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Concept
Serpents in the Bible
Summary
Serpents (נָחָשׁ) are referred to in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in the religious traditions and cultural life of ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life, healing, and rebirth.
Nāḥāš (), Hebrew for "snake", is also associated with divination, including the verb form meaning "to practice divination or fortune-telling". Nāḥāš occurs in the Torah to identify the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, it is also used in conjunction with seraph to describe vicious serpents in the wilderness. The tannin, a dragon monster, also occurs throughout the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Exodus, the staves of Moses and Aaron are turned into serpents, a nāḥāš for Moses, a tannin for Aaron. In the New Testament, the Book of Revelation makes use of ancient serpent and the Dragon several times to identify Satan or the Devil (; ). The serpent is most often identified with the hubristic Satan, and sometimes with Lilith.
The narrative of the Garden of Eden and the fall of humankind constitute a mythological tradition shared by all the Abrahamic religions, with a presentation more or less symbolic of Judeo-Christian morals and religious beliefs, which had an overwhelming impact on human sexuality, gender roles, and sex differences both in the Western and Islamic civilizations. In mainstream (Nicene) Christianity, the doctrine of the Fall is closely related to that of original sin or ancestral sin. Unlike Christianity, the other major Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, do not have a concept of "original sin", and instead have developed varying other interpretations of the Eden narrative.
Serpent (symbolism) and Snakes in mythology
In one of the oldest stories ever written, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the main character and eponymous protagonist Gilgamesh loses the power of immortality, stolen by a snake.
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