evil Serpent (77 page)

The categorization occurred even earlier. The Yahwist reports, according to Genesis 3:1, that the Nachash is one of the beasts of the field (or earth). The Yahwist seeks to stress that the Nachash was originally very much like the human: wise, able to speak, upright, and most likely with feet (at least, and maybe hands).
²⁰⁶
In Genesis 3:1–13, the Nachash (
) chould be imagined as beautiful and attractive, as the great artists, like Mosolino (see the following), imagined and represented; after all, the woman associates and talks with him or her. The comment that the serpent must now crawl on its belly refers back to the beginning of the account. Is Genesis 3:14 (the Nachash is now clearly a crawling serpent) not an echo of 3:1 (the Nachash adumbrates a serpent who will have to crawl)?

It is clear that the Nachash has been altered. He formerly did not have to crawl on his belly; now, he must eat dust and crawl on his belly. This seems obvious now, but the perception has been missed by many scholars. For example, the esteemed Semitist P. Joiion argued: “[The] serpent, before the curse, was not able to move except creeping on his belly; after the curse, he continued to move on his belly: Nothing changed” (“[Le] serpent, avant la malédiction, ne pouvait marcher qu’en rampant sur le ventre; après la malédiction il continue à marcher sur le ventre: il n’y a rien de changé”).
²⁰⁷
Being ignorant of the iconography and symbology that clarify the contexts of our biblical texts leads to such misperceptions. The Yahwist most likely knew the regnant serpent symbolism in the Levant by which the serpent had legs; he makes it clear that God Yahweh cursed the serpent and declared that “because you have done this” (3:14)—that is, deceive the woman—you are now cursed, and you shall henceforth crawl on your belly. Has not the Yahwist cleverly elevated the human above the beasts of the field by narrating that when Yahweh God again appears in the garden, he asks Adam, but condemns the serpent?
²⁰⁸

Eleventh, to whom would the Yahwist imagine Yahweh God spoke when he said, “Now that the man has become like one of us in discerning good from bad”? To whom could Yahweh God be referring by “like one of us” (3:22)? The Yahwist does not inform us, but the text invites us to imagine who could be Yahweh God’s interlocutor. Texts, no less than art, remain lifeless and meaningless without the reader’s active imagination, which must be stimulated and guided by attention to the details in the narrative.
²⁰⁹
Thus, with erudition and imagination controlled by the details and innuendoes of the Yahwist, the Aramaic translators of the Targumim can surmise that God was talking to the administering angels. Yet angels are not mentioned in the Hebrew text. Another, probably divine, being is, however, present; and his role has been to be the talking creature.

In the narrative, beside Yahweh God, only the woman, the man, and the serpent speak. The first two are omitted as possibilities because God is speaking to someone about them (I assume “the man” in 3:22–24, because of its connection to the previous verses, is a collective for man and woman). The only option left open, in terms of the story, is the serpent. Could these words, somewhere in the past, have included the serpent? In the present narrative, one learns that only God and the serpent originally knew about good and evil. Perhaps the Yahwist, as editor and compiler, has left an echo of traditions that portrayed the serpent as a god among other gods, now dethroned by the Yahwist and the growing influence (or foreshadowing) of monotheism.

In the Yahwist narrative, the serpent seems to possess divine knowledge. He apparently has the knowledge of what will happen if, or when, the human eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Thus, he has the knowledge that only God seems to possess. Does the serpent, then, also know what is in the future? How else could the serpent predict—correctly in contrast to God—what will happen when the woman and man eat of the forbidden fruit? The serpent also knows what only God Yahweh knows: he knows the difference between good and evil. Thus, the Nachash seems to have features of a god. Pondering these aspects of the story, one can imagine that perhaps Nachash had already eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. That exegesis would explain why the Nachash is introduced as “clever,” and speaks with assurance of what will happen when the human eats of the fruit. It then becomes remarkable that the Nachash would choose to share this knowledge with these humans, who otherwise would be left in a state of pitiful ignorance.
²¹⁰

The serpent has intimations of divinity in the biblical story of Eden, although the Yahwist most likely tried to remove them. The Yahwist attempts to tone down the possibility of many gods, including the serpent, by categorizing the serpent beneath God. He is among God’s creatures. The Yahwist moves the story in the direction of portraying the serpent as an adversary of the Creator.
²¹¹
Hence, in speculating on pre-Yahwistic serpent symbolism, we are not seeking to discern the theology of the Yahwist.
²¹²
We are exploring pre-monarchic serpent symbolism that may still be mirrored in Genesis 3 and causing the narration to be less than clear, evoking numerous questions. It is thus conceivable that the Yahwist has left a trace of an earlier myth in which a god speaks with a serpent god about knowledge (of good and evil)
²¹³
and eternal life. According to H. Ringgren, the serpent of Genesis 3 is to be identified with either El, the supreme god in the Ugaritic pantheon, or Baal, the god of lightning and storms.
²¹⁴

The possibility that the one to whom Yahweh God is speaking may have been the serpent—in an earlier version of the story—arises because the Yahwist has left in his narrative traces from older myths and legends regarding the serpent. These make sense within Near Eastern serpent iconography and symbology in which the serpent is portrayed as divine and a god (Pos. 11). These traces suggest that, in traditions inherited by the Yahwist, the serpent may have been addressed by God. He discerns “good from bad” and was thought by some ancients to “live forever.” By focusing on serpent iconography and symbolism, we come closer to perceiving the editorial work of the Yahwist and the possible contours of some of his more ancient sources. We approximate the goal of biblical exegesis in the historical-critical perspective: to grasp the formation of texts, the ancient traditions refracted in texts, and to strive for a hermeneutic that is informed by the original context of texts.

Summary

Serpent symbolism in Genesis 3 has now been studied philologically, exegetically, contextually, and symbolically. We may thus review the ten points of the Eden Story that, as stated earlier, are so popular in Christianity and Judaism (and also, in many ways, the culture of Islam).
²¹⁵
Each of the ten points is now exposed as false.

First,
the serpent is not the Devil or Satan.
²¹⁶
Neither the Devil nor Satan is mentioned in the Eden Story; other names for “Satan” also do not appear in this first great story in the Bible. Yet Jews, especially in the first century, often intimate that either the serpent was really the Devil or the Devil used the form of the serpent; even Paul refers to the way the serpent cunningly deceived Eve (2 Cor 11:3). The early Syriac exegetes equated the serpent of Genesis 3 with Satan.
²¹⁷

Second,
the serpent does not lie
. The serpent is also not portrayed as the Liar. What he predicts if the woman eats of the forbidden fruit transpires: she does not die immediately, and she becomes like God in that she knows good and evil.

The snake does not lie, but he does not tell the whole truth. The humans do become like God in that they know good and evil. But, most important, they do not become God and have immortality.
²¹⁸
The author of Genesis 2 and 3, the Yahwist, does not suggest that Adam was created with immortality. He may imply that the man and the woman had to eat daily, or at least periodically, from the tree of life, and that after the expulsion from Eden they could not do that.
²¹⁹
Thus, the Jew who composed the Wisdom of Solomon erred, as do many modern exegetes, in ascribing immortality to Adam and death to the action of the serpent, who is the Devil
:

For God created the human to be immortal,

He made him as an image of his own nature;

Death came into the cosmos only through the Devil’s envy,

As those who belong to him find to their cost. [Wis 2:23–24]

Finally, according to the narrator, the humans do not become like God. They die; there is no implication that God had made the humans either immortal or eternally youthful.
²²⁰

It is clear that the Yahwist has not presented the serpent as the grand antithesis to God. Not only does the serpent
not
lie, God is depicted narratively as failing to speak the full truth. This insight clashes with the affirmation in the Bible that there is only one God and he is trustworthy and faithful; he is the God of truth (cf. e.g. Pss 19:10, 31:6, Deut 32:4; cf. also Jn 17:17, Tit 1:2, Heb 6:18).
²²¹
Yet biblical theology does not ring with the affirmation that God is always truthful.

The Nachash, alone among the animals, is presented as able to speak. If the serpent alone speaks the truth in this Eden Story, and since in the mind of the Yahwist truth was associated with wisdom and unthinkable without it, then the serpent is associated not only with truth but also with wisdom. The stage is set for the later Jewish authors who see the serpent as a symbol of wisdom (Pos. 18). Not only is that evident in the
Apocalypse of Moses
, but it is also attributed to Jesus, who told his disciples, according to Matthew, to be wise like serpents.

The significant impediment to seeing the Nachash as the “truth-teller” is the fact that both Adam and Eve died. Their death became a major theme of the first-century writing called the
Vita Adae et Eva
. This author of this work portrays Seth and Eve going to Paradise in order to obtain “the oil of mercy” (40:1) so Adam, who is sick and appears dying, could be healed. On the way, Seth is attacked by “a serpent” (37:1–3), a “cursed beast” (37:3); eventually the angel Michael informs the two: “Truly I say to you that you are by no means able to take from it, except in the last days” (42:1).

Two points must be repeated and emphasized. First, God said that anyone who ate of the forbidden tree would die “on the (that) day;” but Eve lives to entice Adam, and both live until they are banished from the garden by God. Second, God tells Adam (and, by the concept of inclusion, also his wife) that since he heeded his wife and ate of the forbidden tree he will die. Why does death occur? It is not because God “curses” the humans and they subsequently die. It is because they are banished from the garden and cannot eat regularly from the tree of life, which alone provides continuous life. Thus, the author of Genesis 3 assumes that the key to living forever is to be in the garden and periodically to eat the fruit from the tree of life. Perhaps he assumed, as did all who lived in the early centuries of the first millennium
BCE
, that death was a natural part of living, and the end of it. Thus, God announces to Adam that he will “return to the ground.” The point is repeated: “For dust you [are], and to dust you will return” (Gen 3:19). The first human,
Adam
, returns to the ground,
adamah.
²²²

Third,
the serpent is no trickster
. He does not beguile the woman. The narrator does not depict the woman being tricked into doing what she would never herself think of doing. It is the Rabbis, through midrashic expansion, who added that the serpent pushed Eve into the forbidden fruit. The woman was not tricked; the Yahwist suggests that she willingly participates in the act. Note that after the serpent’s advice: “The woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and [that] the tree would make [her] wise.” (3:6). The narrator does not suggest that the serpent caused her—or bewitched her so as—to see the tree in this manner. As Paul Tillich claimed, the serpent does not symbolize disintegration but integration (cf. Pos. 12, “Unity [Oneness]”).
²²³