What was the snakes name in the bible

When Satan, the ancient serpent, is destroyed, we can go back and finally eat from the Tree of Life and be immortal in paradise. The story's ending changes from tragedy to comedy, to a happy ending for the righteous. The identification of the snake with Satan is more than a side-story in Judaism and Christianity.

It shows how important the book of Genesis was and still is , and how thinking about Genesis has long been a central activity. For our forebears and for many today, the sense of the world is linked to the senses of Genesis. Or, to put it differently, it is a mutual entanglement, in which the world is interpreted through Genesis, and Genesis is seen through the conceptual and moral framework of the world. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism.

Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. Terms Privacy Policy. Part of HuffPost Religion. The text of Genesis clearly states that God condemned the snake to crawl on its belly, as punishment, but only after Eve has tried the apple.

The two paintings on the right have it wrong, showing the snake looking like a snake. The painting on the left is correct. He seems to have had a thing about snakes. And nudes. The ancient Mediterranean region shared many common themes in their myths and religions.

Eve and the snake having sex is not at all an odd idea. In Roman mythology Jupiter seduced Olympia, shown here in a painting, in the guise of a snake. Probably the most explicit link between snakes and sex occurs in the Greek story of the sage Tiresias. He saw two snakes mating and beat them apart with a stick. This displeased the goddess Hera who then changed Tiresias into a woman.

He lived as a woman for 7 years and had children. Later he again beat apart coupling snakes and was changed back into a man. In some versions of the Greek Tiresias story he, after his encounter with the coupling snakes and being changed into a woman, was a prostitute for 7 years.

In the book of Joshua it refers to a woman, Rahab, who was a prostitute. It is also the name of a giant sea serpent, Rahab — the Leviathan — mentioned in Job, Isaiah, and Psalms. We already discussed earlier the biblical serpent Rahab the Leviathan, defeated by God in an epic battle at the dawn of Creation, similar to the much older Babylonian creation myths. In the Gemara about years ago part of the Babylonian Talmud there is an odd section Shabbat a where the rabbis debate various aspects of snakes having sex with women.

They seem convinced that this is a high priority with snakes. They give a method of coaxing a snake out, after it has entered a woman, by having her crouch over a small fire into which certain herbs have been thrown.

When the snake emerges it is to be grabbed with tongs and thrown into the fire. In that same Talmud passage the ever practical?? A snake in the Garden of Eden The Garden of Eden had many animals and plants but all it is known for, for most people, is Adam, Eve, and the Snake. Equally important are two trees, but we will first focus on the trio of the couple and the snake.

The ancient rabbis must have had a lot of time on their hands because they speculated endlessly about the Adam and Eve story, which only takes up a few lines in the bible. There is a tradition among these commentators that there is more to the simple story than meets the eye.

In the text the snake first occurs talking to Eve a talking snake — who knew? There is an imagined back story here where Eve and the snake had sex before Adam. Furthermore her son Cain had the snake as his biological father. When Cain kills his brother Abel he is showing his evil genetic background. The rabbis speculated that since Adam lived for a while in the garden before God created Eve to be his companion, that he had sex with all the animals during that time before Eve.

Satan or Lucifer is supposed to be a fallen angel, expelled from heaven, shown here by at left by Gustave Dore. There is no mention of Satan or Lucifer in the Old Testament. In the book of Job, Christian translations have Satan talking with God about Job but the actual Hebrew only refers to a nameless accuser. Satan is not an important concept in Judaism but it is in Christianity and Islam. The Book of Baruch, around the same time as the Book of Maccabees story of Hannukah , 50 BC neither is in the canonical Hebrew bible - claims that the Serpent had sexual relations with both Adam and Eve.

A Jewish tradition, also found in some Gnostic texts, holds that God originally created Adam as a hermaphrodite Midrash Rabbah, Genesis so that Adam was both male and female. God later decided that "it is not good for 'it' to be alone," and brought the feminine Eve out of Adam, leaving Adam as masculine only.

But the situation is much more complicated than this. There is a long Jewish tradition that Eve was the second wife of Adam and his first wife was Lilith, who is mentioned just once in the bible in Isaiah.

Furthermore Lilith was closely identified with snake imagery in surrounding cultures. She is described as a demon in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Jewish legends God makes a woman at the same time as Adam, as equals, and not from his body rib.

That is actually the first of the two creation stories in Genesis. In the Jewish legends, but not spelled out in the bible, she is Lilith - not Eve - and she and Adam quarrel. She refuses to be treated by Adam as under her. Literally under her physically, as during sex — when she wants to be on top. She storms off, leaves Adam, and becomes a night demon. Again snakes and people are put in the same sexual category. In art Lilith is usually shown is association with a snake.

This is usually translated as meaning that she is the mother of all living things. That is nonsense! At that point she was not even the mother of a child.

Snakes alive! They are everywhere! So Lilith and Eve and snakes and also sex are always closely associated. Lilith becomes a night demon incubus after leaving Eden and preys sexually on sleeping men. God Yahweh had a wife — Asherah, who was a fertility goddess. Archeologists in Israel have discovered numerous statues to her as well as household icons but almost all mention of her has been kept out of the bible. King Hezekiah around BC had Asherah poles destroyed to purify the religion and make it have a single deity.

Ancient mold for making Asherah statues Asherah was a fertility goddess and her statues seemed to have been sacred trees or wooden pillars. She was called the Mother of Heaven. Sort of like Eve being called the mother of all living things. Eve, Lilith, Asherah, the snake, and the Tree of Life are all connected Asherah was the wife or consort of the Canaanite god Baal and the Israelis seems to have adopted her as the wife of their own god Yahweh. She was a fertility goddess and her rituals had three main elements in the Canaanite religion— 1 Ritual prostitution, 2 snake worship and 3 human sacrifice — specifically child sacrifice.

The bible has many statements that show that Yahweh expected all first born, whether animals of the flock or human children, to be sacrificed to him. Eventually this changed and the story of Abraham and Isaac shows a shift to having an animal substitute sacrificed.

Wisdom, yielding to the divine law, is the source of healing and restoring influences, and the serpent form thus became a symbol of deliverance and health; and the Isr'lites were taught that it would be so with them in proportion as they ceased to be sensual and rebellious.

Preserved as a relic, whether on the spot of its first erection or elsewhere the brazen serpent, called by the name of Nehushtan , became an object of idolatrous veneration, and the zeal of Hezekiah destroyed it with the other idols of his father. An animal of the order of Serpentes , [creepers, crawlers, ] Of the class of Amphibia. Serpents are amphibious animals, breathing through the mouth bymeans of lungs only; having tapering bodies, without a distinct neck; the jaws not articulated, but dilatable, and withour feet, fins or ears.

Serpents move along the earth by a winding motion, and with the head elevated. Some species of them are viviparous, or rather ovi-viviparous; others are oviparous; and several species are venomous. In astronomy , a constellation of the northern hemisphere, containing, according to the British catalogue, sixty-four stars. An instrument of music, serving as a base to the cornet or small shawm, to sustain a chorus of singers in a large edifice.

It is so called for its folds or wreaths. Serpent stones or snake stones , are fossil shells of different sizes, found in strata of stones and clays. After setting out from their encampment at Ezion-gaber, the Israelites entered on a wide sandy desert, which stretches from the mountains of Edom as far as the Persian Gulf. While traversing this region, the people began to murmur and utter loud complaints against Moses.

As a punishment, the Lord sent serpents among them, and much people of Israel died. Moses interceded on their behalf, and by divine direction he made a "brazen serpent," and raised it on a pole in the midst of the camp, and all the wounded Israelites who looked on it were at once healed.

John , See ASP. This "brazen serpent" was preserved by the Israelites till the days of Hezekiah, when it was destroyed 2 Kings Numbers Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us. Jeremiah Deuteronomy He brought you water out of hard rock.

Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food! Isaiah Genesis You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. Micah They will come trembling out of their dens; they will turn in fear to the LORD our God and will be afraid of you. Psalm