The Dis-Named One
This is probably the point in the story where impatient readers flip to the back page to see how it all pans out (smiley or sad face, or smileysad?), or skim ahead to discover just who this damned happiness-wrecking serpent really is. Well, I agree. It’s time to unmask the phantom menace!
It falls to the rest of the Bible to fill in the gobby boa’s backstory. Over time we discover this creature is not merely a representation of creeping apostasy or the symbolic sum of human fears, but something catastrophically worse – an intelligent being with utterly fell intent and will. A name emerges in the retelling, more description than anything: Satan, Biblical Hebrew for Adversary or Accuser. Notably, not a proper name. Indeed, the word begins life as something generic - any opposing thing, good or ill - but soon acquires the definite article, The Satan. By Job, we have a clear sense of a specific malign being, as though a once bright and cherished identity has been erased and degraded to a single nefarious function. Not Lucifer, then - the misappropriation of a passage in Isaiah. This creature may have once been a light-bearer, a shimmering star in the dawn sky, but no more. Any light left is mere subterfuge (2 Cor 11:14). Malifer would be more fitting!
When not simply transliterated into Greek, Satan is often rendered as diabolos (slanderer - which eventually corrupts into the English Devil), literally meaning to throw across or strew. In other words, the one constantly seeking to obstruct the way, clutter the path, cause a calamitous fall (mikshol in the Septuagint) and so undermine God’s plan. Hence, Jesus describing poor ole Peter (Mt 16:23) as one such ‘stumbling block’ ie trip hazard deliberately concealed to fell a soldier, (skandalon in the Greek, our scandal), which lands as a devastating pun based upon His previous renaming of Simon to Rock (Peter).
As the tradition unfolds, the marks of this fell spirit are identified with ever greater clarity: slander, lies, untruths, misinformation and false witness, to which we might now add deepfakes. It turns out deception is the ultimate human ‘undoing’ precisely because it is an assault on trust, and trust is essentially the meaning of the word faith. So, definitely an assault on our faith in God, but also our faith in one another (society), and appropriate faith in ourselves (perception, judgement and self-esteem).
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (Jn 8:44)
It isn’t easy picturing or, indeed, conveying such total malice; a spirit corrupt in every conceivable way.
The Key Piece
Much of this we might have intuited from our Genesis journey so far, but some details come from completely left of field:
Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.
(Rev 12:7-9, cf Lk 10:18)
It’s all a bit of an eye-opener. A colossal piece of the story-jigsaw is missing in our creation accounts and only revealed in the Bible’s final book. As a teen, I remember reaching the end of The Lord of the Rings around 4am on a school night and nearly missing the 7.45am bus. Along with my legs, my mind was racing. Breathless with the brilliance of Tolkien’s tale (I’m literally running with this analogy), questions slammed into me like frantic fists on a departing bus door. Who was Sauron? Where did he come from? What was his particular significance in Middle Earth? There would be no rest until I’d read of Melkor in The Silmarillion.
There isn’t actually that long to wait in Genesis before we (ahem) stumble upon a key clue: angels (3:24). Except we don’t get to hear about them in full because the spotlight’s on us. Yet it’s hardly trivial that, also in the beginning, God created beings of pure spirit (Classical Hebrew, malakhim / Ancient Greek, angeloi, and those directly referenced here: keruvim/cherubim), and not just humans of spirit and matter.
As we’ve seen, it certainly ramps up dramatic tension not knowing everything about a villain. But there’s only so long you can keep a reader in the dark before rebellion sets in. Well, we’ve thrown our toys firmly from the pram and what a backstory we’ve now uncovered! It turns out Lord Voldemort is just an anagram for Tom Mar… no wait...
It transpires it was precisely one of these spiritual beings - a leader it would seem - who slipped incognito into our narrative, a high but haughty angel lately fallen into the darkness of its own designs. Not content with its own fate, this dragon antagonist has bent its diabolical resolve upon our downfall. We’d noticed that this deceiving creature claimed to know God’s own mind (3:5) and with a certain jaundiced justification (3:7,22), and that compared to it, the couple appeared painfully naive. Now it’s clear why.
The Serpent’s Hiss
Yet questions persist even as the picture slowly fills out. The talking snake is an attempt to represent the voice of this fallen spirit precisely because a spirit lacks physical form. Ok, but wouldn’t the story still work without a serpent? Can’t the voice simply be in the couple’s heads? There’s no definitive answer to this but I know what my intuition tells me. The writers are at pains to show that this is no mere psychological phenomenon. It’s not all in the mind. There’s this other voice and it isn’t the voice of God, or the other half, or one’s own. It’s real, and this is what it sounds like so you can recognise it when it speaks.
Now the disguised predator imagery is revealed as further genius. This malign voice is pretending to be your friend and sometimes very hard to distinguish as foe because it’s so well camouflaged. And sometimes you don’t even realise it’s there, seduced into thinking you’re listening to your own voice. But it’s very real and you’re not making it up. Despite all this playing out in your psyche. Which you can’t exactly measure. And therefore might naturally but fatally assume isn’t wholly real…
All of which is built upon the mind-blowing idea of ‘inner voice’ which we’ll explore in greater depth in another article.
For now, newly informed by the backstory, we can tackle a further unaddressed matter. What’s with the hiss? Why the need for all that conversation with the woman? If the dragon is so clever, why didn’t it just hand the woman the fruit; or so powerful, simply force her to take and eat; or just conceal it in some other food gift? What was so necessary about her taking it? As per the aforementioned Voldemort and Sauron, it exhibits a curious combination of physical powerlessness and vocal force. It leverages a greater knowledge and intelligence, for sure, but lacks something vital. And that unstated thing turns out to be of universe-busting importance. Another cliffhanger - for next time!
Further Pieces
If it isn’t bad enough learning of a single fallen angel, we discover there were others siding with the Devil. Revelation hints at the rebellion’s extent (12:4):
His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth
Setting aside the mystery of overall numbers, that’s a chilling proportion. These were heavenly beings. Fully aware. Themselves untempted. Sources of their own apostasy. And definitely and defiantly and definitively unrepentant. Angels, no less! In heaven!! Would you Adam and Eve it?
This whispering serpent’s fall is quite different to our own, then. He hasn’t been hoodwinked or seduced but has openly chosen and actively wills all that opposes God. It’s a deeply disturbing portrait. In truth, why would any creature turn its back on goodness forever? Why would any being knowingly oppose their own loving Creator? What precisely would it hope to gain by opposing GOD?
We also learn of the Devil’s hidden motive:
God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world. (Wis 2:23-24)
This answers why the serpent is in the garden. Milton portrays it thus:
Aside the devil turned
For envy; yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance [Book IV, 502-4]
It may sound strange the Devil would envy in others something it had so willing rejected for itself, but I suspect this is one of many contradictions in such a twisted spirit.
Ok, but we’re still somewhat in the dark as to the how. Revelation speaks of a throwing down, but, being ejected from heaven surely isn’t to be rewarded with a place on earth? Thus an alternative is offered (2 Pet 2:4; Jude v 6) – that the fallen angels would be incarcerated in the underworld. Another new, unmentioned place to consider? Yes, but hell seems more like a state of existence than a maximum security prison. The Devil and his motley crew appear to have access-all-areas passes to the universe and they’ll take a run at literally anyone (Lk 22:31-2; Jn 13:2; Lk 8:26-39) including Jesus Himself (Mt 4:1-11). That too requires a dedicated reflection (also next).
Conclusion
If we’ve been feeling the stories till now have all been a little otherworldly, we might begin to sense the closer-to-home profundities emerging in the image of the serpent. As fast as striking fangs, the tale has turned to betrayal and presented the reader with a challenging psychological portrait (ahem) into which to sink their teeth.
In modern mantras, do we just fail to be our best selves because of unrealistic goal-setting? Is it simply because we didn’t identify our deeper needs? Once we’ve engineered a better vision, refined our motivations, removed toxicities, and built better and more nourishing support networks, then analysed, recalibrated, and optimised our trajectories, won’t all be well and lead to that self-actualisation reflected in health, wealth and glowing success?
Well, it might look that way for a time. But, counters Genesis, when we feel as though something all too often stands in our way as we strive to live a good life, or that the right thing looks and feels less attractive than other fruitier options, or that self-serving feels far easier than self-sacrifice, or that:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Extract from To A Mouse, by Rabbie Burns
…then, such intuitions are entirely accurate. It isn’t all on us and it isn’t just about us. There’s a snake hidden somewhere in the long grass of the human psyche, a vituperative viper lying in wait, who takes all things good and true and beautiful and seeks to sully and destroy them. His story is also yet to reach its final chapter, but like every villain in every epic, his days are numbered. For now, the drama plays out. There’ll be consequences for disobedience and betrayal. It sure is looking bad for our couple. And we all hope and pray there won’t be merry hell to pay!
Quick Quiz:
Which city has a standalone sculpture of the Devil?
Which play features a character whose name is a play on Satan?
Which two other mythological gods, one Greek, one Egyptian, mirror Satan?
Prize: I’ll offer up a St Michael Prayer for the intentions of the first person with the correct answers!
Header photo: Gustave Doré, Illustration for Milton’s Paradise Lost, 1866, Wikicommons
Feature photo: Gabrielle Wright on Unsplash