Is the "serpent" God?

[Random]

This is just a little theory I have.

"Little" theories like yours are often facts in disguise.

In Genesis, there is a serpent that talk and dupe Eve into eating the fruit that God forbidden. Christians have equated this serpent to Satan, even today.

Yes they have, wrongly.

There is no direct link between the serpent and Satan. Satan is never named, in this episode. In fact, he (Satan) is never named in the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy), not even in his later incarnation of Devil, Lucifer, etc.

My theory is that the serpent is not Satan, but God.

This understanding should revolutionize Theology to the same extent the Theory of Evolution did Science. Let's call it the SaG theory: Serpent as God.

True Torah Jews know what you mean. It is in their Oral tradition, where it is recognized that "He who speaks, knows not: and he who knows, speaks not". Yahweh God is Lucifer, his name and title, the Morning Star. His planet is Venus, not Saturn as the Christians would have it. Lucifer as Satan, a popular myth, is unsupported by the Bible as neither the Serpent nor Satan nor Lucifer are ever equated to each other in any passage of Scripture.

I don't think God wanted to Adam and Eve to stay in the garden, and he tested them. He deliberately put the tree there, knowing that they would fail, even though he had warned Adam against eating it.

I don't think the serpent was Satan, but God

You are correct.

God saw they were good, the Adams and Eves (a race, not two individuals), but they were already dying, you see. The will to live is free but not by choice, and God foresaw that even though Adam and Eve had everlasting bodies, their will to live would fail eventually and they would die and be lost forever, as though they had never been. If this was not so, why would they be tempted by the promise of spiritual immortality and godlike power that it was said eating the Apple would bring?

So God decided to play a trick to make them disobey Him, because he created Adam and Eve perfectly, so they were perfectly obedient to Him in all respects. He forbid them to eat of the Tree of Knowlege, which is both the serpentine power of Kundalini and the secrets of DNA and all matter, even though it was their only chance of survival. Since neither would disobey Him at the promting of any other spiritual being, Angel or demon, it had to be Him, God, who played the trick...

So, assuming the form of Serpent, God persuaded Eve to choose to eat of the Apple of divine wisdom and thus, gave her freewill because this was the first act of true discrimination against God's Will, which is wholly and unchangeably Deterministic after all. So then God shows up in His normal form acting all angry with them and expels them from Paradise, thus actually saving them for it was really their place of Dying and Sorrows, that they could not know.

So it was that "Adam" and "Eve", survived to become the first ancestors of the human race as it is today. Sure, there were troubles between them, and much labours and suffering, but it could not be any other way then. At least their love for each other would overcome, the beginnings of Faith, I suppose. They had the power to change the future, to create themselves and become creators, so what did God not give them, in a round-about kind of way? He gave them everything - the World, a manifest destiny, the power to shape it.

Anyway, excellent thinking, Gnostic. Furbals.

 

[Vasilisa Jade]

That is a great theory!

I've always been interested in the Gnostic idea that the serpent was sent by (or was) Sophia, in order to break the Demuirge's spell over humanity.

I really want to learn more about Gnosticism too.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

I'm about 6 ft. tall, 180 pounds. I have strawberry-blond hair, blue eyes, facial stubble, and bushy eyebrows. I have broad shoulders, and the beginnings of a beer gut.

Is this literal interpretation "me"?

Who cares?

 

[sandy whitelinger]

Hopefully not Christian theology.

 

[Random]

Hopefully not Christian theology.

Why not? All of that is only my opinion, sure, but why in your estimation would Christian theology not be open to giving consideration to new ideas (or even old, gnostic ones)?

 

[sandy whitelinger]

against[/I] God's Will, which is wholly and unchangeably Deterministic after all. So then God shows up in His normal form acting all angry with them and expels them from Paradise, thus actually saving them for it was really their place of Dying and Sorrows, that they could not know.

So it was that "Adam" and "Eve", survived to become the first ancestors of the human race as it is today. Sure, there were troubles between them, and much labours and suffering, but it could not be any other way then. At least their love for each other would overcome, the beginnings of Faith, I suppose. They had the power to change the future, to create themselves and become creators, so what did God not give them, in a round-about kind of way? He gave them everything - the World, a manifest destiny, the power to shape it.

Nice story. Did you make that up yourself?

 

[Random]

Nice story. Did you make that up yourself?

Yes! Good, isn't it?

 

[Smoke]

I don't think the serpent in the story represents god, though I think it might have represented a god in another telling of the story. I do think the story is, or originally was, an enlightenment myth. The serpent is a kind of Prometheus. The reason I think so is that it doesn't make sense to me any other way.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

Why not? All of that is only my opinion, sure, but why in your estimation would Christian theology not be open to giving consideration to new ideas (or even old, gnostic ones)?

Christian theology should be based on the Bible.

 

[Random]

Christian theology should be based on the Bible.

OK, so why then do Christian churches, Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic, support the identification of Satan with Lucifer and the serpent in the Garden, when the Bible taken and read literally doesn't support it?

 

[sandy whitelinger]

OK, so why then do Christian churches, Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic, support the identification of Satan with Lucifer and the serpent in the Garden, when the Bible taken and read literally doesn't support it?

It's been my experience that Churchs teach counter to what the Bible says because they learned it from those who came before. After a while it becomes tradition and viola, before you know it's the gospel.

 

[Smoke]

Christian theology should be based on the Bible.

The Bible is a collection that was selected with Christian theology in mind. Christian theology necessarily predates the Bible.

 

[Vasilisa Jade]

Christian theology should be based on the Bible.

Why does the Bible have so many holes in it then if it should be the basis of a grand theology? So much play with language? It seems to me as if it was designed to be unclear and translated in many ways.
Maybe it was designed to just be a big riddle.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Who cares?

The one who wants to understand "me." Same goes for the Bible too, eh?

 

[gnostic]

Sounds like a good theory if you only take the Bible with a grain of salt. But based on what we find in the beginning of Genisis, it seems apparent that God created the serpent, the serpent didn't intend to have things done Gods' way, and as a result, was cursed from that point on.

Ah. But you are forgetting that whoever wrote the Genesis (which had been attributed to Moses) was written from the POV of a man, not God.

Nothing that I've read indicates that the serprent = God unless there is some trickery in the Genisis account in which case, I'm the fool.


"Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made."

There is also nothing to indicate that this serpent is Satan.

When God demanded answers from the pair, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. For all the talk from the snake, the serpent is strangely silent, and voice no defence for his action or accusing the others.

If God was all-knowing, then it would know that the serpent is Satan. But Satan's name is not mention whatsoever in the whole episode. Satan is not mention in the Genesis. God punished the serpent, but doesn't punish Satan. God don't even call the serpent "Satan".

Why not just call Satan "Satan"?

So God punished himself?
"And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Genesis 3:14-15 kjv

And why not?

If you believe that God is omnipresent, and that he was Jesus at the same time he was as God, then why can't be both the Creator and the serpent at the same time. You believe that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, eg. 3 in 1, do you not?

Why can't God be both the creator and the destroyer (eg Flood)? Or God and Satan? Or God and serpent? Or the serpent and Satan?

Or do you both (jringer and sandy) seriously believe that a serpent can talk with human voice?

In order to get Adam and Eve to leave the confine of Paradise, God required a little deception to achieve his aim. Why else would he put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden?

So God is using the serpent, putting his own voice into the serpent, in order to dupe Eve. The serpent only talk to Eve, in Genesis 3:1-5. But was completely silent throughout the rest of Genesis 3. Eve blamed the serpent:

The woman replied, "The serpent duped me, and I ate."

The serpent doesn't defend itself, and does not speak to God. God punished the serpent. Why? Why did the serpent not say anything to God?

I believed that God had achieve his purpose, and don't require the snake anymore, so punishing the serpent achieve nothing more than a dramatic display of deception. God wasn't punishing himself, because his voice had already left the serpent.

 

[gnostic]

Christian theology should be based on the Bible.

Christian theology is not just based on the bible alone. There is also a lot of traditions out there, and let not forget the NT apocrypha. Christians believed a lot of interpretations in the bible by early Christian Fathers.

Such as the case of Mary mother of Jesus being a [FONT=&quot]perpetual [/FONT]virgin, even after Jesus was born, without basis of fact. Ignoring the fact that the gospels stated that Jesus had siblings.

And for a long time, Christians believed that Mary Magdalene was the prostitute or the adulteress who was about to be stoned. There was no link either between Mary and the prostitute, or between Mary and adulteress. It state quite clearly that Mary Magdalene was one whom Jesus exorcised demons from her.

 

[gnostic]

That is a great theory!

I've always been interested in the Gnostic idea that the serpent was sent by (or was) Sophia, in order to break the Demuirge's spell over humanity.

Ah, yes. Gnosticism put a whole new spin to the Garden story.

Here, the Creator is not the true god, but a demuirge. Yes, the demuirge did create the physical world, and was partly responsible for creating man. And he did so, to trap soul in the physical material body.

The Creator was offspring of the Aeon Sophia.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad was to the gnostics, the source of wisdom and how to return to the spirit plane. The wisdom, or gnosis, was a good thing, which the demiurge/creator didn't want Adam and Eve to have.

Jesus rebuked John for believing in the story of talking snake. The serpent was Aeon Christ.

But what they call 'the tree of the knowledge of what is good and evil' is the Epinoia of the light. They (the rulers) remained in front of it in order that he might not look up to his fullness and come to know the nakedness of his shamefulness. But as for me, I set them right so that they would eat."

And I said to the Savior, "Lord, was it not the snake who taught Adam so that he would eat?"

The Savior laughed and said, "The snake taught them to eat from a wicked desire to sow which belongs to destruction, in order that he (Adam) would become useful to it. And it knew that he was dis*obedient to it because the light of Epinoia dwelled in him, making him more correct in his thinking than the Chief Ruler.

To the gnostics, the Jews and Christians have distorted the Genesis story. In some strange ways, the Apocryphron of John make more sense than the bible's Genesis.

 

[gnostic]

There is no evidence that they did or did not know the difference between right and wrong. What was stated was that they gained the knowledge of good and evil. Anything else is just conjecture.

That's why I said it was a theory.

To be honest with you, I only thought of this theory last night. .

Christians have long thought that the serpent is Satan. And that theory or interpretations about the Genesis bug for a whole lot of reasons. In many places, it don't make sense.

WHAM! The idea came to my head before I went to bed, and I thought that the serpent could be God as much as it could be Satan.

 

[GabrielWithoutWings]

I am finding more and more that everything in existance can have multiple symbolic meanings.

Serpents certainly are "twisted" and "slithery" and have "double forked tongues".
Sneaky twisted liars?

If your conception of God is a Sneaky twisted liar, then that works.

OR

perhaps you might offer up a different set of snake symbolisms for us?
I'd be interested. Don't really know too much about snakes.

Snakes are portrayed in ways other than sinister.

They are a symbol of wisdom and medicine (the caduceus, for example). Also, Moses in the desert had a brazen serpent that healed people.

Snakes aren't necessarily always feared, but they are almost universally respected for good or bad, regardless.

I'm sure from a Jewish point of view, the serpent was just a serpent. Part of the story was explaining why snakes don't have any legs.

 

[gnostic]

Part of the story was explaining why snakes don't have any legs.

It would seem that the Genesis is no different from religions or myths from other civilisations. The author trying to explain something he doesn't understand.