Podcast: The Fall of Adam and Eve - With Jonathan Pageau

Just what exactly is a malicious serpent doing in the Garden of Eden in the first place?

One of the great mysteries of the Hebrew Bible is the figure usually associated as Satan in the prelapsarian utopia of Eden. Re-reading the text of Genesis, you will discover that nowhere is the serpent so identified; we are not given any further information about this creature than that he is is more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made (in the words of the King James Version).

This serpent — usually depicted in religious art as a typical snake, although likely to have had legs, since God’s later punishment is to force him to crawl on his belly for generations — is the voice that calls Eve to eat of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, granting her and Adam a godlike consciousness that forever condemns them and their children.

That is, at least, the traditional reading. That Hebrew word—arum—translated variously as “subtil”, “crafty”, or “shrewd”, can also mean “sensible” or “prudent”, and the serpent told Eve at least one truth: that by eating of the tree, she will become like God, knowing good and evil, and that God, for whatever reason, didn’t want that.