How did the serpent of Eden become Satan?
Introduction: “the satan” in the Hebrew Scriptures
While it
may strike one who has grown up reading the Bible and/or listening to biblical
preaching as obvious that the serpent in the garden of Eden was Satan, things
are not quite so straightforward as they may at first appear.[1] Satan himself is a character who evolves
throughout the Christian canon of Scripture.
The Old Testament never makes the link between Eden’s snake and the
satan of e.g. the book of Job. The
“heavenly satan” of the OT acts only with God’s approval. Notions of Satan as the personification of
evil opposing God’s rule as his adversary or enemy are ideas not found in the
OT. Extrabiblical Jewish literature
portrays different satanic figures (e.g. 1 Enoch’s Semjaza; Qumran’s
Belial, etc.). The complex parallels and
differences between these figures make it impossible to provide a well-honed
argument positing a clearly defined linear history of Satan’s emergence as
personified evil and the archenemy of God, the character he becomes in later
Christian thought. In the New Testament,
we see the beginnings of a conflation of the different “satanic figures” of
Jewish literature into the Satan of Christianity[2] (including
“the ancient serpent” of Rev. 12.9; 20.2).[3] However, it wasn’t until the 5th
century AD that an unqualified, one-to-one equating of the serpent of Genesis
with the Satan of the NT slithered its way into the mainstream of Christian
thought.
The serpent & Satan in early Christian writings
The
earliest Christian commentators/homilists on Genesis 3 seem to have adopted a
nuanced approach to the question of the relationship between Satan and the
serpent. Ephrem the Syrian, writing in
the fourth century, taught that although the serpent was cunning, it was only
more cunning than the dumb animals that were governed by Adam. The serpent was
not raised to the level of human rationality.
Indeed, Ephrem insists that Adam was infinitely more cunning than the
serpent! As for the issue of the serpent’s
speech, Ephrem posits that either Adam understood the serpent’s own mode of
communication, or Satan spoke through it, or the serpent posed the question in
his mind and speech was given to it, or Satan sought from God that speech be
given to the serpent for a short time.[4]
Severian of
Gabala, writing in the fifth century, affirmed that when the devil noticed the
snake’s intelligence and Adam’s high opinion of it (like Ephrem, he claims
that) the devil spoke through the snake so that Adam would think that the snake
was able to imitate even human speech.[5] In his Homily Six on Genesis, Severian
preaches that God presented Adam with the animals “for his consolation” (cf.
Gn. 2.18-20). The animals that mimic,
e.g. monkeys and parrots, provided Adam with society by their sounds and their
“fawning”. The serpent was “wilier” than
the other beasts in the sense that it mimicked and fawned better than them. Severian admits that this is conjecture on
his part, given that nowhere in Scripture does it say that the devil spoke
through the serpent.[6]
Augustine’s equating of the serpent with Satan
Unsurprisingly
perhaps, it is Augustine of Hippo (354—430) who first draws a direct connection
between the serpent and Satan. For
Augustine, the serpent was not said to be in paradise[7],
though the serpent was among the beasts that God made. Paradise signifies the happy life, from which
the serpent was absent, since it was already the devil. The serpent entered the garden of paradise
spiritually and not bodily. Man had
already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and consequently took pleasure in
the words “you shall be as gods”.[8] Contra Augustine’s notion that the
serpent was “outside the garden”, in his commentary on Genesis, Jewish writer
Leon Kass places the serpent among the other animals that God brought to Adam
and wonders if the serpent’s rejection by the man as a suitable partner (cf.
Gn. 2.18-20; 3.1) could be understood as its motivation to punish him by
corrupting the woman.[9]
Genesis 3 as Ancient Near Eastern wisdom[10]
When we set
aside the diabolical identity that was much later assigned to the serpent of
Gn. 3 and attempt rather to read this passage in its literary and cultural
context, we realize that this text is not a portrayal of a showdown between the
Creator (and his human creatures) and a rival cosmic power, but is rather a
very “subtle” exploration of the human propensity to overreach the bounds of
creaturely existence and to suffer the inevitable consequences.[11] Several modern commentators approach the text
in just such a literary-existentialist way.[12] I will now present three of the many possible
“wisdom” interpretations of Genesis 3.
Firstly, Walter
Brueggemann reads this text as an indictment of the royal “wisdom” of the
(defunct) monarchy. Says Brueggemann[13]:
whatever the serpent may have meant in earlier versions of the story, in the
present narrative it has no independent significance. It is a technique to move the plot of the
story. It is not a phallic symbol or
satan or a principle of evil or death.[14] It is a player in the dramatic presentation.[15] This is the first theological talk in the book
of Genesis.[16] This text may be a reflection on the role of
wisdom, perhaps in an aggressive royal context.
It probes the extent to which one may order one’s life autonomously,
without reference to any limit or prohibition.
Scriptural examples of the violation of this principle include the story
of David and Bathsheba[17]
and the oracle contra the king of Tyre (Ez. 28)[18],
etc. These texts deal with the problem
of human autonomy and the ways in which such autonomy leads to alienation and
death, for self and for others. The
Genesis narrative understands that autonomous thinking of the kind embodied in
the serpent has the audacity to assert that God is a paper tiger, an idle
threat, a literary hypothesis. It
insists, rather, that the freedom of human persons to enjoy and exploit life is
set in the context of the prohibition of God.[19]
The story of
Gn. 3 is the anguished discernment that there is something about life which
remains hidden and inscrutable and which will not be trampled upon by human
power or knowledge. There are secrets
about the human heart and community which must be honoured and not
exposed. That is because the gift of
life in the human heart and in the human community is a mystery retained by God
for himself. It has not been put at the
disposal of human ingenuity and imagination. What is urged is trust. Rather than a knowledge/obedience dialectic, Brueggemann
suggests the antithesis of wisdom/foolishness.[20] Such an antithesis would undermine the royal coercive
“wisdom” of the sort displayed by David (cf. 2 Sam. 11-12).[21]
Secondly, Terence
Fretheim understands this text as a warning about the importance of making
right choices, the correct use of free will; to that end, he claims that the OT
has no interest in the question of the identity of the serpent.[22] The text of Gn. 3 does not focus on the
serpent per se, but on the human response to the possibilities the serpent
presents. As such, the serpent presents
a metaphor, representing anything in God’s good creation that could
present perilously seductive options to human beings.[23]
In Gn. 3, conversations
with snakes about God are presented as nothing unusual. For Fretheim, the reader receives an initial
impression that the serpent is not a villain, but a neutral observer of the
God-human relationship and a conversation partner, positively disposed towards
the woman.[24] The reader appears to be overhearing the
middle of a theological dialogue, suggesting that these words have grown out of
a broader conversation. Eve[25]
betrays a certain anxiety about death.
The author does not use the language of evil to describe the serpent;
indeed, the serpent is identified as a “creature” (presumably created “good”;
cf. Gn. 3.1). The first humans are
presented as individuals who are not sinful, but with clear choices available
to them; they live in a world where choices count and God has not programmed
the divine-human relationship. The
serpent stands as an ambivalent symbol, associated with both life and death
(cf. Num 21.4-9). The identification of
the serpent as a “beast of the field” means that the serpent is not an evil
being or supernatural/metaphysical force opposed to the divine purposes.[26]
Thirdly, the
narrative of Gn. 3 concerns the perils of language and of the autonomous use of
reason. Leon Kass points out that this
chapter opens with the Bible’s first conversation, and that the voice of
developed reason comes from the mouth of a snake. Evident here is reason’s capacity to think
that things need not be as they seem or as they are. An allegorical reading of the serpent takes
it to be the beguiling voice of autonomous human reason speaking up
against innocence and obedience, coming to us as if from some attractive source
outside us that whispers doubt into our ear.[27]
The serpent’s question provokes the woman
to reflect upon (for the first time) the fact that she has needs independent
both of God’s power to command them and of the world’s ability to satisfy them;
pondering the question, she begins to feel both her vulnerability and her
independence. Self-awareness
grows largely through the encounter with error and opposition. As long as experience seems reliable and
appearances go unchallenged, human life proceeds with a childlike trust in the
truthfulness of things. By imputing to
God words he did not say, the serpent’s question introduces the issue of truth
and falsehood. In the space between the
apparent and the real, the human imagination takes wing. The free play of imagination and thought will
soon direct the free exercise of choice.
All that is required is a more developed sense of self, one that recognizes
itself as thoughtful and free. This is
also generated by the serpent’s question.
Because the woman is expanding – through her dialogue with the serpent –
her newly emerging freedom of thought, she has no use for obedience. The serpent does not exactly lie, but neither
does he tell the whole truth (cf. Gn. 2.17; 3.1-7, 22; 5.5). Human reason, generally content to let its
necessarily partial truths masquerade as truth entire, leads human freedom
astray. This story shows us our
complicity – through our speech and reason – in our inadequacy, humbles us, and
prepares us to be educated.[28]
Conclusion
At the end
of the day, the result of the dialogue with the serpent was wholly negative –
Adam and Eve were banished from the garden to face the toils of life “under the
sun”[29],
all the while burdened with the knowledge of their mortality[30]
(cf. Gn. 3.14-24).[31] From the beginnings of the Church, Christian
thinkers saw the narrative of Gn. 3 as describing the situation that Jesus had
come to rectify.[32] Irenaeus, the second-century bishop of Lyons,
saw a messianic prophecy in God’s words to the serpent in Gn. 3.14-15 – for
him, this was the “protoevangelium”.[33] Jesus was the “seed of the woman” who,
through his life, death and resurrection, had crushed the head of the serpent,
i.e. the Devil.[34]
This type
of interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures should not surprise us; Christian
thinkers – as they sought to understand all of reality in terms of Christ (cf.
Eph. 1.7-10) – were bound to bring theological questions to the (admittedly
ambiguous) text of Genesis that were impossible for the original author(s) to have
conceived. Indeed, the argument could be
made that such a Christological approach to the OT is totally legitimate. However, meditating upon Genesis 3 in its
original context is a “fruitful” exercise, not least in order to be reminded of
our responsibility/proclivity for sin, and to avoid all “the Devil made me do
it” forms of self-justification (cf. Gn. 3.13).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blenkinsopp, Joseph, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A discursive
commentary on Genesis 1—11, London & New York: T&T Clark, 2011.
Botterweck, G.J. et al., eds. Theological Dictionary of the Old
Testament, Vol. IX, Grand Rapids & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998.
Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox,
1982.
Hill,
Robert C. “Homilies on Creation and Fall” by Severian of Gabala in Glerup,
Michael, ed. Ancient Christian Texts: Commentaries on Genesis 1—3,
Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010, pp. 1-94.
Waltke, Bruce K. Genesis: A Commentary, Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2001.
Walton, John H. The Lost World of Adam and Eve,
Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015.
[1] Much ink
has been spilled on this question. “The
serpent has been excessively interpreted”: Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis,
Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, p. 47; no fewer than 8 interpretative theories are
exposited in TDOT regarding the serpent of Gn. 3: Botterweck, G.J. et
al., eds. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. IX, Grand
Rapids & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998, pp. 364-66. “…throughout Christianity, the story of Gn. 3
has provided, in the doctrine of original sin, the classic explanation for the
universality and primordiality of moral evil.
By transforming the snake into a malevolent pre-human and superhuman
agent of evil…the doctrine in effect reinstates the idea…that at its creation
humanity entered into…a drama involving malevolent forces and agencies
antecedent to it”: Blenkinsopp, Joseph, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation:
A discursive commentary on Genesis 1—11, London & New York: T&T
Clark, 2011, p. 80. This Christian
re-reading of the Genesis narrative, which necessitated a cosmic backstory
involving “war in heaven” (cf. Rev. 12.7-9) perhaps came to full flower in John
Milton’s 1667 Paradise Lost, which deftly integrates Gn. 3 into its
cosmic drama which famously begins with the speech of the freshly defeated yet
defiant Satan to his demonic hordes.
[2] Conrad,
Edgar W. “Satan” in Katharine Sakenfeld, gen. ed. The
New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 5, Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 2009, pp. 113-14.
[3] Cf.
Rowland, Christopher C. “Revelation” in Leander E. Keck, senior NT ed. The
New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 10, Nashville: Abingdon, 2015
[1998, 2000], p. 1033; cf. also the narratives of Satan’s temptation of Jesus
at the beginning of the synoptic gospels (esp. Matthew and Luke), which seem to
evoke, among other things, the serpent’s temptation of Eve and Adam in Gn. 3. This is indeed how Irenaeus, in his work Against
Heresies, Book V, chapter 21.2 understood Jesus as having undone Adam’s sin
by resisting Satan’s temptations: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103521.htm
(accessed November 9, 2024).
[4] Louth,
Andrew, ed. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament I
(Genesis 1-11), Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001, pp. 74-75.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Hill,
Robert C. “Homilies on Creation and Fall” by Severian of Gabala in Glerup,
Michael, ed. Ancient Christian Texts: Commentaries on Genesis 1—3,
Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010, pp. 74-75.
[7] Cf. Walton,
John H. The Lost World of Adam and Eve, Downers Grove: IVP Academic,
2015, p. 135.
[8] Louth,
Andrew, ed. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament I
(Genesis 1-11), Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001, pp. 76-77.
[9] Kass, Leon R. The beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis,
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 80-81; cf. Blenkinsopp, Joseph, Creation,
Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A discursive commentary on Genesis 1—11, London
& New York: T&T Clark, 2011, p. 81.
[10] Leon Kass
reads the entirety of the book of Genesis as a form of “wisdom literature”. His title for the section of Gn. chapters
1—11 is “Dangerous beginnings: the Uninstructed ways”; his chapter title for
Gn. 2—3 is “The follies of freedom and reason”: idem. The beginning of
Wisdom: Reading Genesis, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
2003, pp. 54-97.
[11] Cf. the myths of Prometheus and Icarus; cf. also the “fall of man”
cylinder from Mesopotamia depicts a male figure and a female figure under a
date palm. There is a serpent behind the
woman: Botterweck, G.J. et al., eds. Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. IX, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998,
p. 362.
[12] Cf. Blenkinsopp,
Joseph, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A discursive commentary on
Genesis 1—11, London & New York: T&T Clark, 2011, pp. 54-55, 80.
[13] Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982.
[14] Pace Waltke, Bruce K. Genesis: A
Commentary, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001, pp. 90-91: “The serpent is a
symbol of antigod. Although not named
here, he is Satan…not a mythological figure, but a part of real history.”
[15] Cf. Blenkinsopp,
Joseph, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A discursive commentary on
Genesis 1—11, London & New York: T&T Clark, 2011, pp. 72ff.
[16] Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, pp.
47-48; cf. Kass, Leon R. The beginning of Wisdom:
Reading Genesis, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003, p.
80.
[17] Cf. Blenkinsopp,
Joseph, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A discursive commentary on
Genesis 1—11, London & New York: T&T Clark, 2011, pp. 58-60.
[18] Cf.
Fretheim, Terence E. “Genesis” in Neil M. Alexander, ed. The New
Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1, Nashville: Abingdon, 1994, p. 359 where he
claims that some version of Ez. 28 was probably a source for the writer of Gn.
3. Cf. Blenkinsopp, Joseph, Creation,
Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A discursive commentary on Genesis 1—11, London
& New York: T&T Clark, 2011, pp. 62-64.
[19]
Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, p. 48.
[20] Cf. 1 Cor.
1.18-31.
[22] I.e. the
Hebrew canon; there is an equation of the serpent with Satan in the apocryphal
book of Wisdom 2.23-24; cf. Botterweck, G.J. et al., eds. Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. IX, Grand Rapids & Cambridge:
Eerdmans, 1998, p. 364.
[23] Fretheim,
Terence E. “Genesis” in Neil M. Alexander, ed. The New Interpreter’s Bible,
Vol. 1, Nashville: Abingdon, 1994, pp. 359-60.
[24] This adds a layer of ambiguity
to the woman’s accusation against the serpent in Gn. 3.13; cf. 3.15. Did the serpent intentionally “trick” the
woman, or in saying this, was she simply trying to get off the hook? Was the serpent simply a sounding-board for
the woman’s own inner desire to eat the forbidden fruit? If so, this is the primordial example of “the
Devil made me do it”.
[25] Named in
Gn. 3.20.
[27] Kass, Leon
R. The beginning of Wisdom, p. 80; cf. Ricoeur’s “externality of
desire”: Blenkinsopp, p. 76.
[28] I.e. in the wisdom of Torah; cf. Kass, Leon R. The beginning of
Wisdom, pp. 82-97.
[29] Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.3.
[30] Cf. Blenkinsopp,
Joseph, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, p. 75.
[31] Cf. Walton,
John H. The Lost World of Adam and Eve, Downers Grove: IVP Academic,
2015, p. 135.
[32] Indeed,
Paul did it first; cf. Rom. 5.12-21; 1 Cor. 15.42-49.
[33] Against Heresies, Book V, chapter 21.1: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103521.htm
(accessed November 9, 2024).
[34] Cf.
Anselm’s 11th-century typological reading of Genesis 3 in Cur
Deus Homo?, Book I, chapter III. Anselm draws a parallel between Adam and
Christ, Eve and Mary, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on the
one hand, and the “tree” of the cross, on the other.
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