Serpents () are referred to in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in the religious traditions and cultural life of ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life, healing, and rebirth.
Nāḥāš (), Hebrew for "snake", is also associated with divination, including the verb form meaning "to practice divination or fortune-telling". Nāḥāš occurs in the Torah to identify the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, it is also used in conjunction with seraph to describe vicious serpents in the wilderness. The tannin, a dragon monster, also occurs throughout the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Exodus, the staves of Moses and Aaron are turned into serpents, a nāḥāš for Moses, a tannin for Aaron. In the New Testament, the Book of Revelation uses the phrases "ancient serpent" and "the Dragon" to identify Satan or the Devil (; ). In later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic interpretation, the serpent of Eden has been variously identified with Satan, the Devil, or Lilith, although the Book of Genesis itself does not name the serpent as Satan or the Devil.
The narrative of the Garden of Eden and the fall of humankind constitute a mythological tradition shared by all the Abrahamic religions, with a presentation more or less symbolic of Abrahamic morals and religious beliefs, which had an overwhelming impact on human sexuality, gender roles, and sex differences both in the Western and Islamic civilizations. In mainstream (Nicene) Christianity, the doctrine of the Fall is closely related to that of original sin or ancestral sin. Unlike Christianity, the other major Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, do not have a concept of "original sin", and instead have developed varying other interpretations of the Eden narrative.
Hebrew Bible
In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Genesis refers to a serpent who triggered the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (). Serpent is also used to describe sea monsters. Examples of these identifications are in the Book of Isaiah where a reference is made to a serpent-like dragon named Leviathan (), and in the Book of Amos where a serpent resides at the bottom of the sea (). Serpent figuratively describes biblical places such as Egypt (), and the city of Dan (). The prophet Jeremiah also compares the King of Babylon to a serpent ().
Eden The Hebrew word nāḥāš is used in the Hebrew Bible to identify the serpent that appears in Genesis 3 in the Garden of Eden. Here, the serpent is portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster, who promotes as good what God had forbidden and shows particular cunning in its deception. (cf. and ) The serpent has the ability to speak and to reason: "Now the serpent was more subtle (also translated as "cunning") than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made". There is no indication in the Book of Genesis that the serpent was a deity in its own right, although it is one of only two cases in the Torah of animals that talk, the other being Balaam's donkey.
God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to tend it and warned Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Genesis creation narrative: Genesis 2:17, "as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die." The serpent then tempts Eve to eat of the tree in Genesis 3, but Eve tells the serpent what God had said.The serpent replies that she would not surely die () and that if she eats the fruit of the tree "then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." () Eve eats the fruit, and gives some to Adam who also eats. God, who was walking in the Garden, learns of their transgression. To prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Life and living forever, they are banished from the garden upon which God posts an angelic guard. The serpent is punished for its role in the fall of humanity, cursed by God to crawl on its belly and eat dust.
There is a debate about whether the serpent in Eden should be viewed figuratively or as a literal animal. According to one midrashic interpretation in Rabbinic literature, the serpent represents sexual desire;Barton, SO "Midrash Rabba to Genesis", sec 20, p. 93 another interpretation is that the snake is the yetzer hara. Modern Rabbinic ideas include interpreting the story as a psychological allegory where Adam represents reasoning faculties, Eve the emotional faculties, and the serpent the hedonic sexual/physical faculties.Hakira, Vol. 5: Reclaiming the Self: Adam’s Sin and the Human Psyche By Menachem Krakowski Voltaire, drawing on Socinian influences, wrote: "It was so decidedly a real serpent, that all its species, which had before walked on their feet, were condemned to crawl on their bellies. No serpent, no animal of any kind, is called Satan, or Belzebub, or Devil, in the Pentateuch." The Book of Genesis itself does not identify the serpent as Satan or the Devil; that identification developed in later interpretation, especially in Christian readings influenced by the Book of Revelation.
20th-century scholars such as W. O. E. Oesterley (1921) were cognizant of the differences between the role of the Edenic serpent in the Hebrew Bible and its connections with the "ancient serpent" in the New Testament.Oesterley Immortality and the Unseen World: a study in Old Testament religion (1921) "... moreover, not only an accuser but one who tempts to evil. With the further development of Satan as the arch-fiend and head of the powers of darkness we are not concerned here, as this is outside the scope of the Old Testament." Modern historiographers of Satan such as Henry Ansgar Kelly (2006) and Wray and Mobley (2007) speak of the "evolution of Satan","The idea of Zoroastrian influence on the evolution of Satan is in limited favor among scholars today, not least because the satan figure is always subordinate to God in Hebrew and Christian representations, and Angra Mainyu ..." – or "development of Satan".
According to Gerhard von Rad, Biblical scholar, Lutheran theologian and University of Heidelberg professor, who applied form criticism as a supplement to the documentary hypothesis of the Hebrew Bible, the snake in the Eden's narrative was more an expedient to represent the impulse to temptation of mankind (that is, disobeying God's law) rather than an evil spirit or the personification of the Devil, as the later Christian literature erroneously depicted it; moreover, von Rad himself states that the snake is neither a supernatural being nor a demon, but one of the wild animals created by God (), and the only thing that differentiates it from the others in Eden is the ability to speak: Michael Heiser argues that since ancient Hebrew was originally written without vowels, the consonantal root (N-H-Sh) is polysemous, allowing the term used in Eden to be read as a serpentine celestial being rather than a biological reptile. Within ancient Northwest Semitic languages, the root encompasses three overlapping semantic meanings: a physical snake or serpent, historically linked to a snake's hissing sound,Brown, Francis; Driver, Samuel Rolles; Briggs, Charles Augustus (1906). Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Entry for nachash. a verb meaning "to practice divination" or "whisper omens",Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter (2001). The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT). Leiden: Brill. Entry for nāḥaš (II). and a root related to polished bronze or copper, rendering a translation of "shining, radiant one" associated with divine manifestations.Botterweck, G. Johannes; Ringgren, Helmer (eds.). Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Vol. IX, entry for nechoshet.Exodus 25:3; Ezekiel 1:7; Daniel 10:6. Drawing on this etymology, the International Standard Version (ISV Foundation) renders the term in Genesis 3:1 as "the Shining One", with "the diviner" and "the serpent" as alternative textual readings. The ISV notes the term "connotes an entity who falsely claims to reveal God's word".International Standard Version, Genesis 3:1, footnotes Under this framework, the figure is often interpreted as a serpentine throne-guardian and renegade Seraph (). These are a class of angelic beings whose name denotes "burning ones", and used interchangeably with "fiery serpents" elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.Faithlife Study Bible. (2016). Lexham Press. Sidebar Article: "Satan in the Old Testament and the Serpent of Genesis 3."van der Toorn, Karel; Becking, Bob; van der Horst, Pieter W. (1999). Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Leiden: Brill. Entries for "Serpent" and "Satan." Furthermore, Heiser posits that the Hebrew preposition mi-kol used in Genesis 3:1, acts as a comparative rather than inclusive marker; indicating it possessed a "shrewdness" that categorized it as distinct from the beasts of the field.
This alternative celestial context changes the interpretation of the subsequent judgment in Genesis 3:14. The statement that the serpent will "crawl on your belly" has been compared to Egyptian Pyramid Texts, which calls snakes to lie down, fall down, or crawl away in a docile, defeated posture rather than an upright attack position.Pyramid Texts 226, 233, 234, 298, 386. Similarly, the command to "eat dust" finds parallels with common ancient Near Eastern idioms found in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Descent of Ishtar, where the underworld is explicitly described as a "house of dust" where spirits consume clay and dirt. Thus, the curse is argued to read as an ancient legal idiom for being cast into the underworld.
Moses and Aaron When God had revealed himself to the prophet Moses in , Moses recognized that the call of God was for him to lead the people of Israel out of slavery, but anticipated that people would deny or doubt his calling. In , Moses asked God how to respond to such doubt, and God asked him to cast the rod which he carried (possibly a shepherd's crook)Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Keil and Delitzsch OT Commentary on Exodus 4, accessed on 9 October 2015 onto the ground, whereupon it became a serpent (a nachash). Moses fled from it, but God encouraged him to come back and take it by the tail, and it became a rod again.
Later in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 7), the staffs of Moses and Aaron were turned into serpents, a nachash for Moses, a tanniyn for Aaron.
Fiery serpents
"Fiery serpent" () occurs in the Torah to describe a species of vicious snakes whose venom burns upon contact. According to Wilhelm Gesenius, saraph corresponds to the Sanskrit sarpa 'venomous snake', serpent; sarpin, reptile (from the root srip, serpere). These "burning serpents" infested the great and terrible place of the desert wilderness (Numbers 21:4-9; Deuteronomy 8:15). The Hebrew word for "poisonous" literally means "fiery", "flaming" or "burning", as the burning sensation of a snake bite on human skin, a metaphor for the fiery anger of God (Numbers 11:1).
The Book of Isaiah expounds on the description of these fiery serpents as "flying saraphs" (according to YLT) or "flying dragons", in the land of trouble and anguish (Isaiah 30:6). Isaiah indicates that these saraphs are comparable to vipers, worse than ordinary serpents (Isaiah 14:29). The prophet Isaiah also sees a vision of seraphim in the First Temple: but these are divine agents, with wings and human faces, and are probably not to be interpreted as serpent-like so much as "flame-like".
Serpent of bronze
In the Book of Numbers, while Moses was in the wilderness, he mounted a serpent of bronze on a pole that functioned as a cure against the bite of the śərāpîm in Numbers 21:4–9. The phrase in Numbers 21:9, , is a wordplay.