The Good and Evil Serpent (52 page)

By the time of the Quran, the equation between the serpent and Satan is so ingrained in consciousness that it influences Muhammad. Note his words in “the Heights”: “Children of Adam, do not let Satan tempt you just as he turned your two ancestors out of the Garden, stripping them of their clothing in order to show them their private parts.”
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Evil

The fierce independence (cf. 2.11), cold-bloodedness (cf. 2.12), and sudden appearance of a snake (cf. 2.6) made it a good symbol for evil. Among the Semites, especially those in the south, the serpent tended to symbolize demons in the desert,
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a tradition that clearly appears in the
Books of Enoch
. The Arabic
jinn
denotes both a desert evil spirit and a snake.

The serpent often symbolizes the source of evil. In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology, the serpent often symbolized evil.
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In ancient Egyptian religion, Apophis, the serpent, was perceived as the archenemy of the Sun God Re. In Indian religion, Kaliya, who is the prince of serpents, symbolizes evil; he is conquered by Krishna.
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In Native American lore, the dark of winter is perceived according to the myth about the beginnings of time: then the sun was covered by the powers of darkness, which are controlled by Sisiul, the serpent.

In biblical lore, the snake sometimes symbolized evil. A passage in the Psalms that is well known announces that no evil will befall those who make the Most High their dwelling place; indeed, note what they will be able to do:

You will tread upon the lion and the cobra
,

The young lion and the dragon
you shall trample under foot. [Ps 91:33]

We have seen how this biblical image was represented on clay by Christians in North Africa sometime after the fourth century
CE
(
Fig. 7
). According to Revelation 12:1–6, evil in the form of “a great red dragon” pursues a “woman” who is depicted in terms of astrology and may well symbolically represent the Church (and perhaps at the same time Mary [double entendre]).

In the
Song of Moses
(Deut 32:1–43), the enemies of God and the Hebrews are depicted as the poison of serpents and the venom of asps. This passage is quoted by the author of the
Damascus Document
who employs it to denote his hatred of kings (cf. also
1 En
37–71) and “the head of the kings of Greece” that render vengeance on God’s people:

And each chose according to the wantonness of his heart, and did not remove himself from (the) people. And they arrogantly became unruly, walking in the way of the wicked ones, of whom God said, “The poison of serpents (is) their wine and the head of asps (is) cruel.” “The serpents” are the kings of the peoples and “their wine” is their ways, and “the head of the asps” is the head of the kings of Greece, who will come to do vengeance among them. [CD MS A 8.8–12a]
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It is clear that the metaphor of the serpent and asp was chosen by the author of the
Damascus Document
to stress the evil among the leaders on earth: kings and the head of kings.

We have examined ophidian and anguine golden jewelry.
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The women of Pompeii were especially fond of these ornaments; many examples are preserved in the world’s museums, including the Benaki Museum in Ath-ens,
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and the Archaeological Museum in Naples (see
Appendix III
).
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A stunning confirmation of our search for the serpent as a symbol of evil and the evil one is found in
The Instructor
by Clement of Alexandria (c. 150215
CE)
of whose biography very little is known. He castigates women who wear golden serpentine jewelry:

But now women are not ashamed to wear the most manifest badges of the evil one. For as the serpent
deceived Eve, so also has ornament of gold maddened other women to vicious practices, using as a bait the form of the serpent, and by fashioning lampreys and serpents as decoration. Accordingly the comic poet Nicostratus says, “chains, collars, rings, bracelets, serpents
, anklets, earrings.”
[Paedagogos
2.13]
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Notably, Aphraate also uses the serpent to symbolize evil.
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According to the compiler of the
Lives of the Prophets
, the serpent is evil and pursues people in darkness (as we mentioned earlier).
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The Rabbis tended to attribute sin to the snake in Eden. We even hear that the snake shook the tree of knowledge and its fruit fell to the ground. Then “he pushed” the woman and “she touched the tree.” The serpent becomes the source of evil.
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Again, in an impressive fashion, the Genesis story has been read with eisegesis and impressionistically.

Although the Gnostic who composed the
Teaching of Silvanus
refers twice to the “intelligence of the snake,” according to the Gnostic who gave us the
Apocryphon of John
(the long version), Sophia of the Epinoia gave birth to an evil monster named Yaltabaoth. This monster is “ignorant darkness” and has a form different from her. He has the shape of a lion-faced serpent.

Literary evidence that the serpent symbolizes evil comes from an unexpected source. In
The Acts of the Disputation with the Heresiarch Manes
, Archelaus claims that while the serpent symbolizes evil now, he originally was not evil, but “willed” himself to be evil when he encountered the human. Note this excerpt:

Even that great serpent himself was not evil previous to man, but only after man, in whom he displayed the fruit of his wickedness, because he willed it himself. If, then, the father of wickedness makes his appearance to us after man has come into being, according to the Scriptures, how can he be unbegotten who has thus been constituted evil subsequently to man, who is himself a production? But, again, why should he exhibit himself as evil just from the period when, on your supposition, he did himself create man? What did he desire in him?
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This is a rather odd and novel interpretation of Genesis 3.

Lions and snakes are joined iconographically in the ancient world. For example, a fourth-century
BCE
funerary monument shows a lion with a snake on its right hip.
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Lions and snakes appear in more recent iconography. At St. Quenin, in southeastern France, one can see a capital with two asps facing each other. Just below St. Quenin and at St. Christol in the apse of a church is a capital with the depiction of a lion biting a serpent.
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The lion seems to symbolize God and resurrection, and the serpent death and the earth. If that is the meaning, then the symbol of the serpent has been altered by Christian ideas.

St. Patrick did not drive snakes out of Ireland. They ceased to exist there after the Ice Age. This well-known myth developed because Patrick became a saint, and he drove evil out of Ireland. The best symbol to represent this belief is the serpent.

Evil Eye

The lack of movable eyelids and the inability to blink make the snake a perfect symbol for the evil eye (cf. 2.4).
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One of the Greek words for “snake” means the blind one
. In many late Jewish and Christian amulets, the snake appears to represent the evil eye.

It is not clear what the two snakes that end as ribbons on the lintel stone of the School of Rabbi Eliezar ha-Kappar at Dabara mean. But, given their time period and the fact that the snakes’ heads are in eagles’ mouths, they suggest that the serpent imagery may denote the evil eye.

The meaning of serpent imagery has come full circle. In Babylon, the serpent symbolized the protection of the palace, but at Dabara the snakes had to be killed by the ever-protective eagle. The geographical setting is also important. I have seen eagles soaring around Gamla and other places in the Golan. These birds of prey search out and eat snakes.

In the late 1930s, R. Wittkower drew attention to the universal use of iconography that showed the serpent and eagle together. Such images are found in Sumer and Babylonia (c. 3000
BCE)
,
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India (c. 3000
BCE)
, Scythia (sixth-fifth cent.
BCE)
, Turkestan (fourth-ninth cent.
CE)
, Java (eleventh cent.
CE)
. Today images of the serpent and eagle are seen in Mexico and Costa Rica.
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The snake appears with the eagle in iconography found in many cities, including Alexandria, Athens, Rome, Canterbury, and Constantinople.