The Good and Evil Serpent (69 page)

Even more questions could be listed, but at least one point has been made strikingly lucid. It is clear that a familiar story now seems strange. A once straightforward account now appears chaotic.

While there are answers to some of these questions, most lead beyond exegesis (which is focused on the probable meaning of the words) into unsupported speculation. Our focus will remain on that mysterious character in the story called simply Nachash; is “serpent” what the Yahwist had in mind for this noun from the beginning of Genesis 3?

Scholars’ Reflections

These questions expose tensions and inconsistencies in the first biblical story, the Eden Story.
⁵⁵
The Genesis story may be well written, but it is replete with problems. The story is not well constructed. Yet that is not the evaluation of Speiser, whose translation we quoted. He wrote: “There is action here and suspense, psychological insight and subtle irony, light and shadow—all achieved in two dozen verses. The characterization is swift and sure, and all the more effective for its indirectness.”
⁵⁶
Where is there any description of or use of “light and shadow”? With so many contradictions, how can Speiser claim the narration is “swift” and “sure”?

Speiser’s own pejorative opinion of the serpent apparently has brought more harmony to the Eden Story than is present in the Hebrew. Is not Speiser distorting the narrative when he reports that the serpent “is deliberately distorting a fact” in his first statement to the woman?
⁵⁷

Th. C. Vriezen summarized scholars’ opinions regarding the form and function of the serpent in Genesis 3.
⁵⁸
The serpent is interpreted to be a disguised Satan (the usual Christian interpretation), purely mythological (in the Talmudim; cf. N. P. Williams), a mythological being transformed into an animal (viz. H. Gunkel), or a very clever animal (Vriezen, Westermann).

It should be obvious why so many scholars, especially E. Williams-Forte, are convinced that in Genesis 3 the serpent symbolizes evil and cunning, not death, and that the serpent is primarily the Deceiver or Liar.
⁵⁹
A careful analysis of serpent symbolism in Genesis 3, attention to details, and repeated attempts “to live in the story” reveals numerous meanings such as chaos, youthfulness, and wisdom, as Joines proved.
⁶⁰
Among all of these, the serpent primarily symbolizes wisdom. The text vitiates the claim that the serpent is the Liar.

In the early centuries of this era, those interested in the Eden Story sometimes exaggerated the wisdom of the serpent. In
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent
, for example, E. Pagels points out that the author of the
Testimony of Truth
told “the story of Paradise from the serpent’s point of view, and depicted the serpent as a teacher of divine wisdom who desperately tried to get Adam and Eve to open their eyes to their creator’s true, and despicable, nature.”
⁶¹

Even in the past few centuries, far too much nonsense has been devoted to an explication of Genesis 3. In his book,
The Ophion or the Theology of the Serpent and the Unity of God
, J. Bellamy sought to rebuff the supposedly prevalent claim that it was a monkey rather than a serpent that “was the agent employed in the Fall of Man.” He sought to lead readers so they will comprehend that “it was a
Serpent
instead of a
Monkey”
that “brought about this business.”
⁶²
Such misconceptions seem to reflect the fear of Darwinism in London in 1911. They are far from the world of scholarship in which questions, not answers, guide a study.

Many more examples could be selected of how scholars have failed to see the world of serpent symbology reflected in Genesis 3. Far too often scholars have read the Eden Story with presuppositions that were never examined and most likely unperceived. It seems best to keep the examples at a minimum now and to allude to them or present them as our exegesis proceeds.

Serpent Symbology and Exegesis

Before proceeding further, I must express, briefly, my deep indebtedness to the great minds that have helped us comprehend the oral and literary origin of the first books in the Hebrew Bible. In focusing on Genesis 1–3 and in particular the symbology of the Nachash in
chapter 3
, unfortunately I cannot now assume a consensus regarding the composition of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (a better word than Hexa-teuch or Tetrateuch). The sequence of literary sources in the Pentateuch, J, E, D, and P, developed especially by Reuss, Graf, Kuenen, and particularly Wellhausen, is no longer a firm consensus, even if we add the possibility of a G document underlying J and E (Noth).
⁶³
It also seems evident that Gunkel in 1895, in
Schöpfung und Chaos
, rightly perceived a long and ancient oral tradition behind the alleged Priestly document of Genesis 1. Yet, the existence of J, E, D, and P, their redactors, the exilic Dtr
²
, and the editors and compilers of the prophetic and psalmic texts is a widely held con-sensus;
⁶⁴
it seems strengthened, if not proved, by the study of the scribal activity evident in the biblical texts found in the eleven Qumran caves.
⁶⁵

Because there is no longer unanimous agreement on the existence of J, E, D, and P, there is no solid consensus regarding the date of Genesis 3. Some views now seem highly unlikely; for example, J. Morgenstern opined that the story originated “long before the time of Moses, when our ancestors still roamed the great Arabian Desert.”
⁶⁶
Young opts for the traditional view: Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, but there are some later editorial additions.
⁶⁷
These views are not widely held today.

More representative of scholars’ dating of Genesis 3 are the conclusions by Eissfeldt and Joines. While O. E. Eissfeldt argued for the composition of Genesis 3 sometime between 968 and 721
BCE
,
⁶⁸
K. Joines was convinced we should narrow the range. She suggests some time between 950 and 850
BCE
.
⁶⁹

The earliest possible date for the composition of Genesis 3 is thus clearly uncertain. Perhaps Genesis 3 was composed, from older traditions, sometime in the tenth century
BCE
. Yet, even this prevalent view reflects our own individual training and perspective. As S. R. Driver pointed out, in making judgments regarding the date of Genesis 3, we are primarily reflecting our own particular view of a dark period in history.
⁷⁰

I shall base my reflections on the consensus that, during the reign of Solomon, in the middle of the tenth century
BCE
(perhaps 970–931) when Israel had established prosperous relations with the Philistines and Egyptians, a person, the Yahwist, composed the earliest document in the Pentateuch (the first five books in the Hebrew Bible). In contrast to the later Elohist, who was a moralist and nationalist, the Yahwist cast the history of Israel with a universal perspective. The God of Israel is the Creator of the world, humans, and animals, including the serpent.
⁷¹

Where does the Eden Story begin and end in Genesis? The story seems to begin in 2:4b and continues until 3:24. Genesis 2:4b shows a shift from calling the Creator Elohim to Adonai
(YHWH)
Elohim; 2:4b clearly represents another author and the beginning of another tradition. After the end of
chapter 3
, “the woman” is given a name. She is called “Eve,” and then a new story begins; it is about the birth of sons to Adam and Eve and the tragic relation between Cain and Abel. This division is affirmed by many, including I. Engnell, who perceived in the Genesis story of the first man and woman divine beings, king and queen, and the remnants of a royal annual ritual. When God places skins on Adam and the woman, they receive royal investiture.
⁷²
Genesis 3 no longer is a ritual, if it ever had been. For a study of serpent symbolism in Genesis 3, the division is crucial; in his masterful
Genesis
, Gunkel defined the “Paradiesesgeschichte” as covering Genesis 2:4b to 3:24 and attributed the composition to “J
^e
” and “Ji.”
⁷³

In proceeding, it is essential to comprehend that the first four chapters of Genesis are not the work of only one author or source. The maior criteria for discerning more than one source are the doublets, the two stories of the creation of the human, and the two different names for the Divine: Elohim and
YHWH
Elohim (and sometimes merely
YHWH
, esp. in
chap. 4
). Also important is the first use of the
toledot
(the generations of) formula in 2:4a that shapes Genesis. It appears in Genesis 2:4a, and these words seem to be P’s introduction to the J source
[pace BHS
and RSV].

In what follows, I have come to agree with G. von Rad in seeing the author of Genesis 2:4b-4:26, the Yahwist, as the first genius in the long line of perspicacious Hebrew theologians.
⁷⁴
In the following, it becomes clear, because of the theological integrity and linguistic skill throughout the source (2:4b-4:26), that the Yahwist who composed the second account of creation in Genesis was an individual (the narrative is not the product of a school [pace Gunkel]). It also seems likely that the Yahwist wrote because of some crisis (political or theological) in the tenth century
BCE
, as G. von Rad and W. Brueggemann concluded. It is conceivable also that P is a source or the result of redaction of J and E, as seems likely in Genesis 1–4, as F. Cross has argued.

Today the debate over the compositional character of Genesis rages, and the old form-critical consensus seems to be in shambles. While I cannot appeal to a consensus, it is only fair to admit that I find much insight from sociological sensitivities to the authors, P (broadly defined) and J (the Yahwist), and the fruitful insights from
religionsgeschichtliche
examinations (as with Gunkel). I tend to shy away from seeing tradition criticism in the rather narrow, traditional ways of critical orthodoxy. The author of Genesis 3, our focus, was deeply influenced by earlier myths found in Canaanite culture, and these (as I discovered and should now be evident) had not only originated locally in Palestine but had been inherited from Mesopotamia and Egypt,
⁷⁵
as well as elsewhere (including Hittite culture). Now I focus on the work of the Yahwist. What has he given us, and what does he know about serpent symbology? Let us return to Speiser, since his translation has been chosen to represent a maior position in advanced research.

Speiser offers misleading advice, based on his misperception of serpent symbolism, when he argues that the Hebrew in Genesis 3:1,
aph ki
, means “even though.” That puts the serpent in a bad light. Martin Luther also took
aph ki
to denote something sinister about the Nachash. He offered this advice: “I cannot translate the Hebrew either in German or in Latin; the serpent uses the word
aph-ki
as though to turn up its nose and jeer and scoff at one.”
⁷⁶
Is this really what the Yahwist had in mind?

Far more likely than Speiser’s exegesis and Luther’s opinion is the well-accepted assumption that this expression opens a question. That is, the Nachash is not “distorting a fact;” he is asking a question. As G. von Rad pointed out, what the Yahwist has put into focus is not “what the snake is” but what the Nachash says. The Nachash “opens the conversation—a masterpiece of psychological shading!—in a cautious way, with an interested and quite general question (not mentioning the subtly introduced subject of the conversation, the tree of knowledge, which it leaves to the unsuspecting woman!).”
⁷⁷

In asking a question, the Yahwist thus portrays the serpent as being closer to the woman. This insight does not warrant, however, U. Cassuto’s exegesis, which tends to remove the Nachash from the narrative. According to Cassuto, the only way to explain the conversation between the Nachash and the woman is to assume the “dialogue between the serpent and the woman is actually, in a manner of speaking, a dialogue that took place in the woman’s mind, between her wiliness and her innocence, clothed in the garb of a parable.” He continued, noting that this interpretation allows us “to understand why the serpent is said to think and speak; in reality it is not he that thinks and speaks but the woman does so in her heart.”
⁷⁸

The serpent’s cleverness is reflected in his first revealed characteristic: asking a question. To ask questions and draw close to others is a positive trait in Israelite and Jewish Wisdom, yet E. Wiesel imagines the serpent “meddles in affairs that do not concern him.”
⁷⁹

Speiser thinks that
aph ki
cannot have an interrogative sense.
⁸⁰
One should not be concerned that
aph ki
appears only in Genesis 3, in biblical Hebrew, as an introductory phrase. What should be in central focus are the vestiges of antique Hebrew in the language of the Yahwist,
⁸¹
his diverse and probably multilingual sources, the complexity of the Hebrew elsewhere in this story, and the clear meaning of the Greek, the other ancient Jewish source of this Eden Story: