Who was that crafty serpent?

In church, most of us were taught that the serpent in the garden of Eden was actually somehow Satan, who came to tempt Eve to sin by twisting God's words. She was deceived by Satan, and the consequences of her actions were "spiritual death," happening immediately, and physical death, happening 900 and some odd years later. And because this story is the foundation for all Christian theology, it is my favorite one.

This is all nothing but reading Christian doctrines into the text. Let's let the text alone speak for itself. Here's an analogy of what that means. Imagine, if you will, you're an inhabitant of the planet Mars. Through advanced Martian technology, you've traveled to Earth, learned English fluently, and you landed on the White House lawn. Soon, a Christian human gifts you a Bible, explaining that millions of humans believe this book if from God and tells us the truth. 

So you open the book and begin to read. You start in Genesis. After reading through the first independent creation narrative in Gen 1:1-2:3, you read the second, different creation narrative in Gen 2:4-3:24. Enter: the serpent. 

The serpent

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." Genesis 3:1-7

The serpent is identified as being a serpent. "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field..." He's categorized as one of the beasts of the field. Full stop. Before reading the passage further, if we're drawing our data pool of the text alone to understand what the text is saying, we can only identify serpent as just that- a serpent! There's nothing in the text to indicate or even hint that the serpent is: Satan, a demon, a serpent somehow controlled by someone else like Satan or anything else but being a snake.

The serpent speaks. The narrative reads like a fantasy story so far. The serpent talking is par for the course. Nothing unusual so far. In the internal logic of the story, serpents could talk. "The serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field" may suggest that all serpents and possibly all animals could talk also. How else could it be determined that the serpent was more crafty than other animals unless they, too, could speak? Remember, were interpreting the text solely based on what's in the text. There's no using the New Testament to interpret the text allowed. You're an alien reading the text for the first time. And the original audience for whom the text was written didn't have a New Testament because it hadn't been written yet. No cheating here!

What exactly did the serpent say? "Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” OK. Let's analyze this. We don't know what the serpent did or didn't hear God say. We don't know if the serpent and Eve had had numerous friendly conversations previously. What we do know is this is a simple honest question, possibly intended to get Eve to elaborate on what God did say. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” Her answer was mostly accurate. She added in that God said not to touch the forbidden fruit, which he did not. This may be understood to be the first example in the Torah of what is called "building a fence around the Torah." The is a practice in Judaism that means setting extra boundaries that can help keep you away from the possibility of sinning. God told Eve not to eat from the tree. She added the prohibition against touching the fruit, which could keep her away from the temptation to eat it. She understood the assignment. 

The serpent the said “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Right here he accuses Yahweh of lying about what would happen if someone ate from that tree. Who is the reader to believe? Yahweh God, who we just saw create the world? Or the serpent, who we know is the craftiest of all the animals? (It should be noted that the Hebrew word "crafty" is spelled the same as "naked" in Hebrew. This may suggest that this serpent was skilled in revealing, uncovering, making naked and bare the thing he is discussing with her. But I digress.) The rest of the story must be our metric for determining which character was being truthful and which one is not.

"She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." So, she beted on the serpent being truthful because he was the craftiest animal, and Yahweh God as either lying or mistaken about the fruit. She eats it. And what happened? Their "eyes were opened " metaphorically, of course, and they realized they were naked. They began understanding things that they didn't understand before they ate, just as the serpent told them they would. And in this specific fashion Eve and Adam became "like God, knowing good and evil." "Good and evil" here apparently refers to the mature ability to make judgements about anything like if it's preferable to live life naked, not necessarily or exclusively the ability to determine what's morally right or wrong. 

So far, the serpent was telling the truth, Yahweh God was not, and now Adam and Eve were mentally on the same level as Yahweh God and the serpent, "knowing good and evil," or having the capacity for critical thinking and not remaining on the level of children without the wisdom how to think for themselves. In a way, they grew up, instantly. 

Without quoting the text here, they didn't die that day as God told them they would if they ate that fruit. That part was a  lie, a lie God told them as a threat to scare them out of questioning him. God didn't want them to be able to think for themselves like himself and the serpent already could. They could be easily controlled like children as long as they couldn't understand how to think for themselves. In this way they'd take care of Yahweh God's garden for him, until they died, never once thinking for themselves and thus never making any life decisions for themselves. Did God care about that? No. He only cared about having people to take care of his garden without asking questions or demanding fair treatment or compensation, etc. 

At that point, God, not wanting his elevated status as an immortal god to have new competitors, he said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

God admitted that the fruit elevated the humans to his level- "knowing good and evil," and that the only other thing they lacked that he had was immortality. So, out of jealousy and childish anger, he banished them from access to the Tree of Life that grants immortality. The reader might surmise that God once ate from both of those trees himself, hence his divine knowledge of good and evil, and his immortality. But that part of the story is irrelevant to the message of the story. What is that message?

The Moral of the Story 

The ancient Israelites had the texts of the Old Testament,  and other texts that are forever lost. We call these Scriptures, or sacred writings. This story teaches that unless we are content to live as ignorant innocent children all our lives, the mature way to be is to be skeptical. Don't believe the Scriptures ostensibly given from God's very words just because God said so. Ask questions about them. In the story, God was using his words to prevent the people from gaining the capacity for critical thinking so that he could do the thinking for them, preventing them from questioning him or reasoning with him. He did not want to share what he had: critical thinking and immortality. God was actually quite childish and selfish with what he had: a thinking mind and immortality. The world was his oyster. 

So now we find ourselves in a situation where we have the capacity to think thoughts only gods have the ability to ponder. We can postulate beautiful scientific theories, ponder philosophy, invent great technology, but we also realize our finiteness, our mortality, that's the thing God actively prevented them from acquiring. God was against equal rights and sharing.

The moral of the story is to learn to not be afraid to question the narrative we're told, in this case, the scriptures and the currently accepted understanding of them. It's good to learn new things. You should not be afraid of education. Anyone who discourages you from seeking understanding just might be taking advantage of you. 

I believe the author of this story intended it to be used to teach the audience to have the courage to question what they're taught. That is the only way to grow and learn, not by unquestioningly doing what you're told. This is also one of a number of similar examples in Genesis of people receiving divine instructions with life and death consequences involved and responding irresponsibly either with unquestioning obedience, when they ought to have questioned the commandment or at least attempted to negotiate with God about it, and reaped the respective, deadly consequences. The lesson is to be brave enough to question the divine commands. Just because a commandment seems set in stone (quite literally) doesn't always mean there's another, better path that's not explicitly stated in the text. 

This is why there's no record (outside of the text of the Torah) that the Israelites ever carried out any executions for any of the various crimes with capital punishment prescribed by God. They followed the principle from Leviticus 18:5. "You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them." The goal of the Torah was to bring life, not death. And the first example in the bible of a person breaking a commandment with capital punishment was Eve and Adam, and they, too, weren't put to death. 

The tale of the temptation of the serpent is one of coming of age as a thinking adult. When someone more clever than yourself reveals to you that there's more to the story than what you've been taught from your respected authorities, you may have invaluable knowledge to gain if you are brave enough to look for yourself. 

Personally, I also see that learning "forbidden knowledge," for me, like the Biblical Adam, did bring enlightenment, but then resulted in a forever fractured relationship with those who choose not to ask questions and look for answers. The primordial couple were banished from their paradise, and were forced to work hard and suffer to earn their bread from that point on. I can make similar comparisons to my own life: irreparably fractured relationships, ostracization, and being falsely accused of this that or the other as a way of avoiding accepting that I didn't choose to stop believing fundamentalist religious beliefs for personal reasons, I literally became unconvinced by my journey of asking hard questions and not resting until I found sufficient evidence to convince me of something definitively one way or the other. Unlike Eve, my journey was motivated by my deep belief in God, not by any doubts. It's embarrassing and humbling to look back at how strong my faith was despite being based on some very modern unfair to the texts interpretations of the Bible. But I had no way of knowing any differently. I had no proverbial serpent to talk to. That all changed when I had long hours of access to the internet for months. In online Christian discussion forums I encountered educated people who, despite my initial resistance, slowly introduced me to disconfirmatory, accurate information that began to poke too many holes in my faith for my beliefs in the God of the Bible to have any supports left. And once that system of beliefs was seen for what it was, I was free to reconstruct my thoughts and views now but based on real evidence instead of claims of prophets. And that journey away from Eden and into the frontier will never end until I close my eyes for the final time.