Why did Satan tempt Eve with a talking snake when he could have materialised as another human to tempt her ?

by smiddy 22 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  smiddy

  Since the Angels that followed satan could take on human form and even have sex and bear offspring to females of earth why would Satan not have used this avenue instead of talking through a snake .? which really makes no common sense ?

  Why wouldnt Eve question how a snake could talk? or even reason with a question ?

  Wouldnt Eve be more convinced and believed another "human" rather than take the word of a talking snake ?

  Which is the more logical.?

  Atheists will say its all BS anyway

  What about those who believe the bible is the inspired word of GOD ?
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  Xanthippe

  Myths often don't make sense. Ever read Homer? Cyclops, Sirens, gods and demigods.
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  Ruby456

  there is a theory that most of the guys had died fighting wars and women became the repository of wisdom. on this understanding men wanted to take back power from women but what scared them was women's wisdom - they didn't know where this came from. Hence the snake with its cunning and crafty ways - its seeming to be unobstrusive but deadly and smart. Some myths even paint women as being of a different race to me - Pandora for example

  so rather than being deceived she actually was the repository of wisdom on that understanding - it has its problems

  but the snake figure characterises knowledge of good and evil as coming from lower down the scale and from things closer to the earth. When humans stood upright they kinda looked more to the skies for inspiration

  edit: it is bit perilous for atheists to say it is all bullshit unless they mean that bullshit is a rich fertiliser as a metaphor for enriching intelligence??
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  punkofnice

  It obviously is a fairy tale. However, the further back in time you go, is the weirder the myth.

  Maybe as the myth grows over time, people add to it until it becomes dafter and dafter.
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  Ruby456

  sorry that was meant to read women as being of different race to men - in line five of my post above
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  pale.emperor

  There was an old brother from my congregation who was previously in The Worldwide Church Of God. He said that they taught that Eve likely saw the snake eat the fruit first, then it started talking to her, which would have made her think eating from it gave the person powers.

  There's an interesting article on there by a priest here: http://strangenotions.com/do-christians-believe-in-talking-snakes/
  
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  venus

  Genesis and Revelation both are allegorical. Characters are representation of human behavior. For example, hare and tortoise competed. Story literally never happened, yet we come across hare-like people and tortoise-like people around us.

  Similarly, snake represents sin which can communicate with us in any form wherever we are, and yielding to sin brings misery. Once we succumb to sin, then we engage in shifting the blame which shows deep within us we are pure, hence sinning is alien to our nature. Sin destroys the self-respect and makes us feel ashamed.
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  waton

  The talking snake story, that fairy tale, has been blown out of proportion by it being spun into a catch all for all that ails us and the hopes to cure all, cemented into the world;s memory. Start another development of the plot?

  Adam, made in God's image, therefore in the likeness of a very jealous individual, would have reacted badly to another, possibly male , naked individual near her. This is the French scenario ( Le serpent). Now with a german Garden of Eden, another lady , ( Die Schlange ), naked, would open totally different, interesting plots, with Eve the jealous one and Adam no doubt rising to that occasion, Either of these new individuals could have a fertile future, (after all the pre-diluvian angels did ),- limited only by the scope of the world's fertile imagination.

  Makes you wish for the invention of a pill to stop the conception of such useless nonsense. Enough damage done by the original .
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  stan livedeath

  its easy to understand--ask any dub!

  the talking snake is symbolic..

  however--adam was real----so was eve.

  god creating the world is real--but the 7 days of creation is symbolic.

  god creating adam--real--taking a rib out to make eve--? symbolic.

  garden of eden--? real---no--symbolic.

  the book of genesis--real--the old testament ?----

  please note all the above information is subject to change.
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  cobweb

  If you want to get at why a snake was used in Genesis, its illuminating to look into what snakes meant in Near Eastern culture of the time. Mesopotamian culture thought of snakes as immortal due to shedding their skin. There is the famous Epic of Gilgamesh which features a trickster snake stealing the plant of immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh is much older than the bible and was well known, and there are a lot of resonances and parallels with the Genesis story, with the tree of everlasting life and the flood story.

  The Sumerians apparently had a snake god, and bronze age Canaanite culture from which the Israelite culture grew out of, had a snake cult according to the wikipedia article i just looked at. The bible fable can't be taken in isolation, it is using the imagery of the snake with the associated meanings of the time that would have made sense and taken for granted by the people in that time and culture, and resetting it in a new context to make a point.