This one was fun. I collect fossil shark teeth and always wanted to research the story behind their common name "glossopterae" or "tongues of stone". Well before modern science fossils were being found, but without any knowledge of paleontology all kinds of crazy legends and theories arose to explain them. For those not aware of fossil shark teeth here's a brief run down. Sharks have many teeth, rows of them. As they feed they cast off teeth in the violence. These teeth are naturally very stable and fossilize well. Sharks have been around a very very long time therefore there are many of these fossil sharks teeth to be discovered. In the acient world Malta was famed for the abundance of these fossil teeth so that they are also commonly known as Malta Teeth or Melitenses. Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) being what passed for a naturalist of the day examined these Malta teeth and coined the name "tongue teeth" accepting the commonly held notion that they were serpents teeth, but he held they had fallen from the moon. Quite logical. It needs to be mentioned that it was and still is wrongly believed that snakes bite with their tongues.
There were beliefs that if a person wore the serpents teeth/tongue as an amulet you would be protected from harm or some held that if you soaked the teeth in wine an antidote for snakebite was made. These legends believe it or not continued until the 1600s when it finally was understood that these were teeth of long dead sharks.
Now what does this have to do with anything Bibical? Everything.
Acts 28: 3 but Paul having gathered together a quantity of sticks, and having laid [them] upon the fire, a viper -- out of the heat having come -- did fasten on his hand.
4 And when the foreigners saw the beast hanging from his hand, they said unto one another, `Certainly this man is a murderer, whom, having been saved out of the sea, the justice did not suffer to live;'
5 he then, indeed, having shaken off the beast into the fire, suffered no evil,
6 and they were expecting him to be about to be inflamed, or to fall down suddenly dead, and they, expecting [it] a long time, and seeing nothing uncommon happening to him, changing [their] minds, said he was a god.
We all know the story but did you know that the Malta teeth aka serpents teeth are connected with the Acts story? The island of Malta has no poisonous snakes and did not in antiquity either. The reason? Very old Maltese legend says that Paul not only was not killed by a poison serpent but he did so by removing the poison teeth from all the serpents that lived on the island!!! These teeth fell out of the mouth of the snakes to the ground and that is why Malta has an abundance of "serpents teeth" and why there are no poisonous snakes on Malta!!
There are similar legends in other places written to explain the absence of deadly snakes. For example, Ireland has an ancient legend that claims the grandson of Pharoah was healed of snakebite by Moses who then promised that wherever he or his offspring lived, snakes would have no poison. Guess what? according to the legend they moved to Ireland, hence Ireland has no poisonous snakes.
Now I have always found the Acts story a bit weird. It just smacks you as legend. Notice for example where the snake comes from. That's right, the fire. I know modern Christians have spun it so that the snake was just hiding in the wood or something (improbable as it would be that he could have picked up the bundle and carried it without it trying to escape or defend itself) but there was a belief popular in the acient world that snakes were born from fire. 'Firey serpents' or Seraphim were in Hebrew mythos, brazen (used to represent the color of fire) sepents were common standards and idols. The Greek mythos included the 'fire-born' serpent. The Chinese even associated the serpent with fire in their zodiac....etc you get the point. This might suggest that the story in Acts 28 may be an adaptation of a very old Maltese myth explaing the "sepent teeth/tongues" abundant on the island. Perhaps in the original a local god stole the teeth from the fire-born serpent and it's offspring. When Christianity got a foothold the original was lost to the Christian story in Acts. Like the Irish myth of Moses and the Pharoah's grandson, legends are made to explain what is observed but not understood. Perhaps the Maltese version of the Acts story reflects a more original rather than expanded form of Acts 28.