The Serpent of Genesis is not the Dragon of Revelations

Read my lips: Nobody "deceives" the inhabited earth.The struggle is within us. There is no external entity deceiving us.We struggle with good and evil because we have free will. We were created that way. Nobody deceived us into changing.Clear? So you are suggesting that there was only one serpent in the Bible? That every serpent in the Bible was Satan? If I find a garter snake in my back yard, is that Satan too? Remember the OP?

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IMO, the plain text reading does not support that the serpent of Genesis is the same as the serpent/dragon in the vision of Revelation.

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The serpent in Genesis is a beast of the field.

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It appears that I'm not the only one who doesn't see it. You'll have to do a better job of showing us. Then why do you keep calling the snake a "deceiver"? What does the snake have to do with anything if the struggle is within us? Why do you keep bringing up God's "adversary" if the struggle is within us?

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I didn't say that. I said that you are mistaken about what John meant. And you still neglect to explain how an all-powerful God can have an "external enemy". What "excuses" would those be?Remember me? I'm the one who's trying to convince you that our actions are our own responsibility - that there is no "external adversary" responsible, that there is no deception except what is built into us. That is the question, not the answer. You have not connected the dots. You have not established a link between the serpent and the dragon. All you do is keep repeating it as if it was a given.You have presented a complex interpretation which requires that God's power be shared with an "adversary". I have presented a simple interprestation in which no extraneous entities are introduced - Occam's razor - and God's power is not diminished.When estimating God's power, round up, not down.

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What does that have to do with deception?Connect the dots for your readers, not just in your own mind.

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"Indestructible life" is yet another assumption that you are making. That has not been established and it is not the topic of discussion here. Death is a part of life. Everything does not have to be a blessing or a curse. Some things just are. I don't need you to help me connect the dots. My dots are connected.You should be trying to connect the dots for the other people who are reading this. Convince them, not me.You have a lot of knowledge about the Bible, but you assume a lot of tenuous connections that you can't seem to explain adequately. (For example, you haven't established any connection between the death of Joseph and the serpent in the garden.)Try to think more clearly. Try to express yourself more clearly.Instead of trying to link every verse in the Bible together at once, try to make one good link at a time.

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Jaywill,The topic is not "indestructible life" (Message 131) or the serpent's "deception" (Message 132 and Message 133). You can take those discussions to the appropriate threads.The dots that you need to connect are:Dot #1: the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Dot #2: the dragon in the Revelation.You are trying to connect every dot in the Bible and in your imagination, but you are neglecting the topic at hand. You are writing a book where a paragraph would do if you had a strong argument.Your sole point seems to be that serpent=Satan and dragon=Satan, therefore serpent=dragon.You need to establish that serpent=Satan is true and that all "satans" are equal before your math will work.

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You keep telling us "What The Bible Really Means", but you don't back it up with anything but your opinion.The OP claims that what the Bible really says - to a plain reading - is that the serpent and the dragon are different characters in different stories with different symbolism and different purposes. If you disagree with the OP, it is up to you to connect the dots.You have to show that the serpent was Satan. You have not done that. There are other ongoing threads where you can try to make that case, but until that case is made there, you can not just assume that it is made here.You also have to show that the word/name "Satan", as used in the Bible, always refers to the same "entity". Your insistence on an external supernatural "adversary" actually mitigates against that idea.The serpent in Genesis is a "deceiver" (according to you). The Satan in Job is more like a prosecuting attorney, working at God's behest. The dragon in the Revelation is a mighty, destructive power. If they are all the same, why are they depicted so differently?As you have been told before, you miss the meaning of each individual story if you insist on conflating them all into one gigantic conspiracy theory. Quite frankly, I couldn't care less whether the snake and the dragon are the same or not.I have no vested interest because I don't believe there is a devil in the woodpile lying in wait to trap me. Since the supernatural adversary doesn't exist, what do I care if there are two different stories about him or one story about him?If you can make a reasonable case, I'd be glad to agree with you. Until then, there's more to be learned from two separate stories.(Edited to add subtitle.)This message has been edited by Ringo, 2006-03-15 08:50 AM

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Hi Jaywill,I'm going to go through your rant in some detail - while trying to keep the topic in sight. If I get tired, I might not make it through to the end. As always, I leave it to the intelligent members of the board to decide who has made whose case. If they wish, they may also decide who is "posturing" instead of presenting a clear case. When I say, "what the Bible says - to a plain reading," I mean a plain reading of the Bible.Try for a plain reading of my posts. The problem here is the "conjunction" - which you have not adequately shown. Agreed. And you have not made a convincing connection between the snake and any fallen angel.I do not accept that there is an entity "behind" the serpent. And purpledawn does not accept that the dragon in the Revelation is supernatural. You are still just assuming your conclusion. The reasons why you disagree are not what the debate is about. There's not much point in posting your opinions unless you're trying to make them clear to somebody else. Why treat me like an adversary when I'm trying to get you to clarify your position? Since you are taking a position against the OP, it is up to you to rebut it. It isn't my job to defend it.Even so, I have rebutted you:1. There is no evidence that the serpent was Satan.
2. There is no evidence that every use of the word "Satan" in the Bible refers to the same entity.Purpledawn has also rebutted you:3. There is no evidence that the dragon is Satan. (I make no pretense of presenting her whole case here. ) So, are you saying that Sleeping Beauty and Goldilocks were the same person too? Look at the similarities - both female, both good-looking, both sleepy.... What about Snow White? Didn't she go into a deep sleep too? Maybe all of the fairy tales are really about the same young woman. The enmity in Genesis is between people and snakes. The enmity in the Revelation is between the Jews and the Roman Empire. Why does all enmity have to be the same? Do you know the difference between a parallel and an intersection?Parallels, by definition, are similar in some ways but not identical. Parallel lines (of thought) can not intersect both in Genesis and in the Revelation. Now, where did I say anything about "plurals"?I referred to different usages of the word. Your beloved Strong's Concordance will tell you that the Hebrew word means "an opponent" and the Greek word means "the accuser". Arachnophilia has discussed elsewhere the various usages, definite and indefinite articles, etc. You are welcome to refer to that discussion when you show us that every use of the word refers to the same entity. Purpledawn has answered that. A mad dog on a leash?Who do you think a mad dog would attack? Would he strain against the leash or would he turn on whoever was holding the leash?Very, very, very bad analogy. You depict Satan as a threat to his Master. Not me.Please try to keep up: I have said that the snake was not a liar and that the snake was not Satan.As for what God "needs": I have said that the storyteller needed a character to be the "bad guy". In Genesis, the bad guy tempts Adam and Eve to eat from the tree. In Job, the bad guy tempts Job to turn against God. Both of them advance the plot. In both cases, the decision is in human hands. No adversary to God is needed or implied. It isn't possible, of course.I have said that if God is all-powerful there is no room for a rival entity with any amount of power, whether waxing or waning. You have not addressed that point.

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"Woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you and has great rage, knowing that he has only a short time" (Rev. 12:12)

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It's your own quote. Look at the last three words - "a short time".That was written two thousand years ago. Does that not suggest to you that the "short time" referred to a contemporary menace? For example, the Roman Empire? Still blasphemy.

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Are you going to be the one to explain to Jaywill that an "archetype" and an "arch-villain" are not the same thing?

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... Cain was of the evil one and slew his brother.

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I never thought of it that way before, but maybe that's exactly what John meant - a kind of reference to "original sin".I don't mean upper-case-Original upper-case-Sin. I mean the inborn capacity to sin, which we inherited from the parents-of-us-all, Adam and Eve.Cain being "of the evil one" might just mean he had the capacity to sin.I'm also curious as to why you make a distinction between "sin" and "evil". Adam and Eve sinned, but they weren't "evil"?It seems to me that you are unnecessarily projecting onto an outside source - that poor little snake - our own deficiencies.

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I don't think it's clear that the personification of evil is an actual "entity". You have to assume the existence of a powerful "adversary" in order to read it that way. (As you know, my a priori assumption is that no poweful rival of God can exist - and therefore it probably doesn't. You have never adequately addressed that issue.) I haven't studied that website, but I'm guessing that the Talmud and the Midrash are referring to "the devil" in a figurative sense - i.e. the personification of evil. As I understand it, the Jewish commentaries are more concerned with the capacity for sin within us than with external sources of "evil". That's pretty much what I've been saying. It was a snake.And the deeper truths are about us, not "the Devil".

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No. I've been trying - without much luck - to get you to show us that "plain teaching". (This thread may not be the place to do that.) I have no problem with that. Sometimes the aspect of a prosecutor, sometimes the aspect of a tempter - it's the same figure of speech. That is exactly what I mean.

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Unlikely.I, for one, have heard that crap for decades and it's still just as empty as it ever was.You have failed to establish a satanic link between the serpent and the dragon because you have failed to establish a Satan in opposition to God.

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Sorry, but I think you're shooting yourself in the foot here.How can a plain text reading "capture the full range of Jewish thought"? A plain text reading is what the words say, not every conceivable implication of what they say.My purple friend can correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole point of the thread seems to be to avoid the extraneous externals.(And I don't think you sound harsh. Nothing that long-winded could be harsh. )

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Are you confusing "plain text" with "literal"?A plain text reading of Goldilocks and the three bears does not require us to believe in talking bears, does it? Neither does it require us to read all kinds of symbolism and cultural implications into the story.Sometimes a story is just a story. Personally, I draw the line at talking snakes. And what happens in Genesis stays in Genesis.

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If God didn't create the serpent, who did?I was under the impression that God created everything.

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