"Snakes will eat dirt in the new order." (page 6)

mP

jeffro

Joined 5/21/2005

mP:

Apparently snakes flew before they got punished

Winged snakes is indeed a theme in various ancient mythologies. But Genesis doesn't seem to say anything about snakesflying. Can you explain? Which verses? Or which Hebrew words? Strongs numbers?

mP:

And the LORD God said unto the serpent , Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle , and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seraphim

Literally "burning ones", the word seraph is normally a synonym for serpents when used in the Hebrew Bible . A seminal passage in the Book of Isaiah ( Isaiah 6:1-8 ) used the term to describe fiery six-winged beings that fly around God's throne singing "holy, holy, holy"

Snakes were part of the angels or messengers who helped jehovah in heaven.

Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae offers a description of the nature of seraphs:

The name "Seraphim" does not come from charity only, but from the excess of charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds the name "Seraphim" according to the properties of fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things.

First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God.

Secondly, the active force which is "heat," which is not found in fire simply, but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor; whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those who are subject to them, rousing them to a like fervor, and cleansing them wholly by their heat.

Thirdly we consider in fire the quality of clarity, or brightness; which signifies that these angels have in themselves an inextinguishable light, and that they also perfectly enlighten others.

...

Medieval Christian theology places seraphs in the highest choir of the angelic hierarchy. They are the caretakers of God 's throne, continuously singing "holy, holy, holy".

mP

jeffro

look up the articles on seraphim and follow the various links. theres lots of scriptures and quotations from famous jewish and xian scholars and entities.

You missed my point: it seems you're trying to place too fine a point on your certainty about claiming to KNOW something that is actually impossible to know: what a large population of people actually believed in the past.

MP:
Thts utter nonsense. there are dozens of scriptures talking about flying snakes if you bothered to continue and read my suggestions in the previous post.

We dont know everything about the ancient world but we know enuff on certain topics. The magical creaturs in the bible all have counterparts. Even the cherubim are copies of other similarly named cratures from neighbouring cultures.

The jewish religion was simply a local copy with some modifications of neighbouring beliefs. it was not new or different, it was just a local version.

there are countless similarities that make this copyiing obvious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherubim

mP

adamah

the account didn't actually state that it the serpent "lost it's legs"

mP:

I neer said it lost it legs, you made that up. the scrpture says it was forced to go on its belly. This either means it had legs or it flew. Given the other scriptures talking about flying snakes or serpahim its obvious what it did "before" it went on its belly.

mP

adamah

BTW, I remembered Jesus' advice to his disciples in Matthew 10:16 to be "wise like serpents, and harmless as doves", and looked it up. The Greek word often translated as 'wise' was 'phronimoi' (Strongs: 5429), which also was translated as 'intelligent, prudent, sensible.'
So in Jesus' time, the serpent clearly still enjoyed a reputation for being wise, cautious, prudent (defined as "looking out for one's self-interests").

mP:
How could a snake be wise unless he was thought by god. thats basically the only sensible conclusion, after all, all knowledge comes from god. given snakes used to be messengers of god, they spoke with ihim regularly. the bible says similar things in multiple places about one gaining knowledge about stuff from god.

mP

Adamah

hat's why I say the story only gives creedence to YHWH as the cruel trickster God, which is what led the Early-Christian Gnostics to reasonably believe that YHWH was only a demi-God, and not the "real" God. They saw the serpent as analogous to Prometheus, the demi-God who was the friend of mankind, stealing fire (an ancient symbol of knowledge) from Zeus for the benefit of humanity (Zeus didn't want mankind to possess knowledge, just as YHWH didn't want man to have wisdom).

mP:

Jehovah is not a trickster.

The truth is when your priest and make claims that god is on your side and you get conquered by pagans you need to cover your arse. After all you want to keep your position in society. All that free food, drink you receive via taxing sacrifices and gold for god, sorry yourself is a good thing you want to keep. how exactly does a priest explain that israel keeps getting destroyed when jehovah is on their side. its an impossible task, so you must invent basially nonsense.

the excuse about knowledge is the priests want to keep the exclusive rights to interacting with god. They argue god makes the sun come up , the food grow and that only they can talk and keep him happy. They dont want the common man doing these things because then they are out of business. Its simply selfish gain by selfish aresholes for selfish reasons. unfortunatley many ancients believed these learned people knew somethin g special so they paid them.

thats the basic truth.

mP

adamah

One of the OTHER occurrences of the Greek word 'phronimoi' (out of a total of 14 in the NT) is in Jesus' parable of 'the Faithful and WISE servant' found in Matthew 24:5 (and in Luke). How interesting that Jesus would use the same adjective for serpents as he'd use for the faithful and WISE slave?

mP:

Of course they use the same word, as son of the king or snakes as messengers of the king, they both serve and announce the will of the king jehovah. pretty simple.

mP

adamah

You're claiming that Hebrew religion was "no different", when even THAT is a questionable claim (I suspect that Hebrews adopted or 'hijacked' ancient Egyptian and Babylonian pre-existing beliefs, and modified many to fit into their beliefs over a long period of time, the process of blending beliefs is largely unavoidable, called 'syncretism'. Why the motivation to place the Torah in written form? The "Persian Emperial Authorization Hypothesis" is hotly-debated in scholarly circles, and it MAY provide a compelling explanation for the motivations of the leaders of Hebrews held in captivity to assemble the written Torah into a historiographical work of legal code, in order to gain their autonomy under the Persian Empire who liberated them from Babylonain captivity).

mP:

Sure your history summary is fine, that hardly makes my assertion wrong. im not discussing why they wrote the torah, i dont think it matters in discussing the similarities. so they wrote the torah down and edited over time. big deal that doesnt change the fact they copied their neighbours, nor does it make my statement wrong.

Well there are lots of similarities.

The temple in jerusalem is identical in many forms to other pagan temples. it faces east to worship the sun, they celebrate high holidays that match the equinoxes and solistices, they perform sacrifices and so on. Then we see the jews adopting the names of other gods as labels for their own god. Amen is of course amun or amen as in tutkhenamen. el is of course the god el or bel from other cultures. adonai for lord is of course the god adonis etc from other cultures. strange but true.

Jeffro

mP:

This either means it had legs or it flew. Given the other scriptures talking about flying snakes or serpahim its obvious what it did "before" it went on its belly.

look up the articles on seraphim and follow the various links

You're taking something much later from Thomas Aquinas (and other Christian writers) and retconning the story about the snake in Genesis.

It is possible that the locomotion of the snake in the story in Genesis was influenced by earlier myths about winged snakes, but it's not obvious.

Julia Orwell

Hell I thought mP was being facetious about flying snakes! Gave me a laugh anyhow.

"Snakes will eat dirt in the new order."

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