The Serpent of Genesis is not the Dragon of Revelations

What was the fate of the serpent in the garden? So all we need to do, is see if Satan appears doing anything other than crawling on his belly. Of course, that could be a bad translation, it could be 'traverse'. Once again, could be a translation issue. Moving on... Interesting comparison. Why would the devil be compared with a lion and not, for example, a snake?There are references to Satan/the Devil sitting on a throne. I'm not sure crawling serpents can really be defined as 'sitting'.Another interesting verse: I come away from the Bible not seeing Satan and the serpent as being the same. I see satan as being an Angel given a job by God (yes, pun intended), him getting overzealous in his duty and becoming the eternal enemy of mankind.This message has been edited by Modulous, Sat, 04-March-2006 09:12 PM

Yes, I think everyone agrees with that interpretation. So to find out what that creature is, we need to find a legless serpent that lays eggs that hatch into legless serpents. I'd go with snake. I thought the serpent of the garden wasn't cursed to become a snake? Isn't that what you were saying in Message 48?My reading is that there was a legged serpent that did a bad thing so God cursed it and now we have snakes, sprung from the seed of the original cursed serpent.

I don't see why it should show up in the fossil record necessarily, but it might do.I appreciate that the pre-curse serpent was much different that the post-curse one. It had legs for a start. I don't see anyone missing this. It was what became the snake. It was a legged snake you might say. In the same way that a pre-curse woman was still a woman. The same way that a man with no legs is still a man. Yes, I know. It seems to be everyone elses literal reading too, particularly arach's. Which is why I'm having difficulty understanding where the issue is. Not all ancient reptillians were dinosaurs though. Evolutionary thought has snakes descending from a sister line of the dinosaurs, so the best bet is looking away from dinosaurs. I always thought of the Eden serpent looking like this little fella.I'm fairly sure that Voranidae are not the same linneage as dinosaurs, but I could be wrong. What do you think? Which is fine, and the way I read it, and the way arach reads it...when we consider the text literally.

It kind of implies that there was a kind in which the serpent fits. It does seem that there were more than one member in this kind, but that doesn't imply that it will definitely get fossilized. It might be that there were only 12 in its kind. Wouldn't expect fossilization then. A plain reading would indicate that the individual serpent that was guilty would have lost its legs, and all the offspring it sires would be legless. Given that the original serpent and its offspring were cursed to be stamped on by humans (in the head), I'd be surprised if the original serpent lived that long, but its possible. Yes, arach has expanded on this, but in the thread you were replying to, I put a link to certain monitor lizards, which are how I imagine the genesis serpent. I'm not surprised you agree, you just quoted yourself (not me). Yep, but if God cursed me, would I change kinds? What I'm confused about is the nature of these misunderstandings. We don't really seem to be having any obvious ones, just some minor differences of opinion. Well...that's fine. The point I was making is imagine those guys as having no legs. They kind of look snake like. When I picture the Eden serpent I see something similar to one of those guys. In the very simplest way, yes, but it could also look like a daschund so that wouldn't be useful! When we look closely at snake body structure and dino body structure we see that dinos are far from snakes with legs. There are other organisms in the fossil record that would be more obvious candidates for legful snakes.

So Dimetrodon was post curse then? I agree. However, that doesn't mean that the parents will get fossilized. We have no Biblical evidence that there was more than a few Serpents, why would we expect them to be fossilized? That seems contrary to what you said. Which would indicate that the curse did not affect the Serpent itself, but its offspring. I'm fairly sure a plain reading would show that the Serpent was also cursed, just as his offspring were. Unless you are now pushing back the word parent to before the Serpent? Still, we need to know, did the curse affect all 'reptiles' or did it leave some parent 'dino' group unscathed? I don't that's right at all, several non dino examples have been provided in this very thread which have much closer tails, bodies AND heads to snakes than dinos had. A balloon snake with balloon legs kind of looks like a balloon daschund to me.

Interesting line of thought. It could be that the Serpent was a tree snake, sometimes on the ground, often in trees...and that God cursed it to live in the desert. Other Serpents (sea snakes other tree snakes) carried on living in their preferred environments.

It wasn't a dating issue, I was just wondering how your thinking was working. So basically the only lizard like creatures pre-curse were dinos, after the curse other reptiles formed. It seems rather unorthodox, is there any basis at all for it, or is just a pet theory? I'm just trying to get a grip on your position. What are these parents? When you said parents, I was inferring you meant the original serpent and another. Do you mean their parents? Or do you mean their offspring?The second point confuses me even more. You originally said I am asking why should this legged creature show up in the fossil record? What Biblical support is there for many serpents to exist? You've just conceded that the Bible says nothing about numbers, so there is no reason to believe that they should have fossilized. OK, so before the curse, there were only dinosaurs, no reptiles is that right?These precursed parents were dinosaurs I take it.The curse affected all dinosaurs, except these precursed parents?It seems to me you are saying the curse affected all dinosaurs on one hand, and on the other hand you are saying it affected only most dinos. I'm trying to follow the argument but I was hoping for clarification. The only way I can reconcilliate the problem is that God cursed the dinosaurs to have reptillian offspring. Is that what you are saying? And this would seem to suggest my reconciliation is correct. I needed to rehash this because it seemed to be contrary to the plain reading of the Genesis account, but you insisted it wasn't. As such I thought that I had misunderstood something you had said, so I am looking for clarification.The problem I am having with it is that a plain reading of the Genesis account would suggest that one of the parents (ie the garden Serpent) was cursed to crawl on its belly. It might not be logical that the parent was zapped into a belly crawler, but that's what Genesis says. This came up in Message 74, if you want to start at the beginning. True, but they universally have characteristics which no reptile has, and vice versa. Whereas the other candidates that have been put forward don't have this problem. Hence why I would recommend looking at non-dinos for the serpent. I'm not scraping the barrel, I know that lizards/dinos and dogs are very different. I will repeat what you said so you can understand where this came from, you may realize that my tongue was in my cheek...from Message 74: