What is the serpent in Genesis 3 v 1 ?

Answer 1

Satan approached his victim indirectly, using a serpent. This sly approach exposed Satan for what he really is, a devious intruder. Further, the stranger in the sheepfold sets out to rob the rightful owner of his sheep. In fact, he is worse than a thief, for his aim is also to “slay and destroy.” Similarly, Satan was a thief. Deceiving Eve, he stole her allegiance from God. Moreover, Satan also brought death to humans. Hence, he is a murderer.

Satan’s dishonesty was evident in the way he twisted Jehovah’s words and motives. “Is it really so that God said you must not eat from every tree?” he asked Eve. Satan pretended to be shocked, as if he were saying: ‘How could God be so unreasonable?’ He added: “God knows that in the very day of your eating from it your eyes are bound to be opened.” Note his words: “God knows.” Satan said, as it were: ‘I know what God knows. I know his motives, and they are bad.’ Sadly, Eve and Adam did not turn away from the voice of this stranger. Instead, they heeded it and brought woe to themselves and their offspring.

The inspired record, in Genesis chapter 3, describes how Satan set about satisfying his wrong desire. In the garden of Eden he approached the woman Eve in a manner that concealed his real identity. He employed an animal commonly seen by the human pair, a serpent. Evidently using what we would call ventriloquism, he made it appear that his words proceeded from this creature. Its naturally cautious manner fitted well with the impression that Satan wanted to make.

Answer 2

The Serpent in the Tree is an embodiment of the ability to stretch out amongst the branches and touching each and everyone. It is a symbol of the path of the Sephirot.

Answer 3

According to Jewish myth, the serpent is Samael. He was NOT a snake at that time, because it had legs--God removed the serpent's limbs as a punishment for tempting Eve, and thus he became a snake.

Answer 4

The serpent is non other than satan himself.
His showing up in the garden of eden is his first attempt (in the flesh age) at trying to pollute or interrupt the pure line, that womb to womb through eve, would come the Christ.
He is also what you read "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil", and Christ is the tree of life.

Answer 5

People assume that the serpent is Satan or the devil but Genesis isn't specific.

Answer 6

the serpent is called a snake, one of the animals in the garden. Some people say it was satan that controlled or beguiled the snake.

Answer 7

The serpent is a symbol of women's rejection of the female-oppressing male-dominated Yahweh cult.

Keep in mind that there is more than one creation story in the OT- 1st Genesis, 2nd Genesis, and the Leviathan or Rahab vs God struggle mentioned in the book of Psalms.

Genesis 1:27-30: "So God created man in his own image; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, and every living thing that moves upon the earth.' God also said, 'I give you all plants that bear seed everywhere on earth, and every tree bearing fruit which yields seed: they shall be yours for food.'" Note that no exception is made for the fruit of any tree in this account.

Genesis 2: 7-8: "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus the man became a living creature." Gen. 2: 15-18: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and take care of it. He told the man 'You may eat from every tree in the garden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.'" Gen. 2: 21-22: "And so the Lord God put the man into a trance, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh over the place. The Lord God then built up the rib, which he had taken out of the man, into a woman,"

In the first, men and women were created at the same time. In the second, man was created first, and woman was created from a "rib" of the man.

There are other differences, too, but let's just look at the serpent part.

To understand that, we'll have to look at some other religious symbolism...the snake was a holy symbol for some of the polytheistic religions of the time; a symbol of rebirth, and sometimes fertility, associated with Goddesses. A very famous statue of a Minoan Goddess shows her snakes:

http://witcombe.sbc.edu/snakegoddess/

Snakes were associated with prophecy and wisdom - and Goddesses - in several places, such as Egypt, Sumer, Crete, and Greece. In Egypt, the female deity of pre-dynastic northern (Lower) Egypt was the cobra goddess Ua Zit. Egyptian deities and royalty has a uraeus emblem - a head and hood of a cobra. Some Sumerian Goddesses, such as Inanna, were associated with snakes. In Minoan-era Crete, we find some statuettes of goddesses or priestesses with snakes. In one case, the snakes are cobras. In Greece, in what is most likely a Minoan legacy, Hera and Athena were associated with snakes, and the shrines of Delphi, Olympia, and Dodona were originally associated with goddesses. However, they were taken over by the followers of the male gods Zeus and Apollo, who were depicted as snake-killers. Even then, the greatest wisdom was associated with priestesses.

The snake (together with the cup or chalice and the raven, and still associated with new forms of old Goddess-worshiping religious practices) is also resident in the sky as a constellation

AND fruit tress have been sacred to Goddesses rather than Gods in many cultures.

Examined in light of this, the Adam and Eve story is quite interesting, and it answers the question of why the snake/serpent in this creation story tempted Eve rather than Adam. In a struggle to establish a male tribal God as the only God of a people, it would naturally be women who were most reluctant to give up religious practices and religious thought that gave them the same rights to holiness as men, and an equal place in society. And it also makes perfect sense that the snake or serpent would be symbolic of the Goddess-oriented religions that posed a threat to the establishment of the Hebrews' tribal God as the only God.

The Adam and Eve creation myth clearly sets men up as being superior to women. The resistance of women to embracing both a religion and a society in which they were inferior to men can be seen as the theme of this creation myth. In the symbolic language of myth, this is a story about how women rejected the tribal God of the Hebrews and the limitation on their freedoms.

Of course, since it is written from the point of view of enthusiastic followers of the religion of the tribal God of the Hebrews, this rejection had to be portrayed as something evil, with dire punishments falling on the women who didn't submit to the authority of this tribal God or the societal rules of a male-dominated culture.

Answer 8

The serpant was Satan, but he wasn't in the form of a snake. It actually means "beautiful" not snake. Eve was tempted by a hot guy to eat from the tree of knowledge.

Answer 9

satan loves you!