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 (ethereal??).
Genesis
3: 14
And
the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, you
are
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:
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
