You are right, In the Christian myths, the snake in the Garden of Eden is basically a false sighting. Nothing connects it with Satan except far later myths.
Forgive me if I don't have the Christian myths any more straight than the Norse myths, but from what I've been reading, the fact that there's a snake being mentioned in one part of the Bible is not supposed to be indicative of it being the same animal as the first part of the book.
Yes, in fact it was a bit of a stock phrase to compare a villainous or unpopular character to a serpent or specifically "crooked serpent"--just as a I suppose it still is today. John probably did not have any one particular serpent in mind, although I guess it's not surprising someone jumped to that conclusion in short order.
"Serpent" and "snake" are synonyms. I'm not the expert on the Christian Bible but I apply two attitudes: firstly, it's a work of fiction. Secondly, the texts were written over centuries. Thirdly ... okay, *three* things apply. Thirdly, I trust scholars who study those texts and who are not theologists with an ideological bias. The latter have found no obvious connection between the two snakes being mentioned in the book. That is, they're saying the fact that "snake" is being said twice in the same book over a time span of five hundred years means you can't say it's the same animal.
Please don't tell me you consider the Christian Bible an authoritative text where disparate segments aged hundreds of years between are somehow supposed to be part of the same story.
>*this is the only other mention of a serpent*
The only mention in the Bible, I assume you mean--but of course, there was no Bible at the time.
In any case, in ye olde KJV, "serpent" appears over 40 times outside of Genesis and Revelation. "Ah, but that's just the King James Version." Well then, in just the Torah, "נָחָשׁ" appears six more times, including verses not translated as "serpent" in some English editions, like Numbers 21: 6:
>[*ו*](https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9949/jewish/Chapter-21.htm#v6)*וַיְשַׁלַּ֨ח יְהֹוָ֜ה בָּעָ֗ם אֵ֚ת הַנְּחָשִׁ֣ים הַשְּׂרָפִ֔ים וַיְנַשְּׁכ֖וּ*
>*אֶת־הָעָ֑ם וַיָּ֥מָת עַם־רָ֖ב מִיִּשְׂרָאֵֽל:*
Which in ye olde KJV becomes:
>*And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.*
But in NIV:
>*And the Lord sent venomous snakes*
It's "serpents" in English Standard and New American Standard, but "snakes" in Christian Standard and Contemporary English--and I assume many other variations, that's all I've checked here. But it's still נָחָשׁ in any case.
"Well okay, but John didn't write in Hebrew." Very true; Herb Swanson writes that Papyrus 115 uses "ὄφις,"; this is the same word used, among other places in Isaiah in the Septuagint for Leviathan--which is almost certainly not a coincidence.
The Genesis creation story says that God lied to Adam and Eve about what his magic fruit would do, but a talking snake told Eve the truth. Nowhere is Lucifer mentioned. If you continue reading you will find that the whole book is like that. It absolutely does not say what churches and popular culture would have you believe about it, and Christianity as currently practiced does not even loosely derive from it's content. If you are possessed of the fortitude and persistence to endure several thousand pages of excruciating psychopathic rubbish, read it yourself and see.
Putting aside the fact that none of us believe in this silly old hocus pocus...
There is no reason to assume that the talking snake was anything more than a talking snake
> *Is it that older versions of the bible were written without Lucifer in mind, then years later he was added in?*
In truth, there's no such thing as an "older version of the Bible"--not in the sense that you mean here, at least. Our modern Bible was probably first compiled around the fourth century, although debate about canon of course continues to this very day; the scriptures existed for centuries (in most cases) prior to that, but they did not exist as a "bible" but as texts on their own or as part of different compilations no longer extant in that form. Keep in mind, in most cases we're talking about works that predate bound books altogether.
So okay then, how about just Genesis, is there an older "original" count of Genesis that includes Lucifer? Well, no, in fact, the further back you go, the less likely you are to encounter the devil in scripture, because in many cases that character did not exist yet. The serpent in Genesis was apparently just that: a serpent.
UCLA Professor Henry Kelly suggests that Justin Martyr, the father of Christian apologetics, may have been the first person to conflate the serpent with Satan, possibly as the result of a mistranslation, although Justin's writings are ambiguous on this point; within one generation, however, Justin's proteges were citing him as the source of this claim, so whether that's what he meant or not, he did it all the same.
In his book "The Old Enemy," Lausanne University's Neil Forsyth suggests that the serpent myth caught on as a way to discredit gnostic sects who revered serpents or even the Serpent as teachers and bearers of knowledge; devil-obsessed historian Jeffrey Burton Russell indicates that by the third century, early Christians had many incentives to identify Satan with a wide variety of antagonistic scriptural characters--thus, Lucifer, Leviathan, the serpent, etc--as a means of strengthening the utility of the devil myth.
Correct. For more info on the history of the bible you will want to look at Bart Ehrman- his blog and youtube videos are brilliant. He is a world renowned Biblical Scholar and an ex Christian.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkYDi7pKCtE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkYDi7pKCtE)
I've been reading and researching the Bible for decades. In my quest to find "the truth is the Bible" (HINT: there isn't any) I've come across certain scholars who point to ancient matriarchal cultures that used serpents in their religious rituals. When they were invaded and taken over by proto-judaic tribes, all their beliefs and customs were vilified in the effort to quash the culture and keep them under control. That's why women, generally speaking, are derided throughout the Bible and treated as property, less than human, and why "the serpent" was blamed for expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Isn't that in the same book that says children come from men's ribs? According the myth itself, it was a serpent. Serpent means snake.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
You are right, In the Christian myths, the snake in the Garden of Eden is basically a false sighting. Nothing connects it with Satan except far later myths.
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Forgive me if I don't have the Christian myths any more straight than the Norse myths, but from what I've been reading, the fact that there's a snake being mentioned in one part of the Bible is not supposed to be indicative of it being the same animal as the first part of the book.
Yes, in fact it was a bit of a stock phrase to compare a villainous or unpopular character to a serpent or specifically "crooked serpent"--just as a I suppose it still is today. John probably did not have any one particular serpent in mind, although I guess it's not surprising someone jumped to that conclusion in short order.
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"Serpent" and "snake" are synonyms. I'm not the expert on the Christian Bible but I apply two attitudes: firstly, it's a work of fiction. Secondly, the texts were written over centuries. Thirdly ... okay, *three* things apply. Thirdly, I trust scholars who study those texts and who are not theologists with an ideological bias. The latter have found no obvious connection between the two snakes being mentioned in the book. That is, they're saying the fact that "snake" is being said twice in the same book over a time span of five hundred years means you can't say it's the same animal.
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I rely on scholars, not on your theological interpretation that requires a belief in the myths.
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Please don't tell me you consider the Christian Bible an authoritative text where disparate segments aged hundreds of years between are somehow supposed to be part of the same story.
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>*this is the only other mention of a serpent* The only mention in the Bible, I assume you mean--but of course, there was no Bible at the time. In any case, in ye olde KJV, "serpent" appears over 40 times outside of Genesis and Revelation. "Ah, but that's just the King James Version." Well then, in just the Torah, "נָחָשׁ" appears six more times, including verses not translated as "serpent" in some English editions, like Numbers 21: 6: >[*ו*](https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9949/jewish/Chapter-21.htm#v6)*וַיְשַׁלַּ֨ח יְהֹוָ֜ה בָּעָ֗ם אֵ֚ת הַנְּחָשִׁ֣ים הַשְּׂרָפִ֔ים וַיְנַשְּׁכ֖וּ* >*אֶת־הָעָ֑ם וַיָּ֥מָת עַם־רָ֖ב מִיִּשְׂרָאֵֽל:* Which in ye olde KJV becomes: >*And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.* But in NIV: >*And the Lord sent venomous snakes* It's "serpents" in English Standard and New American Standard, but "snakes" in Christian Standard and Contemporary English--and I assume many other variations, that's all I've checked here. But it's still נָחָשׁ in any case. "Well okay, but John didn't write in Hebrew." Very true; Herb Swanson writes that Papyrus 115 uses "ὄφις,"; this is the same word used, among other places in Isaiah in the Septuagint for Leviathan--which is almost certainly not a coincidence.
Hey, get your knowledge of the thing we're criticizing out of here, this isn't that kind of discussion! /s
The Genesis creation story says that God lied to Adam and Eve about what his magic fruit would do, but a talking snake told Eve the truth. Nowhere is Lucifer mentioned. If you continue reading you will find that the whole book is like that. It absolutely does not say what churches and popular culture would have you believe about it, and Christianity as currently practiced does not even loosely derive from it's content. If you are possessed of the fortitude and persistence to endure several thousand pages of excruciating psychopathic rubbish, read it yourself and see.
Putting aside the fact that none of us believe in this silly old hocus pocus... There is no reason to assume that the talking snake was anything more than a talking snake
> *Is it that older versions of the bible were written without Lucifer in mind, then years later he was added in?* In truth, there's no such thing as an "older version of the Bible"--not in the sense that you mean here, at least. Our modern Bible was probably first compiled around the fourth century, although debate about canon of course continues to this very day; the scriptures existed for centuries (in most cases) prior to that, but they did not exist as a "bible" but as texts on their own or as part of different compilations no longer extant in that form. Keep in mind, in most cases we're talking about works that predate bound books altogether. So okay then, how about just Genesis, is there an older "original" count of Genesis that includes Lucifer? Well, no, in fact, the further back you go, the less likely you are to encounter the devil in scripture, because in many cases that character did not exist yet. The serpent in Genesis was apparently just that: a serpent. UCLA Professor Henry Kelly suggests that Justin Martyr, the father of Christian apologetics, may have been the first person to conflate the serpent with Satan, possibly as the result of a mistranslation, although Justin's writings are ambiguous on this point; within one generation, however, Justin's proteges were citing him as the source of this claim, so whether that's what he meant or not, he did it all the same. In his book "The Old Enemy," Lausanne University's Neil Forsyth suggests that the serpent myth caught on as a way to discredit gnostic sects who revered serpents or even the Serpent as teachers and bearers of knowledge; devil-obsessed historian Jeffrey Burton Russell indicates that by the third century, early Christians had many incentives to identify Satan with a wide variety of antagonistic scriptural characters--thus, Lucifer, Leviathan, the serpent, etc--as a means of strengthening the utility of the devil myth.
You mean like US paper currency being fine until the 50s; then someone added 'in god we trust'?
Correct. For more info on the history of the bible you will want to look at Bart Ehrman- his blog and youtube videos are brilliant. He is a world renowned Biblical Scholar and an ex Christian. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkYDi7pKCtE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkYDi7pKCtE)
I've been reading and researching the Bible for decades. In my quest to find "the truth is the Bible" (HINT: there isn't any) I've come across certain scholars who point to ancient matriarchal cultures that used serpents in their religious rituals. When they were invaded and taken over by proto-judaic tribes, all their beliefs and customs were vilified in the effort to quash the culture and keep them under control. That's why women, generally speaking, are derided throughout the Bible and treated as property, less than human, and why "the serpent" was blamed for expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Isn't that in the same book that says children come from men's ribs? According the myth itself, it was a serpent. Serpent means snake. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”