Serpentspeak
Betrayal Story: Chapter Three
Now the serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that the Lord God had made. It asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’ 3:1
And
Another truly astonishing opener! So much to unpack. Including that fronted conjunction. The ‘now’ or ‘and’ or ‘so’ indicates to the reader unbroken continuity with chapter two. The chapter divisions are a much later addition. Sure, this is the next chapter of the story but it’s the same authorial voice. The point here is to train ourselves to read across the dividing lines, to stay awake during any superimposed transitions which might cause the attention to spot whilst the brain resets. What we’ve just read is this:
Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. 2:25
This is incredibly clever writing. We’re in paradise, right? It reminds me of this humorous anecdote recounted by David Foster Wallace:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
What the hell is unashamed? Because what on earth is shame? Why even mention it? And at this point precisely? Well, the context is the man joining himself to his wife to become one body, which is a spiritual thing but also clearly about getting it on. This is the first time in our reading journey where we’re drawn out of the dream, out of the narrative, and a knowing distance forced between reader and characters. Nakedness essentially means transparency to them but includes vulnerability for us. Sex means only communion for them but hints at waywardness to us. Something libidinal is creeping into the text here and, tragically, seeking to burst our lovely paradise bubble forever.
If you think I’m overinterpreting, there’s even a pun in the Hebrew to signal the connection. The word for nakedness is ‘arummim’ and the word for subtle is ‘arum’. A question of ‘knowingness’, then, is the central meditation of the whole story spanning chapters two and three. We have here an antique example of the celebrated literary device dramatic irony, that staple of (the much later) Greek Tragedy, where the audience knows more than the characters. Plato and Aristotle identify one of its key effects as katharsis, that is, a purgation from misperception and misconception. They seem to mean slightly different things by it but the point is: seeing tragedy unfold on stage serves to instil a sense of gratitude and perspective - life could be so much worse. The opposite is happening in our passage. It’s literally meant to make us squirm. Because this is the origin of all tragedy, the catastrophe template, it’s happening to us all right now. It doesn’t get any worse than what’s unfolding here. And ‘no shame’ is the brilliant irony first deployed to triggerhint (not a word) our communal sense of distance from that feeling. So shame is in the air all right, but we’re not yet fully certain why.
Speaking of…
Our stories have an obvious mythic character which is then really hammered home when one of the animals starts to speak. Which, if you’ll excuse the pun, is a certain twist in the tale. There was no mention of this in 2:19, (oh, watch out for the slippery one - a rare ole chatterbox, if ever there were!), when the Lord fashioned them all from the earth. This is another device called narrative omission the purpose of which is to cast a backward shadow. What more aren’t we being told as we go along? This enhances the growing destabilisation already at work in the narrative.
There is but one voice in Creation Story One. Speech is the King’s prerogative. In a world short on silence, it’s easy to forget that speaking is a privilege, voice a vocational gift, and words as precious as diamonds. Despite humanity’s importance in the story we don’t have a voice, because it’s not our story to tell. And what God says, happens. He says it into being. Creation is divine utterance. We’re meant to stand awestruck.
I’ve laboured the point because Creation Story Two takes such a different and dialogical approach. As much as anything, it’s a meditation on the meaning of conflicting voices. Even God’s own voice is changed. In 2:18 we hear Him thinking aloud about finding the right partner for the man, just as soliloquy serves character exposition in Shakespeare. We hear Adam’s voice too. He’s recounted as first naming the beasts and then recorded rejoicing over his wife. Only now we hear another voice, not that of the woman who only speaks afterwards in 3:2, but that of a talking snake!
A what now?
If we might expurgate any inadvertently imbibed animus of Dick Dawkins, we’ll discover the genius in this. The unspoken covenant between any storyteller and hearer is a certain suspension of disbelief. The multiple therapeutic benefits of stories are well attested but the key one here is stretching the imagination. As we’ve seen, the only way of approaching certain mysteries is through story. This is often reductively described as just making stuff up. As though the whole of human enterprise isn’t somewhere on that spectrum! In stories, we push at the boundaries of what’s generally considered real because who knows definitively what reality even is?
So, the talking snake works on at least four very powerful levels. Firstly, it’s meant to be funny in that at first sight preposterous way – like a family morality tale, (think The Lion King, or more directly, Kaa’s seductive psychedelic eyes in Disney’s Jungle Book). I get side-eyed in Church when I guffaw at obvious scriptural humour. We seem to have grasped the true part of ‘true story’ and forgotten its transfiguring force as drama. But the comedy is also an ironic device precisely because, secondly, the talking snake is obviously the level opposite of funny. Think kid-shape inside a reticulated python. Aren’t snakes bad enough without one also having learnt to talk!? What even is that? Which leads us to our third point: Marduk. And our fourth: the sum of all fears.
Marduk, then. He became the head god of great Babylon, destructive enemy of Israel. In other words, the adversary when these stories were being shaped. The Hebrew word for serpent here is nakhash which refers to both snake and dragon. A dragon in the ancient world looked something like a crocodileagle. Guess whose principal symbol that was? No? Ok, Marduk.
Babylon takes on the status of archetypal adversary for two telling reasons. Firstly, Neb II, King of Babylon, unforgivably destroyed God’s Holy Temple and reduced Jerusalem to rubble (588-6 BC, cf 2Kgs 25). Secondly, he also deported the ruling classes to Babylon. This meant they had their noses rubbed in it daily (see Ps 137/6) – that Marduk had proved he was bigger and better than their God - who doesn’t even have an image - so why not just forget old ways and embrace the many luxuries of this sophisticated, superior civilisation. It was tempting. Not all Jews chose to return to Judah.
If you now amend images of a snake coiled about a tree and instead visualise Smaug, then God’s punishment of the serpent in Gen 3:14 makes more sense: Then the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, be accursed beyond all cattle, all wild beasts. You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust every day of your life.’ The idea being that it’s now rendered serpentine having had its wings and limbs thoroughly clipped – just like Babylon in the end. The serpent/dragon is established as a prototype of apostasy and the archetypal tempter.
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Fear itself
But it’s also very clear from the text that the talking snake isn’t merely symbolic. What is meant exactly by ‘the most subtle beast’? Babylon’s treatment of the Jews definitely wasn’t, so that can’t be the point. We’ve noted the linguistic resonance between ‘subtle’ and ‘naked’ and so further observe the serpent shamelessly approaching the naked woman first. We can put aside that male prejudice against ‘the weaker sex’ still lurking in early Christianity (1 Tim 2:11-15; 1 Pet 3:7)? The exposed Babylonian (trouser) snake here represents the phallic allure of forbidden intermarriage. But the ‘dick-pic’ approach is hardly the epitome of sexual seduction and, let’s face it, we’re not staring at the world’s greatest chat-up line either. The shame can be found here but the ‘subtle’ lies elsewhere.
Still, the Jewish reader will have easily marked the arrival of the antagonist or villain to the stage. It’s writ pantomime large. Though, of course, anyone might. That’s also the point. Ophidiophobia is described as an irrational fear of snakes. Or, as I like to describe it, common sense. Aren’t we all Indiana? There’s the whole mammal v reptile war going on in evolutionary biology (you know, Kong v Zilla), with notable snake survival mechanisms seemingly hardwired into our primitive brains. Nagini simply needs no explanation. Before he even opens his mouth, then, this character comes loaded with primordial dread: choked, crushed and slowly digested, or, poisoned with venom beyond your worst nightmares? Choices, choices.
In the detail
But open his mouth he surely does. Or, rather, it does - despite the willy-wagging there’s a disturbing otherworldly genderlessness to the creature. Another brilliant irony. And we only have its speech as clues to intent. We’ll analyse the words themselves in greater detail next time but it’s worth clarifying what they already tell us. Firstly, God made this being. Secondly, it’s engaged in an effort to undermine its creator God. Thirdly, it appears to be masking its intelligence behind rhetoric. Fourthly, its goal is to have a furtive, displacing conversation with Adam’s naked wife, (see 2:25 above). I’m gonna call it: none of these are good in a place called Paradise.
‘Subtle’ turns out to mean something like guile - all ambush predator, with precise knowledge of where to sink fangs into human innocence. The voice of the serpent, first heard, instantly spreads a deepening chill over the tale. Before ever a fruit is cradled in palm, a sinuous fear grips Eden’s free air. It hangs upon the lolling fronds and slow-drips poison into its wells. There’s a sudden feeling of freefall, and the reader’s stomach knots to witness the woman’s fearful vulnerability and naivety before this alarmingly ill-defined being…
If you’ve never read The Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis, put aside all your other reading and treat yourself.
Header photo: K Wills, Unsplash
Thank you - very well written and thought provoking