Growing up a Christian I never suspected that one of my biggest challenges theologically would end up being how I should feel about the serpent in the story of the Garden of Eden. Who exactly was the serpent, what is he, and why, if he is such a vile creature, does Jesus admonish his followers in the “Bible” to “be wise like serpents” (Matthew 10:16, KJV) and refer to himself as being lifted up like a serpent on a pole (John 3:14)?
14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,”
John 3:14, NSRVUE
If you grew up Christian like me, I’ll warn you now, this topic is a doosy and will require you to keep a REAL open mind. It may just cause you to reexamine everything you’ve been told by the “church” regarding the matter of original sin and the Garden of Eden.
The Biblical Garden of Eden
As a recap, the majority of Christians are taught from the Bible to believe that God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden along with two trees, the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and the “Tree of Life”. God told them both that they may eat of any tree in the garden except ONE, a tree in the center of the garden that was the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”.
One day Eve is walking in the garden and a serpent appears to her. We are told in the book of Genesis that the serpent was the most wise, or cunning, or shrewd or crafty (depending on which translation you read) of all the beasts on earth (Genesis 3:1). Again, this is re-affirmed by Jesus later in the New Testament when he instructs his followers to be “wise”or “shrewd” like serpents (Matthew 10;16).
It has long puzzled many Christians how it is that the serpent is depicted as the one who caused the original sin and was cursed by God and yet also later presented as a good and noble creature worthy to be looked up to and emulated (i.e. “be ye wise like serpents” and “the son of man must be lifted up like the serpent”).
In the Biblical account written by the Hebrews and appearing in our modern “Bibles”, Eve tells the serpent that God forbid them to eat of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and warned them that if they even touched the fruit, they would die. In fact, the warning as recorded in Genesis says that “in the very day” they eat of the fruit, they will die.
The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
Genesis 2:16-17, NASB
Let’s set aside for the moment the statement “in the day that you et from it you will surely die” and focus on the next verse.
It is interesting to note that the VERY next verse following, Genesis 2:18 discusses how Adam was alone and that God looked for a “helper for him”. Only after parading all of the beasts of the field before Adam was it determined that Adam could not find a suitable mate and thus God decided to create Eve from his rib. This part of the story is often overlooked and needs to seriously be re-examined. God FIRST has Adam look for a mate from among all the “beasts of the field” and only afterwards decides to create woman. This, I believe, is important to understand later on.
Because of this, it is worth examining this passage here:
18Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” 19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
Genesis 2:18-20
As we will soon see, the ancient depictions of the Garden of Eden written long BEFORE the Hebrew retelling make it clear that the “gods” viewed Adam as no different than all the other “beasts of the field”. Even the Hebrew version of the story confirms this when it says that only after Adam named all the beasts of the field was it apparent there was no mate or helper suitable for him. This will make much more sense later and is connected intimately with the story of the Watchers and for whom “women” were created.
Continuing on with our story of the Garden of Eden, the serpent responded to Eve that what “God” told her about the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” was not true. He informed her that if she touches the fruit she will not die and furthermore, if she eats of the fruit her eyes will be opened and she will become like God, knowing the truth of good and evil. As we all know, Eve then became persuaded to eat of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and even persuaded her husband to eat of it also. When God found out,he became angry at all three of them (Adam, Eve and the serpent), cursed them with many curses, and cast them out of the Garden of Eden.
I pause here for a moment because for a LONG time I never understood the big “sin” here. Did God not want man to know the difference between good and evil? Why does that make any sense? And worse yet, when we do learn the difference between good and evil we are punished for it? That also made no sense to me. Why wouldn’t God want his followers to KNOW what’s wrong and what’s right? How can one be ‘judged’ if one doesn’t even understand what is “good” and what is “evil”? Clearly, I felt, I was missing something in the story.
I will submit to you early that the answer MAY lie in the notion that before this point, man was considered just a ‘beast of the field” in the eyes of God and, like all other “beasts” was not subject to judgement over laws of morality such as “good and evil”. But once man became “enlightened” with the wisdom that came from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he was elevated to a status above mere beasts of the field and now subject to judgement. If that is the case then the original sin was less to do about eating a piece of fruit or not and more to do with whether we are mere uneducated “beasts” or an enlightened being.
Furthermore, as a budding “educated” Christian, there were other things that really bugged me about the story of the original sin, namely the curses. For example, Adam is cursed with physical labor toiling after the soil the rest of his life. Ok, that makes sense since he ate fruit God freely provided but once he sinned he has to go make his own food. The serpent is cursed to crawl on his belly and perhaps that makes sense if the serpent previously could fly or walk and this allowed it to be in a position to tempt Eve. But what about Eve’s punishment? Greatly increased pain in childbearing and forced to be ruled over by man? What on earth does that have to do with the sin at hand? Maybe being ruled by man could make sense but pain in childbirth? How does this remotely relate? Unless maybe we’re missing something about what happened here. I believe yes, we are missing the real meat of the original sin.
Before we get to that, I’d like to point out a couple of other interesting things about Eve and the serpent story that also often go overlooked by the modern “church”. Technically, it appears, the serpent did not lie to Eve about the consequences of eating the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”. The two claims the serpent made were that 1) “you will not die” when you touch the fruit and that 2) if you eat of the fruit your eyes will be opened and you will become like God, knowing the truth about good and evil.
As to the first point, Adam and Eve did not die “in the day” they touched and ate of the fruit. In fact, Adam lived to be over 900 years old according to the Bible and thus lived nearly a thousand years after eating the fruit. Modern theologians deal with this apparent contradiction by using the following logic. Before Adam and Eve ate of the fruit they were given eternal life but once they ate the fruit the “pronouncement of death” was placed upon them and eventually they would die. Thus it was in the day they ate of the fruit that it became inevitable that they would die. For me personally, this is a bit of mental gymnastics required by those who insist the Bible contains no contractions and is “infallible”. Because the Bible can’t be wrong, this MUST be the solution. In fact, even I used to believe it as well until I read more of the history behind the story. My point is this, Eve said in the day that she touched the fruit she would die. The serpent told her that was not true, she would not die the day she touched the fruit. And, in fact, Eve did not die the “day” she touched the fruit. In other words, the serpent did not lie.
The second point is this. The serpent told Eve that when she ate the fruit her eyes would be opened and she would be like God, knowing the truth of Good and Evil. The book of Genesis actually records that’s EXACTLY what happened.
22Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24
So the exact thing that the serpent said would happen, happened. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” they became like gods (i.e. one of “us” in the plural form). And it was because man had become like “one of us” that he was kicked out of the Garden of Even.
I would like to point out that the reason Adam and Eve died, according to the story in Genesis, was because they were removed from the Garden of Eden and no longer allowed to eat from the “Tree of Life”. One could argue therefore that it was not the eating of the fruit that caused them to die but the removal from the Garden. and access to the Tree of Life.
Another point that doesn’t make a lot of sense to many but makes sense later when one understands the historical accounts of the Watchers, is what happens immediately after Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Let’s review:
7Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 8They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” 11And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Genesis 3:8-11
So you see that as the serpent said, their “eyes were opened” and the first thing they noticed was that they were naked so they immediately covered their sexual parts (i.e. loins). When God comes to speak with them his first question is, “who told you were naked, did you eat from the Tree?” So apparently one of the big keys to understanding the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the issue over man’s “nakedness” or sexuality. We will delve into that more later.
The ultimate point we are driving to here in this post is that the serpent in the Garden was not just some random “beast of the field” that tempted Eve to eat forbidden fruit (oh and as a teaser, what does the term”forbidden fruit” suggest to you?). Rather, the point the author will be making is that the serpent in the Garden was none other than an angel, specifically a Seraphim angel as the author of the book will demonstrate soon. As we will see in future blog posts, the Seraphim are said to have the appearance of a serpent as documented in the Bible itself.
I’ll end today’s blog with the following food for thought. When one looks at the ancient Sumerian texts of the Enuma Elish (also known as the seven tablets of creation) we will find that the Garden of Eden story was actually written THOUSANDS of years prior to the version re-told in the Bible and that the older version of the story sheds additional insight into what is actually happening in the Book of Genesis. We will begin to examine the older Sumerian tablets of creation next.
Thoughts for the Blogmaster:
Serpent – just because a creature is vile or evil or mean does not mean that the creature is also stupid. There can be good and evil in the same entity – watch the one or the other thinking while leaving out the gray. Also watch making assumptions about the serpent that are not included in the actual Bible. As a human I think adding “noble” to the serpent is a personal assumption that may adding color like other humans who interpret religion. Also, I am not sure that when Jesus said he will be lifted up like a serpent on a pole that he meant to be looked up to and emulated. That sounds like making assumptions which may or may not be what Jesus was saying. Jesus often spoke in hidden ways, through parables that the self-righteous would assume they understood but those who are humble would seek to understand the many layers of his statements, unwrapping them like an onion.
I see an assumption about on that day you will surely die. Does it mean you will die on that day specifically or does it mean you are no longer immortal and will face death at some time, whether that day or some day in the future. The language is not clear enough to choose one of these options and I suggest something might be lost in the translation. Day in Hebrew can mean 12 hours, 24 hours or a period of time. Often when I don’t understand I check the original language to start to open my mind to what could be going on.
In regard to naming the beasts of the field and finding a helper for the man, the assumptions I see made above are using the language as logic statements. Genesis is a different kind of literature and reading it with a logic lens, in my opinion, can cause odd or strange conclusions that don’t make sense. I think that is what you are pointing out – odd or strange conclusions – and then accrediting them to God. Perhaps it would be helpful to try interpreting the language in a more open ways, perhaps the first as a story, looking for the figurative and literal meanings, which all could be true.
God said don’t eat from the tree of knowledge because you will surely die. Genesis 2:17. Perhaps God did not want humans to die. Perhaps God wanted to be in eternal relationship with them. Maybe with the knowledge of good and evil comes a price, and that price is dying or eventually dying. Action and consequence. Maybe the elevation was not to be compared to beasts of the field but children and adults, children not needing to be concerned with good and evil so much but adults being burdened with the responsibility of knowing the difference and dealing with themselves and others who do or do not do good and or evil, community relationships when needing to deal with good and evil acts or intentions, et cetera. Might not have anything to do with beasts – red herring in the literature.
As far as pain in child birth, before this point God had created all the living beings. Now after the fruit eating incident, female’s bodies were to now be the center of creating life as they were no longer in the Garden where God did the creating. Just another possible interpretation. And surely pain is suffering. Where does it say that God promised people a life of no suffering or that living comes without suffering. That life is filled with suffering is something the Buddha recognized as well.
As far as the serpent lying, I think the words were twisted. Maybe not die that instant but die as a result in some time period, yes. And with knowledge comes burdens and responsibility. You shall be “as gods”. What does that mean anyway? I think one assumes be a god, but is that the correct assumption or just the assumption the serpent wants Eve to make. I would have to study this point more in other translations. I just don’t think one can say the serpent was telling the truth – he was being like a lawyer (haha) and you have to be really careful to understand what was said and what was not said. Take out any assumptions and stick to the words themselves.
As to why Adam and Eve were subject to death (eventually) – was that physical or spiritual death? Or both? What if a person looked at this story from the point of view that God is unconditional love and everything God did was to show unconditional love in the long run for the benefit of the whole human race and the earth and all the living creatures on it. I see a strain of assuming God had evil or bad motives, should be assumed to be unable to be trusted. And if that’s how one has experienced God through religious teachers, leaders, parents, relatives, friends, et cetera, I can get the jaded interpretation of God. However, it might be interesting to open the mind and consider the interpreting the Biblical language from the viewpoint that God is the move loving being, that God is in the end unconditional love. Take a fresh look wiping off what one has been taught or has experienced, and look for the hope of unconditional love., I can agree that religion has caused great harm physically, emotionally, psychologically, environmentally and many other ways. BUT is God religion, or have humans created religious practices and interpretations of God to control others – power and money – and God weeps at religion and religious interpretations.
Okay, that’s enough commenting for now. Thanks for the opportunity.
Beth, thanks a million for taking the time to write such a detailed response and engage in the conversation. Man, I hope that nothing I write in response is taken personally. There are so many topics there in your post that it is hard to know how to respond at this point. I’ll try to be brief (and I’m not good at that) and sum up what I think is the crux of the argument. I think I’m making an assumption about you and you are making an assumption about me.
My assumption about you is that I suspect you, like myself, grew up accepting the Bible is the “divine word of God” and all other writings outside of the Bible as just “opinions of man”. If that is your current position then you will not at all be influenced by writings outside of the Bible and will probably not enjoy my thoughts and commentary. In other words, if you view the Bible as “fact” and all other sources as “opinion”, you probably will be frustrated with my commentary. To be fair, I used to be like that myself. If it wasn’t directly from the Bible I could give ZERO CRAPS what your source was – you’re wrong. The only “truth” is the Bible. That’s what I used to think myself. I would like to believe that was back when I was ignorant about the Bible, how it was written and how it was put together. I no longer believe the Bible is somehow the divine word for word thoughts of God. Rather, I believe it is just a collection of early writings that reflect what man thought about God at the time just like many other books outside the Bible that reflect how people of the day thought about God at the time. Unfortunately, a lot of this blog has to do with the understanding that books outside of the Bible shed light into what the Bible actually meant when certain things were described. In other words, if we better understood the common stories of the day we would see that what was written in the Bible may not mean what w think it means. If you, like I used to be, view all outside sources as untrustworthy and only the Bible as “fact” then it will be extremely hard for you to take any of my opinions or thoughts seriously.
On the other hand, I think you are making an assumption about me. I detect that you might assume I just haven’t studied enough, read carefully enough or looked into the original languages to fully understand the Bible and therefore my opinions are simply uneducated opinions by someone who hasn’t studied enough or looked at it through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Again, IF that assumption is correct, I’m not sure I can overcome that objection, especially if you were to say that only people guided by the Holy Spirit will come to the correct understanding. That logic, IF YOU USED IT, is circular logic because by definition, anyone who comes to a conclusion other than your own clearly isn’t being guided by the Holy Spirit. All I can say is that I was a HARD CORE bible student most of my life. I have a pretty good grasp of both Hebrew and Greek as well as Hebrew and Greek idiomatic phrases and language. I’ve read contemporary works to better understand what the words meant in that day. I’ve spent time with Messianic Jews who have a good handle on the Hebrew language and helped open my eyes to how it was used. By contrast, I maintain most of modern Christiandom looks at the Bile through fairly modern eyes, reading it as the church has interpreted it now for about a thousand years and not perhaps how it would have been received by someone living back there in the day. Again, I may be wrong so I apologize if you are not implying I just haven’t studied enough.
The reason I mention the above assumptions is that IF we are going to get into the nitty gritty details of debate (which we don’t have to debate anything), then we’d need to make sure we are clear as to the basis of our beliefs. If the Bible is the only authority for you then, if we are to dialogue further, we’d have to discuss together that opinion and see if we can agree to a more mutual common ground. If common ground cannot be found it probably will only be frustrating to both of us.
Having said all this I want to remind you that I love ALL comments and questions. I do not mind responding more in detail to anything you wrote above. I just don’t want to waste your time if we are so far off on the basis of what is truth that it’s a non starter. Let me know if you want to continue reading and commenting or if you want to discuss if either of my assumptions are correct or in error.
Thanks!
Hey Lee, Thanks for the response. Ideally it would be much more interesting to discuss these things in person.
I don’t believe the Bible is the only source of fact out there about the past. Did not mean to give that perception. I think the Bible is more authentic than other ancient texts – more accurate to what the text actually said in say 1000 B.C. than other sources from that time. But not the only factual accounts out there. I totally agree with your statement above that most modern Christians read the Bible through modern eyes and interpretations. I think that is a major problem! There is so much richness lost in the Bible as well as other ancient writings because meanings of words or the parts of the story not stated specifically that we all make up in our minds based upon our experiences were terribly different than someone would have assumed or knew about when the “story” was happening. Hope that makes sense.
And I think it is probably hard for both of us, and others, to understand ancient texts because there are some interpretations and assumptions so embedded in our thinking (so implicit) that we can’t realize them. I wish I had a good example. I think all the morality interpretations about sex as “stated” in the Bible comes more from modern interpretations based in Puritan beliefs, American “self-denial”, and political power/control that are embedded in our modern acculturalization. Hope that makes sense.
Maybe what I am trying to say is I don’t think God is the problem, I think it’s us humans who interpret the Bible that are the problem, especially when “we” filter thoughts through the lens of organized religion that uses religion for control of people, power and for money.
BB
In a way I agree, having a verbal discussion can be great. Having said that, when people have firm beliefs it is easy for a face to face or voice to voice conversation to get heated or for a person to start tuning someone out because in their head they are already formulating their response to something that was said earlier and thus are only have listening. I find that the written dialogue allows both sides to read at their own pace, take notes, formulate their idea and express it after giving the other person their full attention. I tend to prefer writing because even I can get heated or feel tension when I feel I’m being attacked. In writing, if I feel attacked, I can take a breather and ask myself, “Is this person really attacking me or am I taking it wrong?”
I’m super encouraged to hear you do not believe the Bible is the only source of authority on the past. A lot of my opinion is based on the fact that I have come to understand outside sources from the Bible are VERY valuable to understanding what the Bible meant. Modern Christian commentaries for example get a lot of their insight into verses from the very same thing most Christians are afraid to do (reading outside sources). As Biblical scholars read other contemporary writings of the time they come to understand better what a word or phrase meant in Hebrew or Greek. It’s ironic that many turn to a good commentary to help understand a difficult passage of the Bible but fail to realize those commentaries are very often using extra biblical sources to better understand the true meaning of the passage at hand. Christians, in my opinion, should not be afraid to read any books outside the Bible. I would say ALL Christians should at a minimum read the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubiless. In fact, Jubilees is often call the second Genesis because it fills in details about stories Genesis only touches on. It’s an amazing book and reads very much like other books of the Bible. It also was very much considered “scriptural” for a very long time. I think people should be encouraged to read these books for themselves and start formulating their own opinions as to whether the book should have been rejected or not.
Again, appreciate all your detailed comments. Keep ’em coming!
I did want to add one additional comment to this btw and that is to make clear that I have not viewed God through the lens of sinners in the church. I used to ALWAYS believe God was perfect and pure while humans are sinful and evil. In other words, viewing God as good isn’t a new or novel idea for me that I haven’t thought of. I grew up believing God was pure and “unconditional love”. My past examples of Christian behavior are not what turned me away from being a Christian. Rather it was my studies that did. The more I studied the more I realized that what I was taught in church was not even Biblical. it was doctrine, not human behavior that made me have to leave. The church does not teach what even the original writers believed in my opinion. Modern Christianity bears little resemblance today to what the original believers actually thought and meant. The point of all this is just to reiterate that my beef with the Bible and organized religion is not based on human examples but rather bad or incorrect doctrines.
I have a lot to say here. I am not sure I will get it all in. I come up with things I want to say then read it all and lose what I thought of. These first 2 entries have been very interesting.
First I never knew the tree was called “the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” I thought it was just the Forbidden Tree or the Tree of Forbidden Fruit. This changes a TON of things. Someone or some being who does not want you to have knowledge is scary and abusive to me. It brings me back to what I was thinking of commenting on your last post about theology studies and how they are encouraged to read all of the books that the church does not want the congregation to read. Maybe it has to do with wanting to be blindly followed. The students of theology are coming in as voluntary servants of God. They have decided and vowed to love and obey and follow at all cost the teachings of the church and of God. So they are given all of the tools to better manipulate the followers. They will not stray because of the additional knowledge. They will use it to explain parts of the Bible to others as a way to get them to listen. If the followers may on the other hand stray if given all of the information. Or the ability to see the man behind the curtain.
I hope this makes sense.
Also I have thought of the Bible most of my life as a long, complicated, series of stories added to by many different authors over many many years. They are stories written to teach lessons, like fables, and used to teach lessons that were believed in that time. For instance when minsters were required to have their male sex organs cut off! Maybe many of them were written by people hallucinating from drugs or other mental illness, or people who were just controlling, or evil. The other books I equate to spin offs by yet other authors to explain stories they liked or also believed in.
Are you looking into these stories as events that took place or as simply stories? I bet if I got caught up on your entries most of this would be answered.
I have many more questions but I am not a writer so need time to formulate. .
Thanks for commenting and sorry I didn’t see it for a few days. That is a tough series of questions and comments with lots to unpack there. For the record I don’t know that the “system” was intentionally designed to deceive people. I think it evolved by well-meaning people who felt they were “protecting the flock” against false doctrine. But, as you point out, it seems inherently hypocritical to teach the ministry some of the history and reality of how the Bible was created and then encourage them to keep that information to themselves because people won’t understand and might have their faith shaken. I never liked the idea of someone deciding for me if I’m mature enough to understand something.
I do tend to view the Bible now as a collection of stories assembled together and given a stamp of approval by a church that consisted of (and continues to consist of) corrupt human beings rather than some divinely ordained process guided by God himself. I personally have studied too much about how the Bible was assembled to believe an almighty God had any part of that process despite being told repeatedly that God works in mysterious ways. But I digress…
The point I am making I guess is that I believe the “church” is massively corrupt and dishonest with itself but it’s a self delusion not necessarily an intentional one. The purpose of the church has become to protect the church at all costs. Losing members means losing money, losing money means losing your church. Losing the church means you can’t preach the gospel, etc