It was concluded in the previous chapter that the serpent represented evil, and that Adam and Eve’s eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad could be explained as gaining experiential knowledge of their physicality.

​

This is too simple a conclusion for this story and we need to look further for the meaning of this allegory.

An alternative way of viewing the Garden of Eden story is that it covers two underlying questions:

​

 

• What is the status of humankind in relation to God?

​​

and

​

• Who determines the moral code by which the universe functions – man or God?

 

A helpful way for investigating these issues is via the concept of the serpent.

 

Many Hebrew words express underlying concepts. The Hebrew word for a serpent is nochosh – from the three root letters nun, chet and shin. From these three letters comes the noun nichush, which means magic or witchcraft. The verb from these three root letters is lenacheish, which means to guess or to foretell, but it can also meaen to engage with the supernatural. This raises the possibility that the serpent in the Garden of Eden story is not an agent of evil but an indicator of the way to the occult. 

 

It is difficult for us nowadays to appreciate the importance of the occult in ancient times. The supernatural world was the realm in which the gods operated. It was also where illness and death were decreed, since these were conditions controlled by the gods. Diviners would attempt to tap into the supernatural realm to foretell the future by means of omens. The non-Jewish prophet Balaam, introduced in the book of Numbers, was a skillful operator of the supernatural world. 

 

The Torah does not deny the existence of the occult since this was also the realm of the One God. Nor does the Bible deny Balaam’s art and its effectiveness. Rather, the Bilaam story is about how God neutralized Balaam’s control of the supernatural and took over his divinations.

​

The function of the serpent as indicating a pathway to the spiritual world was well known in the ancient world. Along the monumental entrance structures to the temple of Marduk in Babylon were dragon-serpent reliefs. A Mesopotamian deity strongly linked to serpents was called Ningishzida. His name means roughly “Lord of the Good Tree.” He was associated with serpents, vegetation, and the gates of the underworld. He was frequently shown as a serpent or serpent-dragon. The crowns of the Egyptian Pharaohs often contained Uraeus, a stylized representation of a rearing cobra. It symbolized the goddess Wadjet who was a protector of Lower Egypt and the Pharaoh. This cobra was believed to provide protection through its venomous power, warding off enemies and malevolent forces. In a mystical sense, the Uraeus embodied the Pharaoh’s connection to the divine and his role as a mediator between the gods and his subjects.

​

Of interest is a 12-inch copper serpent found in a pagan temple in Timna Park in the Negev.1 Timna was an important site for the production of copper.2 It indicates that the use of a copper snake was well established in the ancient world for occult practices.

 

When Moses was approached by God to become leader of the Jewish people, Moses asked for signs that he could show the Israelite people (Exodus chapter 4). God told him to throw his staff to the ground and it turned into a serpent. He was then asked to put his hand under his cloak and it became leprous. These were not party tricks. The serpent was a sign pointing towards the supernatural and leprosy was the product of the supernatural. Both indicated that Moses had received privileged access to God’s supernatural realm and could now be considered a prophet of God.

 

When Moses returned to Pharaoh to persuade him to let the Israelites go, his first demonstration was to throw his staff on the ground and it became a snake (Exodus chapter 7). Pharaoh’s magicians were also able to do this. Maimonides, ever the rationalist, suggests that both Moses and the magicians had produced a sleight of hand. More plausible, however, is that Moses was demonstrating to the magicians that he had access to the supernatural world. Initially, at least, Pharaoh’s magicians were unimpressed, since they also were able to produce snakes from their staffs and thereby influence the supernatural world. However, it did not take them long to realize that their power over the supernatural was no match for Moses’, as Moses’ snake was able to gobble theirs up.

 

The Book of Numbers (21:4-9) relates how the Israelites spoke out against God and Moses due to their discontent with their conditions and food while in the wilderness. Because of this, God sent venomous snakes among the people and many were bitten and died. Following their repentance, Moses interceded for the people, and God instructed him to make a model of a serpent and set it on a pole. Those bitten would look at it and live. The Talmud explains that when they looked up towards heaven and subjected their hearts to God they were healed.3 Rashi also explains that Moses made the serpent out of copper because the Hebrew word for snake nachash is linked to the Hebrew word for copper (nechoshes).

 

None of these explanations provide a reason as to why a copper snake was a fitting way to reach out to heaven. However, once it is appreciated that the serpent was being used as a vehicle for reaching into the divine realm, its use becomes understandable. It also explains why it was kept as a memorial during the First Temple period. Eventually, King Hezekiah of Judah destroyed it as part of his religious reform program, as it was being used inappropriately as an object of worship:

 

He abolished the high places, and broke the images, and cut down the ashera (idolatrous groves), and crushed the copper serpent that Moses had made: for until those days the children of Israel were burning incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan (II Kings 18:4).4

 

There are a number of biblical prohibitions against delving into the occult (Deuteronomy 18:9-14 and Leviticus 20:6). Divination was perceived by the Torah as a threat to Torah-belief, since entering the realm of the supernatural sought to usurp control of this strata from God.

 

Thus, an alternative explanation for the role of the snake in the Garden of Eden was that he was offering Adam and Eve a path to the supernatural world. This would place both of them on a par with God. The means for doing this was to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad.

  

This explanation fits well into the plain meaning of the text. Consider the words of the serpent: 

 

You will not surely die; for Elohim knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and bad (Genesis 3:5). 

 

The text does not say — and you will know good and bad and therefore be like God, but rather that first you will be like God and then have knowledge of good and bad. This knowledge would enable them to formulate their own moral code. Hence, the name of the tree.  

 

Being on a par with God was, of course, not the only option available to Adam and Eve. One possibility was for them to function as a higher form of an animal. Adam may even have considered this possibility when looking for a mate, although he eventually rejected it:

 

And the man assigned names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field; but as for man, he did not find a helper against him (Genesis 2:20).

 

Because he is in the image and likeness of God as described in Genesis I (Genesis 1:29), Adam could also have continued to function as he was, at a level just below that of the angels. He would continue to live in the rarefied environment of the Garden of Eden in a utopian existence and functioning totally in obeyance with God’s wishes. His experience of good and evil would be based on what God commanded him. He would still, of course, have free will and could eat of all the delicious fruits of the garden. However, he would assiduously avoid the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why not continue like this? Perhaps because it lacked the challenges of overcoming temptations?

 

Then there was the way offered by the serpent —to reach into the supernatural world and be almost on a par with God, and in particular “to be like God knowing good and bad’ (Genesis 3:5), namely having the freedom to devise one’s own moral code.

 

Once they had eaten of the fruit of the tree, YHWH had no alternative but to eject them from the garden lest they eat from the Tree of Life. Should they have done this and attained immortality, God and mankind would be in perpetual competition for the direction of the moral world.

 

And YHWH Elohim said “Behold man has become like one of us knowing good and bad, and now, lest he put forth and take also of the Tree of Life and eat and live forever” (ibid 3:23).

 

Clearly, Adam and Eve had overreached. They had been given a privileged position in a paradise, the Garden of Eden, in which their earthliness was of no importance to them because of the spirituality pervading the Garden of Eden. Now, however, because they had directed themselves towards the spiritual realms, they had to be made aware of their earthliness, sexuality and mortality. 

 

The beauty of this explanation is that the punishments, or more accurately consequences, now fit the crime. Adam and Eve aimed for the heavens and are now firmly brought down to earth.

 

Adam was, of course, already linked to the earth (adama) by his name, but his earthly nature had been of little relevance to him. However, as soon as the couple ate of the forbidden fruit, they gained immediate awareness of their physicality:

 

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed together a fig leaf and made themselves aprons (Genesis 3:7). 

 

As the serpent had promised, “their eyes will be opened” (ibid 3:5). However, their eyes were not engaged with the higher spiritual realm they had anticipated but to awareness of their physical natures.

 

In summary, this allegory describes why immortality was not bestowed upon mankind, why Adam and Eve needed to be ejected from Paradise, and why man needs to be so strongly bound to the earth. If man had remained immortal, he would have dominated the earth with his own ethics. The Bible has also explained the reason for the dissonance between the perfection of the universe created by Elohim in the first creation account and the challenges existing for man in the second.

​

However, we have not finished with the Garden of Eden story yet. The consequences for the serpent, Eve and Adam are yet to come. Do the consequences relate to their crimes?

​

I suggest they do.

 

References

​

1. The original of this copper serpent is in the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv and a replica is displayed in the Visitor Center at Timna Park.

2. Timna was a major copper mining and production site beginning in the Chalcolithic period, which was from about 4,500 BCE. The Chalcolithic period is distinguished by its use of copper, this being the first metal to be extracted and purified by man on an industrial scale. Copper would have had a number of uses and one of them was for cultic activities. This may be why the Hebrew word for copper, nechoshet, is from the same root as lenacheish, to engage in reaching the occult or spiritual world. This is an instance in which the Bible helps us understand the pagan world, rather than the other way round.

3. TB Rosh Hashona 29a.

4. This episode is discussed in the Talmud (TB Avoda Zarah 44a). No explanation is provided in the Bible nor in the Talmud as to how it was being used inappropriately, but Rashi suggests that the serpent itself was used as an object of worship.