This is a long excerpt from Steve Hays' ebook Apsotasy & Perseverance (pages 50-54) which can be found at Triablogue. It concerns the issue of why Genesis uses a talking snake that tempts Eve. There is seemingly no introduction to the serpent and as modern readers, we are sometimes at a loss when it comes to the implied connotations that an Israelite who just underwent the exodus (the original audience of Genesis) might have about a serpent. I copied and pasted this, so some of the formatting is different from the original. Normal text is words from Steve Hays, italics are other authors he quotes.
i) Gen 3:1-5
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Modern readers often poke fun at the specter of a talking snake. However, other issues aside, we need to approach this text from the viewpoint of what the "serpent" would connote to the original audience, and not to modern readers who may be wholly ignorant of its narrative associations.
This text raises some basic exegetical questions. Why is the Tempter depicted as a serpent? What‘s the intertextual connection between the serpent and the devil? (101)
a) One obvious reason to depict the Tempter in ophidian terms is due to the fact that serpents were ritually unclean animals (cf. Lev 11; Deut 14). The audience of Gen 3 is the same audience as the audience for the ceremonial laws. So they‘d associate a snake with an unclean animal.
b) On a related note, as a number of scholars have shown, Eden is sacred space. A bucolic temple. By the same token, that makes Adam a "priest" in the sense that one of his duties is to act as a gatekeeper to prevent the garden from being defiled by ritually impure intruders. (102)
The mere presence of an unclean animal like a serpent ritually desecrates the garden. This depiction alerts the reader that fact that this speaker is an unwelcome guest. He doesn‘t belong there. Something is already amiss.
As a practical matter, it doesn‘t seem realistic to suppose that Adam and Eve could prevent a snake from entering the garden. How would two human beings be in able to patrol every square inch of the perimeter to keep the garden a snake-free zone? Even if Eden were walled garden, snakes can climb over walls.
And, of course, an ancient Jewish reader could ask himself the same question. That's a narrative clue to the true identity of the "serpent."
c) In the ANE, snakes were associated with wisdom. And Gen 3 exploits that association:
The serpent of Gen 3, the most"subtle" animals of creation, represents also supernatural wisdom. Although the first man is forbidden to eat from the tree of the garden before the serpent is created (Gen 2:16-20), the reptile knows of the prohibition before accosting the woman (3:1). It pretends to know as much about the tree "to make one wise" as God does (Gen 3:4-5)…The serpent convinces the woman that it is wider than she, knowing even the secret intents of the mind of God so that in its supernatural wisdom it understands that mind better than can the woman in her believing obedience. It invites her to stand in that wisdom…The serpent as a figure of wisdom is encountered frequently in the ancient Near East. (103)
d) In addition, the name of the tempter may well be a metonymic pun or double entendre, from homonymic or paronomastic folk etymology. (104) That's a common convention in the Pentateuch. As one scholar explains, in this particular case:
A more directly sinister nuance may be seen in Heb. nahas if it is to be connected with the verb nahas, 'to practice divination, observe signs' (Gen 30:27; 44:5,16; Lev 19:26; Deut 18:10)…The related noun nahas means "divination" (Num 23:23; 24:1). Near Eastern divination formulae frequently include procedures involving a serpent. (105)
Such a play on words would trade on the ophiomantic connotations of name in ANE culture, and thereby clue the audience to the malevolent and preternatural identity of the Tempter.
e) Apropos (d), there is a polemical thrust to the serpentine trappings of the Temper. As one scholar points out,
In Egypt, the people had seen the serpent venerated as either a force of life or of death, for the tombs were painted with snakes, and the king even wore a stylized serpent on his headdress. The Israelites would have regarded the serpent as an evil force because it was often a symbol of death, and its status as a symbol of life would have been rejected since only the Lord can produce life. Thus, in addition to its importance as the account of how evil entered the human race, this narrative also has a polemical force, showing the connection of the serpent with rebellion against God, which is death. In other words, divinity cannot be achieved (as promised in 3:5) by following the pagan beliefs and symbols, for they only bring death. (106)
f) Apropos (e), this is reinforced by two Pentateuchal comparisons:
alpha) The serpentine staff of Moses (Exod 4:2-4). And that, in turn, involves a premeditated confrontation with Egyptian ophiomancy and ophiolatry (7:8-12). As one scholar explains:
Some snakes were to be worshipped, others were to be considered incarnations of evil…Probably the most important serpent worship was the cult of Uraeus centered in the city of Per-Wadjit in the delta. There a temple was build in the early dynastic period in honor of the Uraeus-goddess Wadjet. She personified the cobra and was the tutelary goddess of Lower Egypt…The two goddesses and the sovereignty they imparted to Pharaoh were physically represented on the front of the king‘s crown in the formed of an enraged female cobra. (107)
This identifies the goddess as Wadjet, the serpent-goddess of Lower Egypt. Wadjet was frequently portrayed as a snake that spit forth flames as her poison. (108)
Aaron's casting of his staff before Pharaoh and its transformation into a snake was an incident of judicial irony, an extensive polemic against Egyptian thought and practice…finally, the scene is ironic in that the Hebrew leaders cast before Pharaoh his very emblem. The two tutelary goddesses of Egypt and Horus were represented in the cobra of the crown. (109)
Since the Pentateuch forms a literary unit, the implied reader of Genesis would be cognizant of this ophidian symbolism when he read Gen 3. And this is reinforced by the fact that the implied reader for the Pentateuch is a member of the Exodus generation–with fresh memories of life in Egypt.
beta) The iconic serpent in Num 21:8-9. As Currid explains:
Reacting to the last grumbling incident before the Hebrews reached the Promised Land, God sent hannehasim hasseraphim ("fiery serpents") upon them because of their unfaithfulness. The nehasim bit many of the Hebrews and some died. Yahweh then ordered Moses to fashion a saraph and set it on a standard or pole in the middle of the Israelite camp. So Moses crafted a nehas nehoset ("bronze serpent"), and whoever had been bitted needed only to look at the image to be healed. (110)
Isaiah 6 represents the attendants of Yahweh as seraphim with six wings, and elsewhere the prophet speaks of seraph meopep ("a fiery flying one" [Isa 14:29; 30:6]). By definition, "a seraph is a serpent, and for Isaiah it may have wings, as in the case of the seraphim of Isaiah 6." (111)
It is clear that the uraeus was a fiery snake which the Egyptians believed would protect the Pharaoh by spitting forth fire on his enemies. (112)
This episode is an example of sympathetic magic, that is, "controlling an adversary through manipulation of a replication."…Sympathetic magic was especially common in dealing with snake bites–the Egyptians believed they could be healed by an image of a snake. (113)
Episodes such as the divining of the Red Sea and the serpent confrontation were ironic critiques of similar accounts in Egyptian literature…Moreover, the biblical writer often used a parallel idiom as a polemic against Egypt…Likewise, Numbers 21 is a scene of polemical taunting against Egypt. (114)
a) So a spitting cobra was a cultic and occultic emblem. It represents the tutelary "gods" of Egypt.
b) If Exod 4, 7 and Deut 21 make polemical use of ophidian symbolism, then it‘s natural to assume that Gen 3 is another case in point.
c) It's also striking that Isaiah can employ ophidian imagery to depict angelic figures. That, of course, falls outside the Pentateuch. But it's probably an allusion to the Pentateuch. It suggests a natural association.
d) One also wonders if the "stones of fire" in Ezk 28:14, 16 (in conjunction with the cherub) are meant to trigger a free association with blinding venom of the spitting cobra, in its emblematic status as a numinous being with fiery venom. Likewise, the incendiary image of king's fiery demise (v18).
Footnotes in this excerpt:
(101) James Barr asks, "Why, after all, a snake?" The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (Fortress 1993), 65. Yet there are several plausible reasons for a serpentine tempter, viz. the wisdom motif, the unclean animal motif, the polemic against ophiolatry and ophiomancy.
(102) Cf. T. Desmond Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem (IVP 2008); G. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission (IVP 2004).
(103) Joines, K. "The Serpent in Gen 3," Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 87/1 (1975), 4.
(104) On the general convention of metonymic names in Biblical literature, cf. T. Stordalen, T. Stordalen, Echoes of Eden: Genesis 2-3 and Symbolic of the Eden Garden in Biblical Hebrew Literature (Peters 2000)., 55.
(105) V. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans 1991), 187.
(106) A. Ross, Genesis (Tyndale House 2008), 50.
(107) J. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament (Baker 1997), 88-89.
(108) Ibid. 91n42.
(109) Ibid. 92-93.
(110) Ibid. 146.
(111) Ibid. 146.
(112) Ibid. 147.
(113) Ibid. 148.
(114) Ibid. 154-55. Cf. R. Hess, Israelite Religions (Baker 2007), 202-07.
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