Bible Studies

What the Serpent originally wasn't in the Beginning

by Robert Randle
01/21/18
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Genesis 1: 24
God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals, each according to its kind." It was so. NET Bible 

Genesis 1: 25
And God made the beasts of the earth after their kinds, and cattle after their kinds, and every thing that creeps upon the earth after its kind: and God saw that it was good. 

Genesis 2: 19
Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.

NOTE: The man (Adam), not the Lord God, named the serpent, and it was associated with the 'kinds” of beasts of the earth and not creeping or crawling things (such as reptiles are)..

Genesis 3: 1
Now the serpent (Heb. nachash) was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? ERV 

NOTE: The word “subtil” is different from subtle in that some of the various meanings are these: mysterious; rarefied; nebulous; refined; arcane' veiled; or insubstantial

Genesis 3: 14
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, you arecursed 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:

Micah 7: 7a
They will lick the dust like a serpent, Like reptiles of the earth.

NOTE: Is this passage to be taken literally, too?

CONCLUSION:
Tradition or myth is a powerful shaper of concepts, but the Old Testament of the Bible clearly associates the 'serpent' as one of the animals or beasts; and not reptilian, originally. It is difficult to get a mental picture of what sort of creature it was, and as we know from evolution there are many species and types of creatures that once existed back in the dawn of time, but did not survive to the present era, or their fossil remains have yet to be discovered by scientists. The curse of the serpent might have been an evolutionary process over millennia and not necessarily an immediate event. Whatever the creature called the “serpent” at the beginning, be it shapeshifter or whatever, must have had the ability to communicate with the Adam and Eve, somehow; which would indeed have made it unique among all the “other” beasts of the field. Also, since God created “kinds” or pairs of every creature on the earth (Cp. Genesis 6: 19-20), why only one serpent, or was there more than the one in the narrative?

Robert Randle
776 Commerce St Apt 701
Tacoma, WA 98402
January 21, 2018
[email protected]