The Serpent of Genesis is not the Dragon of Revelations

ok, so:
1. lives in the water.
2. big.you saved me from asking my next question: what's big and lives in the water? a whale.according to my hebrew dictionary, the modern word for whale is — though other sources spell it — -- "LeViYaTaN." the plural, — (leviyatanim) literally invokes the (taninm) of genesis 1:21. wikipedia claims the name comes from a word meaning "twisted" or "coiled."so, as per the bible, whales = serpents. i know i've showed pictures before demonstrating that whales were not known very well, even somewhat more recently. they were considered sea-serpents. the term "serpent" seems to be kind of loose -- i doubt moses's staff turned into a whale.

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slight correction: in job, satan does his own bidding, allowed by god. he is quite independent: it is satan that suggests the test to god, not god commanding satan.it still cannot happen, but by the will of god. but it's not god's bidding. ...does job pass? there's about 30-some-odd chapters in there that seem rather failing. never outright, if i remember, but he certainly seems to imply that god is an absentee parent, or an unjust one. and yet, at the end, it's job's friends that god says are wrong.job is a very curious book.

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darn people have no real clarity when it comes to this, but thats mythology for you more than likely i think so, giants and cyclopses and other things might be interpreted from remains of huge life-forms. i agree with this, nothing in the bible says it was anything more than a crafty snake

this is very true, the norse vikings called whales sea serpents, they never got very close to the whales to really see what they were. since whales move rather fluidly, they could make that misstake

By the will of God or by God's bidding. I don't see much difference. Well, we have to go to the back of the book to find the answer:

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Job 42:12 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning....

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Job got his "diploma", so he must have passed the test. Even Jesus said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"I don't think that questioning God is the problem. Rejecting the answers is the problem.Job faced his hardships with the typical human response, "Why me?" and God answered (more or less), "Who are you to question me?" In the end, Job accepted that answer.(Which brings us full-circle to Cain. We don't know why his offering was rejected by God. We only know that he rejected God's rejection. Same story as Job, essentially - different ending.)

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so, as per the bible, whales = serpents. i know i've showed pictures before demonstrating that whales were not known very well, even somewhat more recently. they were considered sea-serpents.

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Interesting. I was searching for info on whales in the Mediterranean Sea, which is the closest large body of water the ancients had access to, right?This site concerning the Med Sea states: The Fin Whale is the second largest animal in the world. It can grow to 85ft long.The Sperm Whale also gets to about 60 feet long and has teeth.Since the sperm whale blowhole is to the side and not centered, when it expells the stream is to the side. I wonder if that is what gave the inspiration for fire breathing? Looks like steam.I also wonder how much the swimming in pods and such inspired the many headed idea.Needless to say their sea had two very large whales for their viewing.I can see how the dragon in Revelation could be based on these whales.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

...well, lets not go that far. the dragon of revelation is based on pre-existing legends, and there's a lot of distortion in between. it's not like john saw a whale, and thought "big seven headed snake!" it's just that legends grow after a while.also, i would like to suggest (before anyone else) that the multi-headed sea-dragon myths might also have some origin in giant squid. certainly the kraken and homer's scylla does. maybe leviathan as well? it's possible that rare encounter with different animals are distorted and combined...

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it's subtle, but the difference is free will. which is a big deal for us human types. so maybe the fundamentalists who scorn doubting thomas might take head to job, and indeed jesus. questioning god is not a sin. job sought, and he found.

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well, lets not go that far. the dragon of revelation is based on pre-existing legends,

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Sorry I didn't connect the dots. Based on pre-existing legends that probably were inspired by these whales.

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also, i would like to suggest (before anyone else) that the multi-headed sea-dragon myths might also have some origin in giant squid.

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I wondered about that also when I read that the sperm whale feeds on the Giant Squids which feed at the lower depths. Makes one wonder if they bring them to the surface to eat.Lots of inspiration possibilities. (No wording changed in edit)This message has been edited by purpledawn, 03-13-2006 09:19 AM

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

quite. anyways, i was bringing it up mostly to show that the definition of "serpent" is rather vague, in this case.we can conclude that where some of these serpents might be (paritially) inspired by mysterious animals in the sea, the serpent in the garden was not. it is a definition of a common garden snake. no legend, no mystery, and no awe seems to be implied here.

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The serpent in Genesis is of course related to and representative of Satan the Devil. Here are other considerations that convince me that the "ancient serpent" is indeed the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole inhabited earth (Rev.12:9).The serpent tells Eve that the couple will gain the knowledge of good and evil. This part is true. Even God agrees that they have gained that knowlege (Gen.3:22). But the cost of this knowledge is not only that they must die but that vast majority of humans only perform evil."And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was ONLY EVIL continually" (Gen.6:5)Man was deceived to gain the knowledge of good and evil. But the actual outcome was that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil, and that in one endless and continous stream. This shows the deception of the serpent. Eventually, what did they fill their minds with? The sad answer is "only evil".Satan is said to be the identity of the ancient serpent (Rev. 12:9). The actual facts of Genesis make this association beyond dispute - "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually".The serious Bible student should notice that man has gone from being created "very good" (Gen. 1:31) only to degenerate into being "only evil" and that by listening to the serpent. How can the serpent not mean something very powerful that has knocked man off tract from the original nature of his creation? How could such a influencial creature only be a talking snake?God discribes the downward decline of human society as [b]"the end of all flesh" (Gen.6:12). A gradual corruption has been put into motion starting with man listening and obeying the serpent. [b]"And the earth was corrpt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt ...". God's creation has gone from Him beholding that it was "very good" to beholding that it was "corrupt". Adam and Eve with the serpent are responsible for this decline of the earth into corruption.I don't listen to the nonsense that that the Devil was God's helper. The Devil was responsible for taking God's creation from "very good" to "corrupt", "filled with violence", arriving at "the end of all flesh", causing man to be filled with wickedness in his imagination continously, and causing God to repent that He made man on the earth.What kind of helper then is this?The obvious opposite of the serpent's enfluence is to walk with God. Genesis repeats the formula from the decendents of Adam "and he died ... and he died ... and he died ... and he died ...etc. (See Genesis 5:5 - 27). But Enoch escapes dying but is translated by God out of the cursed earth. And why? Because he "walked with God" (Gen. 5:24). The opposite of serpent's deception and subsequent death is therefore to "walk with God". So the serpent cannot be God's helper if his enticement brought about the opposite of walking with God.Noah also is said to have "walked with God" - [b]"And these are the generations of Noah, Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generations; and Noah walked with God"{/b.The result of the serpents temptation was that man would not walk with God. The way of escape from the corruption and judgment was for man to "walk with God". The serpent is rightly designated by Revelation 12 as the one who decieves the whole inhabited earth - the sncient serpent, the Devil and Satan.I also see God's wisdom in representing the Satan as a snake n Genesis. The snake is obviously not human. And it is important that man would learn that the enemy of God is not human. By portraying the fallen angel as a serpent animal, two things are established in embryonic form:1.) The devil and Satan was a creation of God. That is because the serpent, like the other creatures, was an item from Gods' creating hand.2.) The devil and Satan is not human. He is actually superhuman. But in morality he is depicted as a serpent. That is something lower and meaner than human.Portraying the devil and Satan as a serpent has for God an educational function. Further details on the nature of God's enemy are provided latter in the rest of the Bible. The bottom line here is that Revelation 12 correctly identifies the serpent as Satan. That is really all we have to know.The color, shape, length, way of speaking, species, beauty, whether it had legs or not, or could not, and all other questions like this are really not important in the biblical scheme of things.This message has been edited by jaywill, 03-13-2006 05:19 AMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 03-13-2006 05:21 AMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 03-13-2006 05:24 AMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 03-13-2006 05:25 AM

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The serpent in Genesis is of course related to and representative of Satan the Devil.

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IMO, you're projecting a later belief onto an earlier writing. The use of the word evil and corrupt is not indicative of Satan.You haven't really connected the dots in a way that I see a obvious connection from Revelation to Genesis.Since the Persions apparently believed in the good versus evil scenerio and they believed in a ruler over the powers of evil, who had many servants in this realm known as demons, I do see this influence on later beliefs. I don't see this view in Genesis though.

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What kind of helper then is this?

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One Jewish reading described Satan as a member of God's court, the prosecuting attorney, but IMO that is also a later belief than the Genesis story.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

Satan is said to be an ancient serpent, not "the" ancient serpent. That's hardly a positive ID. It's like saying the perpetrator was a Caucasian male, not "that" Caucasian male. You still have not answered the question: How can any entity - snake or Satan - be powerful enough to knock god's intentions off track? We know you don't listen. How can we have a meaningful discussion if you willfully refuse to listen to the other side?We may need a separate topic for this, but you have to establish that Satan is a serious "adversary" to God before you can start proclaiming that every evil influence in the Bible is Satan.

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Nothing good came out as a result of man listening to the serpent. The only good that came out of it was related to man's desire to be saved from the damage of his having listened to the serpent.The corruption, the decay, the judgement all came as a result of Adam's going to way of the serpent. If that is not the effect of an ultimate Evil than it is good enough to be virtually so. Further splitting hairs that the serpent is not Satan the Devil are pointless.He might as well have been if he was not. You have to consider if God should open up the Bible with a long backround comment on the nature of angels good and bad. This as an introduction to the Bible might not make much sense.I don't see why you cannnot see the wisdom of God in telling us initially sparse details about the nature of His ultimate advasary. That these details are provided latter seems proper to me.God's main concern is man in Genesis. Therefore we do not have in Genesis a long history of Satan. We have a mentioning of something virtually so close to such a being but only as it is related to MAN.Details are filled in latter. Why does this scheme seem unlikely to you in the arrangement of communicated truths of the Bible?Do you object that it could not be Satan because Genesis should have had at least a chapter telling the origin of Satan? Why not consider that some amount of silence on who the serpent is does not mean there is little significance to him? First or Second Samuel may contribute to this opinion. About five times it says that a lying spirit from God was sent upon Saul. But I take this to indicate that the Devil is under God's sovereign control and cannot trespass beyond what God will permit.Job seemed certain that uttimately it was God who was behind his misfortune. And God does not deny this in Job. God only rebukes Job for his foolish utterances based on his limited understanding of God's ways.This message has been edited by jaywill, 03-13-2006 11:23 AM

Much good came from listening to the serpent. One major difference between mankind and all other animals is the extent of our knowledge of good and evil. It is the one gift that lets us have things such as Veterinarians, the Endangered Species List, reforestation efforts, Doctor's Without Borders, a concept of Justice.But that has nothing to do with the question in this thread.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion