How Did Serpent Speak? If the account is not an allegory, then how can we explain the ability of a serpent to speak? The Bible provides no answer. How Eve heard the serpent is not explained either, but there is no indication that she was shocked to discover this creature could communicate with her. This has led some to speculate that before the Fall, animals had ability to speak. But it is not necessary to hold this view. In the Book of Numbers we find God speaking to the prophet Balaam through a donkey.
Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times Numbers Identity Of Serpent We have a similar situation here. Though the serpent is not explicitly identified in the Book of Genesis, he is identified with Satan in the last book of Scripture.
So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years Revelation ; Not Supernatural Being It does seem clear from Scripture that there was an actual serpent in the Garden-he is described as one of the wild animals that God had made Genesis ; 2 , The serpent was not a supernatural being.
In some way, Satan entered into the body of the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve. Therefore, Satan himself is the personage behind the serpent. The serpent was the instrument the Devil used to do his bidding.
Thus we can conclude that the tempter was the Devil who was disguised in the form of a snake. According to Scripture, the career of Satan, or the Devil, has been steadily going down since his creation. Originally he was created as a perfect being without any sin. Satan Cast Out At some unknown time in the past, he decided to rebel against God. When he rebelled against the Lord this beautiful creature became the Devil or the adversary.
It is clear from Scripture that God did not create the Devil. This creature became the Devil when he decided to rebel against God.
Cast Out Satan was cast out of God's presence because of his sin. The Book of Job informs us that he now has some access to God's presence but only when the Lord allows it. God Of This Age Satan is presently deceiving humankind. The Bible calls him the prince of this world, the god of this age and the prince of the power of the air. Jesus said to the religious leaders of His day: You are of your father the Devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it John This deception will continue until his future judgment. During the time of the Great Tribulation, he will be cast down to the earth Revelation After the Second Coming of Christ he will be thrown into the pit for a thousand years.
After the thousand years, the Devil will be released for a short time. He will then be thrown into the lake of fire forever Revelation Thus will be the end of his inglorious career. More Shrewd We now come back to Genesis three. The creature is called more shrewd than all other beasts. Shrewd is an ambiguous term.
One the one hand, it is a virtue the wise should cultivate Proverbs ; , but when misused it become wiliness and guile Job ; ; see also Exodus ; Joshua More Subtle The Bible, in stressing the craftiness or cunning of the serpent, said he was more subtle than all other creatures.
The New Testament also emphasizes this fact. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ 2 Corinthians By Satan's fall, the wisdom and great intellect that he had was ed into an evil craftiness. Eve, along with Adam, had dominion over all the creatures, was now being tempted by Satan working through an inferior being.
Play On Words The choice of the term aroom shrewd is one of the more obvious play on words in the text; for the man and his wife have just been described as nude aroam They will seek themselves to be shrewd cf. Genesis is connected with by a Hebrew wordplay. Adam and Eve were naked 'arummim' ; and the serpent was more crafty 'arum, shrewd than all. Their nakedness represented that they were oblivious to evil, not knowing where the traps lay, whereas Satan did and would use his craftiness to take advantage of their integrity Allen P.
Why Allowed To Enter? This brings up an important question. If the Garden of Eden was God's paradise, then why would God allow the Devil the right to enter this place of perfection? How did Satan gain access to Adam and Eve? Obviously God had to allow the Devil access to the Garden. Very Interesting topic. Thanks BAR. More studies can wear us out. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. The above article is full of doctrinal error. My are so many being duped by the adversary even among biblical scholars! Pandora was specifically instructed not to open the box, but Time seduced her and and she opened the box out of curiosity that brought out death and all the evil of the world. Eve was specifically instructed not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but Time seduced her and she ate its fruit out of curiosity that brought death and exile from the garden of eden.
Thus Time is the Snake and curiosity is the Satan. After eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge, man became conscious and thus lost the primitive animal innocence, he came to understand death and other natural and artificial evils like illness, war, jealousy, money etc, before that he was just another animal unaware of the death and other evils. He exiled himself out of the nature into the Civilized world, the artificial villages and cities of the world. The Lord cursed Time the lifetime spent by man on Earth , that it would crawl on its belly and eat dust— The daily grind of the routine work makes us feel like Time is crawling on its belly and nothing lasts forever, youth, beauty, love, money, fame, everything changes to dust in side Time, hence Time eats dust.
Thus Humans have to plan the sowing of seeds ahead of time and then as per the plan procure the seeds, actually perform the actions by moving their hands and feet to sow and subsequently harvest the produce.
So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way to the tree of life. The Young have Hope the flaming sword that can cut through all adversity turned every way so that the Human race keeps procreating and bring forth new generations to keep the way to the tree of life or else if the young are exposed and corrupted by evils of the scientific knowledge, civilization and society, they will decide that the world is too evil to bring forth the next generation and abstain from procreating and the Human race will die out as is happening in the Developed world due to the low birth rates.
Genesis is a very advanced scientific and psychological message in this interpretation, shrouded in the secret code of snake, satan, civilization, youth and hope.
So I see that you think that you know your Hebrew. Perhaps you should ask a a rabbi. So you actually used a Holy name of Him in mowing that it could be deleted???! Not a good idea. Short story of a Homo sapiens. Oh boy o boy , satan ,I want to be your biggest fan.
You are majestic , a celebrity all wise and powerful. I like your pictures but I have some questions about you and I want to know more about you. I am from earth and a hominoid, yes, I am only an ape. Your picture is quite confusing you have horns like you are a herding animal , oh I know, it may be for protecting you and your herd but you have bipedal locomotion and have penta dactyl hands and you have a tool for protection or may be for hunting, oh I get it you are a hybrid between cattle and ape, right?
I mean your abode. I mean are you a living thing or a non living thing? He cant be right satan, please tell me. If you were bit? Before it, you did your thing — And you lived. This is no small matter, in the lands of cobras, of asps. The Bronze Serpent was destroyed during the reign of Hezekiah c.
It was destroyed, because the Israelites were burning incense to it —. For unto these days, were the sons of Israel, making perfume to it. If you read the text critically, you will see, that the issue was not idol worship, nor apostasy, nor the incorporation of foreign gods into the worship of YHWH.
The issue, was the control of all YHWH worship in one single location, under the hand of one small familial group, who were descended from Levi and Aharon. Even some of the Levites — Especially, the descendants of Moshe — Objected, to this abomination of centralization. You have to know what you are reading, within the cultural and historical context of the times, to be able to properly interpret actions — And, more importantly, Within the Mind of YHWH — To Be Able To Understand the motives, which underscore said actions.
Aharon wanted to centralize worship under their control, in the South. I prefer the YHWH who you can kick back with under a tree, in the breezy shade and the grass, by a small flowing stream. Did not even enter into the picture, until after worship was centralized.
And the Anointed Enter Within the Sanctuary, in spite of everything that the Church of man does, to prevent it. Thank you for this article. I appreciate the time it took to dig into this. I will help guide me in my our studies. This was one of the most disappointing articles I have seen in Biblical Archeological Review. Clearly no one qualified reviewed the article before it was published. Here are just a couple of the factual errors:. However, while some do treat the two instances in Nu.
The ESV is inconsistent i. Two more could be added if we accepted the contention that instances in Nu. I found this article really interesting. As Christians we are taught that Lucifer, Satan and the devil are one and the same. Regarding God cursing the serpent to crawl on the ground and what kind of creature was it before it was cursed.
Is there anything in scripture to indicate that the curse on this creature was just to that individual alone? You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. It would have been even more poignant if it had been. Dustin, quick question, how can Eve know that eating the apple is evil, if she only gains the knowledge of good and evil after having eaten it?
As an exegesic reader of the scriptures, and a believer of His preserved Word, I would have to say that you are heretical. Satan is one of many names given to the fallen angel, just as Savior references Jesus Christ. Is is mentioned, along with evil spirits numerous times in the old and new testiment. He was noted to walk in the garden of Eden until inequity was found in him.
Evil and darkness are always the abscence of goodness, not some twisted Mr. Hyde side of God. Please be careful when you post things contrary to God says in His word. The end of Revelations warns you about what may happen. In Christ always,. And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. It would do well for all men to first be born again of the Holy Spirit before writing opinions about the Word of God. You know what, the serpent in the garden of Eden could be symbolic for Satan rather than a talking snake? In a way this symbolism would make sense because the animal we all know that spoke like a man was a donkey of the prophet Baalim but then again the strangest things have happened.
So Satan might have the power to possess animals by making them talk. Mind you he does with humans. I guess its back to the drawing board. Recent scholarship is no proof either. In the end, like the bible, scholarship says what you want it to so. This article provides a useful corrective to anachronistic exegesis of Scripture that would import later ideas into earlier texts. That said, one needs to distinguish between the purely historical-critical reading of Scripture practiced in biblical studies and the theological reading of Scripture by the Church.
In the former, there is no warrant for linking Satan to the serpent, nor for linking the seed of the woman Gen. When Genesis is read through the eyes of Christian faith, however, such readings become plausible and legitimate.
From a biblical studies point of view, the writer overstates the claim that the New Testament does not link Satan with the serpent of Eden. While no NT writer makes a straightforward, direct identification between the two, there are a number of texts where a connection may at least be hinted at — not only Rev.
The author would have done well to research recent scholarly commentary on these texts. In fact, Job and Zech. In one of the earliest accounts of a vision of Yahweh presiding over the heavenly court that is described by the prophet Micaiah during the 9th century B. Thus why he talked. Despite the many comments attempting to discredit the above article, the fact remains that there are no references In the Old Testament linking the serpent with Satan.
The internet is an example of how information can be used for good and evil and how serpentine entities can slither through a hole in the wall, as the immoral influences slipped in to early Christianity that is mentioned in Jude The introduction of Babylonian and Greek concepts initially into Jewish thought and later into Christian thought led to a belief in a supernatural creature with the capacity to cause humans to sin.
Careful reading of the texts establishes that God at times is the adversary and the false accuser is those that oppose the spread of the Gospel. Would God create a being that could challenge Him and cause untold misery to humans? James But then again this first book of Genesis is a priestly account from the 5th century B.
The 10th century B. Sure enough, my discoveries were much as the author describes. Including the anomalous reference in Chronicles in which David is severely reprimanded for taking a census. What could I conclude but that during the interlude between the bulk of writing in the OT and NT, the perspective of the writers had significantly changed. But why? My intuition is that Persian and perhaps Greek perspectives had been added to the Judean point of view about the human state and the conflicts within creation.
My suspect models from elsewhere would be Zoroastrian writings very similar to those in Enoch. The dualistic divide is over truth and falsehood. But how this could have influence beliefs in Judea is difficult to document, if not to surmise.
Greek civilization nearly succumbed to the expansion of the Persian Empire since it was relatively poor in resources. But yet our written heritage from Greece is far larger than that of Persia. But still. Whether we use a close reading of the Bible or not, we still have to debate whether all evil in the world is rooted in human nature or some of it comes from outside.
A jury might be confronted with an individual whose crimes exceed what they would have attribute to the abilities of one limited individual. Even on the question of exorcism, regarding the most famous case on which a Hollywood movie was once based, the two priests in the actual case were of two minds. One was sure that he was dealing with the devil. The other was not sure, save for the fact that there was a young man who needed his help. If I recall correctly, he spent his remaining career as a military chaplain saying that he faced more evil there on the battlefield then he did in that famous incident.
And then what are to make of the changed Biblical perspective? Or, should we say, in the NT. Ok, made a mistake…creation of beasts are mentioned in Gen 1 …Anyway. IT would suggest, Satan, was not created at the beginning of creation. Perhaps the background to the account of the accuser tempting David to take a census for the purpose of imposing a draft on men for the military originally comes from the collective memory of the Canaanites under Egyptian domination as was revealed in a recently discovered grave near Tel Shadud in the Jezreel Valley.
Named so after the Egyptian god Set, this Pharaoh was particularly reviled and singled out from the Pharaohs for his heavy-handed policy of sacrificing the heirs of the Canaanite kings to the god Amon at Thebes not unlike the Poles under Soviet domination whose military officers were massacred by Stalin. I find this article a bit too contradictory to be considered academic.
Some consider Job as the earliest written book of the Bible. If so the Hebrews had an early example of him that was passed down. The account in 1 Chronicles has an individual Satan not God as she states incorrectly who talks David into taking a census. Another example is Psalms It identifies Satan and interestingly uses the Hebrew word satan which is translated, adversary,.
That the writer uses that word rather than the more common tsar, must give it a higher descriptive meaning. He was, after all, an adversary and an accuser. Satan aka The Devil aka Lucifer aka the Dragon etc.. But Paleo-Hebrew and modern Hebrew DO use the definite article much more than the author claims, what bible is she reading from?
Pure dishonesty or pure incompetent study. What pure blind willful error from self-condemned according to God Himself Jesus. This author actually needs to read the Holy Bible PROPERLY since the commenters on this article have clearly shown by citing the Scriptures properly that her claim is untenable and only tenable to the intellectually dishonest.
Utter blindness, what utter dishonesty. The author seems only to be qualified in repeating the countless lies of satan which satan sells to them who love themselves more than the Creator who created them.
More outright utter willful blindness aka intellectual and spiritual dishonesty. What serious intellectual dishonesty. Even when the Emperor of Rome, Emperor Hadrian wrote from the area that Alexander conquered he said;. Man refuses Freedom and chooses to operate on a world of Appetite and hence goes against God, or sins and inherits suffering and death.
Serpent in the Garden of Eden represents the World of Appetite. I like to know more about this interpretation. An interesting study drawing patently erroneous conclusions. Whether the serpent was an instrument of Lucifer or an embodiment or literary construct, the elemental truth conveyed is that he beguiled the innocent to sin and they became aware ….
Oh and to Ilan, his tongue was forever split — divided- and can never tell the truth, he is the father of lies and told the first lie to the innocent…. Why is it that God never took away the one aspect of the creatures abilities that were his most potent weapon. His ability to speak? Motion and Nourishment both were redone to punish him, but apparently he kept his tongue.
Why is that? The explanation about the Serpent in the Garden of Eden is just a way to see how sin and evil worked to make humankind accountable to the Lord for all conscious acts. Still it is the way we all are accountable to our Maker and the answer will be our own judgment. Google their teachings regarding this subject, its quite interesting and informative. The serpent was the symbol of the goddess Asherah in her role as Goddess of Fertility.
The real meaning of the Adam and Eve and the apple story is to portray Asherah worship as the reason for the Fall of Man and exile from Paradise. Many words in the bible have parabolic meaning. A parable has literal application, but is not literal. Good luck with your studies. Revelation He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.
Arthur are you serious? Does it matter if the author is an atheist? Did I read that right? Burrit college tenn: students and an officer report a large UFO Feb. Citizens stated that it was saucer shaped and giving off a green glow Maer. Amazing that so many think these insights are new.
This is the view of academics even at places most would consider conservative. He who has ears to hear……. Not having read much of the comments. I reply to the article only: Simply you miss the point that you have made. In a single phrase: satin is the — Test — of humanity.
The measure of each life will be discovered through the purification of fire. I submit to be: The second death. God alone is the Judge, shown in Daniel. The three were NOT cast into the fire as a test, they were cast in for annulation; God found them righteous in representing His Glory, a light for others to Truth. Had nothing to do with proving the man as king was righteous, which would be the intent of burning a person to death to assert their judgement was correct. Falsely elevating themselves or attempting to bring God down to their understanding.
Those articles apply two very different meanings to the following noun. First of all, this article relies almost exclusively on canonical scripture … and the badly abridged Hebrew version too. Any discussion of understanding such a text, including even the works of Shakespeare, must consider more the literature both contemporary and preceding its compilation.
In older texts, also, derivative literatures can aid in illuminating the subject texts. To begin, folks often quickly dismissing New Testament evidence of Jewish belief. The Qumran materials, however, demonstrate that the Christian view if the Satan mythos is clearly shared among other Jewish denominations. Jewish folk tales and commentary also support this image. Next, poetic language is quite plastic. Describing something as a dragon in one place and a serpent in another is clearly well within the range of such imagery.
Another important evidence can be derived from the Ebla materials. For me, on the other hand, the idea central to the article is proposing that people are constantly reviewing their concepts. Just as the modern writer is beleaguered by the need to keep upgrading his software, humans seem always to be engaged in upgrading their understanding of heavenly things.
That seems to be a fairly viable concept! PS … what does it matter whether the author is an atheist or Luther reincarnated? Is the data correct and is the argument logical? I think the data set here is too small. Science and faith are two different ideas one should not try to hurt the faith of faithful people by giving their scientific logic. Paul, I enjoyed reading your 9. Thought provoking and 10 times more information than the lady writing this article. It is sad to see atheists writing for anything biblical.
What can we expect with Satan attempting to destroy a anything good. I am sick and tired of reading articles that start out by telling all about the education of that author. And according to 1 teacher, it matters NOT to how many letters or numbers one has before or after their name.
Unless one has Yeshua in their life as Lord and Savior, their education is meaningless; and I agree with that teacher.
Something I have also noticed over the years. How does either sever the purpose of supporting Scripture, when your authors are heretics? This is what I gather from the reading here. It does make sense if this is the intended purpose and claim of this article.
Even though ufos by which i presume you mean flying saucers are not proven to exist, have no credible evidence for their existence, and the way we view them is solely an invention of Hollywood. Strange then that you accuse the Biblical authors of referring to myths when you mention nothing more than a modern myth yourself by way of rebuttal.
PS your field of study is listed as religion. For reasons I have never understood these issues are very hard to sort through. The Apostle Paul lays the blame for wrong decisions directly on the heads of those who made them, no outside influences needed. But elsewhere in Scripture we see allusions made that sound contradictory in certain ways. Merely anti-Christian propaganda. The lack of validity to the claims in this article has already been shown by previous posts, so I will add nothing more.
I would like to understand the point to which you are elluding to. So to say that there was no clear indication of the being modern day Jews and Christians know as Lucifer, ha Satan, or the devil; is not necessarily an indication that the being is not real, or that the modern understanding is not based on revelation. I wonder to which alternative reality you, the author, is leaning towards.
And you believe in god? If I am to believe in such a fictitious character, my god would be the Sun…;. I suppose we get used to that these days. Although Academe may require such a jaded view, you are missing a great deal of the dynamic of the Scriptures, whether it be the Tanakh or the NT, and thus you miss all the depth within.
I am sad for you — but perhaps hope still abounds. The evil reptile slid through the grass and flowers, now and again, twisting its head towards its tail, licking like a beast grooming itself. Now-a-days an artist can simply rehash old music with a digitally remastered box set.
The ancient Egyptians possessed books on magic in which every known reptile was drawn from snakes to lizards all the way up the chain to crocodiles and this seems to have been known to the author of the book of Exodus where Moses throws down his staff in a dress rehearsal and it became a serpent Heb. The text emphasis the plurality of the Egyptian gods who maintain the checks and balances necessary to restore civility following the murder of the god Osiris at the hands of the god Set the biblical Satan and the ensuing rivalry between Set and the offspring of the deceased Osiris, the god Horus, whose quarreling caused Egypt to be divided between north and south.
From the Nag Hammadi library dating to the mid-4th century C. Pritchard, p. Schwaller de Lubicz, That crap image is from Renaissance Art, not Biblical text. Just go look at a pictorial glossary of known Dinosaurs. They ALL have their bellies off the ground, both quadrupeds and bipeds. But what do we see today with lizards? Not just snakes. Revelation 12;9 — And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Dragons were real, and large, and majestic. They are clearly what people regard today as dinosaurs. The Leviathan of Job 41 is a beast that lives in the water, considered by many the hippopotamus of the Nile, and not merely a serpent as in Isaiah though they seem to share some physical features. It would serve as a potent political metaphor for Hobbes many centuries later.
To understand the evolution of the devil as Satan is inalienable from our understanding of the evolution of evil in the two bibles Old and New. The same is true of God. In Genesis he goes for a walk in the afternoon breeze. Clearly a very physical presence. I disagree, but am interested. The serpent speaks to Eve in the Bible, showing it is not an average animal.
The serpent, dragon, etc imagery of and in the book of Revelation is clearly not hearkening back to prehistoric monsters or myths. Read in context it is clearly not some random, massive animal or sea monster, but an enemy of God and the spiritual order God has set up.
In short the author brings up problems, but not insurmountable ones. Word Origin of Hebrew origin satan Definition the adversary, Satan, i. My Bible software Accordance shows 27 occurrences of satan, 19 of which have the article ha.
Would like to know how the author arrived at her statistics. This site has a cadre of atheists running it. Sorry but you have condemned yourselves. You are without excuse. Your email address will not be published. By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Combine a one-year tablet and print subscription to BAR with membership in the BAS Library to start your journey into the ancient past today!
Learn More. On that day YHWH will punish With his hard and big and strong sword Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisted serpent, And he will kill the dragon that is in the sea. Total 4. Related Posts. By: Richard Elliott Friedman. May 30, at am. James says:. December 23, at am.
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Alfonso says:. October 18, at am. Jhan says:. October 16, at pm. Manny says:. DANI says:. August 17, at pm. Ryan McKernan says:. Font Size Font Size. Previous Next. Genesis 3. New International Version. K 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking L in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid M from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Genesis Or placed in front. More on the NIV.
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