The Good and Evil Serpent (105 page)

No one will be able to discern which type of snake each Hebrew noun designated, not only because different names were given to the same reptile in ancient Palestine (as in modern Israel and Palestine today),
⁷
but also because the ancient Hebrew-speaking sages were not interested in a taxonomy of ophiolatry. Yet it would be unwise and misrepresentative to translate so many different nouns with the one word “serpent.” Thus, some order and a better relation between the Hebrew and the English will result if we agree to translate each Hebrew noun with only one English word. This method will establish consistency between the Hebrew and English nouns, and thus avoid the confusion found in translations produced by many different individuals, as in the Septuagint and modern publications of the Bible (notably such distinguished productions as the KJV, the NKJV, the RSV, and the NRSV).
⁸

Any good translation strives for consistency and avoids indicating that all authors of books in the Hebrew Bible were simply thinking, unreflectively, about some nondescript snake or asp. Thus, I supply here not only the English supposed equivalent of a Hebrew word but also the various meanings of the ancient Hebrew word. That is, that while consistency in translating is an art and goal, the ancient Hebrews tended to think generically. It is prima facie obvious that
appears at times to be synonymous with other terms; for example, it is parallel to
(“crawling things of the earth”) in Micah 7:17,
(“asp”) in Psalm 140:4[3],
(“cobra”) in Psalm 58:5[4], and
(“vipers”) in Jeremiah 8:17 and Proverbs 23:32. The noun also seems synonymous with
(“Leviathan”) and
(“dragon”) in Isaiah 27:1, and with
(“fiery serpents”) in Numbers 21:6–7. Obviously, all snakes belong to the reptile family.

Since Egyptian phenomena lie behind some Hebrew thoughts on and images of the snake, it might be helpful to state that reptile in hieroglyphics is
ddft
, which gives us the Coptic
. As we attempt to understand ancient herpetofauna, we should remember that the snake remains, even today in some ways, only a partially known reptile.
⁹

It is imperative also to stress that biblical scholars and other experts have uncritically assumed, without studying ophidian iconography, that the serpent often, or always, denotes a negative symbol.
¹⁰
This tendency reads Paul (2 Cor 11:3) and Augustine back into Genesis 3,
¹¹
and imagines unreflectively that Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 explain Numbers 21:6–9, John 3:14, and
Barnabas
12:5–7. In light of the professed conviction that we biblical scholars usually strive to understand texts within contexts, it is disconcerting to observe the failure to see the links between the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Palestinian serpent cults (especially at Beth Shan and Hazor). The “religion of Israel” is allowed uncritically to define “the multifarious religions of Israel.” Imaging the serpent as dominantly a negative symbol is myopic and uninformed; it fails to engage the complex symbology of the “serpent” in Genesis 3, the traditions concerning Moses’ staff, the upraised serpent in the wilderness, as well as the tradition and cultic celebrations in the Jerusalem cult represented by Nechushtan. Moreover, ophidian iconography increased with deeper and wider positive symbolical meanings, especially from circa 1600
BCE
to the first-century world, and especially in Minoan and Canaanite cultures, climaxing, in many ways, in the Asclepian cult at Epidaurus
¹²
and probably also in Jerusalem at Bethzatha.
¹³

Only two examples seem necessary. First, to suggest, as too many established scholars have done in widely influential commentaries, that the Seraphim in Isaiah 6:2–7 cannot be examples of serpent symbolism because “serpents do not have feet”
¹⁴
misses the fact that they do, not only in ancient iconography,
¹⁵
but also in prehistory in the Middle East (the
Haasiophis
with “well-developed hindlimbs”),
¹⁶
and in large snakes (in atrophied forms).
¹⁷
Ancient iconography showed animals with human elements or creatures with a mixture of animal, reptile, and human elements.
¹⁸
The Brooklyn magical papyrus of the fourth or third century
BCE
depicts a serpent with two human hands and two human feet (
Fig. 27
).
¹⁹
The biblical exegetes who claim that the Seraphim cannot be serpents have not read the early Jewish sources and the evidence that suggests Israelites and even Jews sometimes adored serpents. Such modern scholars, for example, probably have missed the reference in the
Prayer of Jacob
that salutes “the Father of the Patriarchs,” the Creator who sits upon “the s[er]pen[t] gods.”
²⁰

Second, to claim that there cannot be any parallel between serpent symbolism and Jesus, the Son of Man, in John 3:14 is to fail to let the images be seen, as O. Keel showed some time ago.
²¹
Hence, we must avoid the simplistic assumption that the serpent symbolized destruction and powers opposed to God, a position found, for example, in W. Kramp’s
Protest der Schlange: Signale zum Umdenken.
²²
It is now becoming obvious that in antiquity the serpent symbolized not only sixteen negative concepts but also twenty-nine positive meanings, including the complex ideas poured into the uraeus, Ouroboros, and caduceus. Moreover, it is now certain that these symbols often shown in works of art covered more than three millennia and were popular in many lands, including the Holy Land.