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The story of Eden is narrated to explain how sin and death came into a world in which man was intended, by willingly and knowledgeably taking his destined place in creation, to live eternally in conditions of unalloyed happiness. That high calling was abruptly interrupted when the first man diverted from the Divine intention, foreswore his allegiance to the Lord God to whom he owed life and all things, and awarded his loyalty to another who promised him all the blessings he already enjoyed without any of the obligations and responsibilities. And so the idyllic picture of Eden became sullied with the entry of the Devil upon the scene and the ingress of sin. So, says St. Paul in Rom. 5. 12 "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned". But the familiar story is so simple, almost childlike, that the idea that all the strife and injustice and heartbreak in the world, the battle and murder and sudden death, the futility and frustration and hopelessness, was inflicted upon mankind by a vengeful God as punishment of a primal woman for plucking and eating the fruit of a forbidden tree at the behest of a talking snake is in itself so unreasonable that no one could be blamed for questioning whether it really is a literal narrative of the manner in which evil came into the world. But a little careful thought reveals another angle to the subject.

The Bible narratives were intended, not just for the people and the culture existing at the time they were written, but for all peoples and generations at whatever level of intellect and culture the world was ever to see. The story had to be expressed in terms understandable and informative to all who in future times would read it. It can be literally true and yet use similes which can convey the underlying truths to men of future times whether simple of mind or profound of intellect, whether knowledgeable in all arts and sciences or able to understand only the elementary characteristics of the circle in which they have been born and lived. And it must express customs and actions, habits of life, outlooks and attitudes of men, in so simple a form that it can convey its meaning to later generations born into a different world who could not be expected to comprehend them. So the story has to be written in terms that can convey the essential principles without claiming verbal exactitude. And when one comes to a story as old as that of the Garden of Eden, admittedly the oldest story in all the world, account has to be taken of the repeated occasions upon which it has been copied and re-copied, translated and re-translated, from one language into another, so that even the true meanings of essential words get obscured or confused in the process.

"Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent .... God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die ..." (Gen. 3.1). What in fact was the nature of this "serpent" possessed not only of powers of human speech, but able to discourse upon powers appertaining to God?

The Hebrew word here rendered "serpent" is "nachash", the normal word for that creature; this is a derived usage from the basic meaning. "Nachash" refers primarily to the practice of enchanting, wizardry or revealing supernatural knowledge, derived in turn from the verb "to hiss", hence the development to the "hissing" or subnormal mutterings of necromancers and the characteristic hissing of the serpent. Examples of this use in the Bible are the "enchantments" of Balaam in Numbers 24, the "divining" of Joseph in Gen. 44, and Israel's "sorcery" in the days of Ahaz and Manasseh in 2 Kings, chaps.17 and 21. Properly speaking, the word is basically applicable to an enchanter or one having contact with the powers of darkness, and it might be that Gen.3.1 would have better been rendered "Now the enchanter was more subtle than any of the beasts of the field …". But this is not the end of the story. The Garden of Eden narrative in written form is more, perhaps much more than a thousand years older than the Hebrew text from which the present Bible is translated. From the many Sumerian and Akkadian words existing in the present Hebrew text it is clear that it must be derived from an original written in those languages at a time which must have preceded Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees by at least five centuries, a thousand years before there was any Hebrew language. One has to go back that far to discern the basis upon which the Tempter of Eve was described in Genesis as a serpent

In those far off days the descendants of Shem and Ham, (known in ordinary parlance as the Akkadians and Sumerians), newly degraded into idolatry from the original worship of the Most High God of their fathers, looked upon the serpent as the symbol of life and made it a life-giving power and object of worship. In their sculptures it was given a dragon-like form, endowed with wings to denote its heavenly origin. (The dragon of mediaeval English literature and art had the same form and was still known by the name of "serpent" even then). This mythological creature was called in their language the "sirussu" a word which combines the ideas of a human form shining with a fiery heavenly radiance (the angel who appeared in Daniel is described in very similar terms). Eight sirussu stood guard at the four gates of the Temple of Babylon (E-Sagila, "Temple of the chief God") in Daniel's day, and those figures were of highly burnished copper, the brightly shining or fiery ones. In those times it would appear that the sirussu, usually defined by scholars of Sumer as the "walking serpent", was identified in the minds of men with a brilliant supernatural winged creature claiming to be the bringer of life to men and inviting their worship.

From where did these men draw their inspiration for this glorious appearance of an otherworldly being who promised life. The extant descriptions and engravings of the sirussu date only back so far as about the days of Abraham and must have been based on earlier legend or histories which are now lost; the later the legend the more it tends to depart from the original source. Might it not be a lingering recollection, handed down through the ages of one who was seen by the first mother of all, and whose form was indelibly impressed upon her memory and remembered by her children, more and more vaguely as generation succeeded generation? By the 17th century BC the Babylonian god Marduk, hailed as the Son of God and the defender and redeemer of men, was depicted as a noble and valiant warrior endowed with six wings, bearing some resemblance to the "seraphim" which Isaiah the prophet saw in vision standing around the throne of God. Isaiah 6.1 says they had six wings, two to cover the feet (more properly, the body), two above the head and two wherewith to fly, exactly as in the known relief engravings of Marduk. And the significance of the Hebrew word "seraphim" is "fiery ones" or "burning ones" ‑ saraph is the verb for burning ‑ evidently in allusion to their dazzling and perhaps fiery appearance, so that the sirussa and the seraphim both owe their origin to a common source.

Traditions at the time of the First Advent must have preserved some such recollection of the form of the serpent of Eden. The apocryphal work "The Apocalypse of Abraham" (Ch.23) narrating the story of Eden says that "behind the tree there was standing as it were a serpent in form, having hands and feet like a man's, and wings on its shoulders". This is a work of the first century AD but it shows that some such tradition was still in existence at even so late a date.

There is one other interesting point. The oldest type of writing at present known, dated to about twenty-five centuries before Christ, was in the form of simplified pictures, known today as "pictographic". Examples of such writing are still very sparse and not yet fully and satisfactorily deciphered, but it is significant that the symbol for the sirussu is that of a great man, a noble or king, with wings reaching above his head. Is this the earliest representation of the serpent of Genesis which has come down to us?

Who or what was it, then, speaking to Eve in the garden, in words of human speech which she could understand? She knew that the lower animals were inferior and subservient to Adam and herself, and that none of these normally had the gift of speech. She knew that the snakes were created beings like herself, liable to death like all other animals; perhaps had even seen them die. Is it likely that she would be deceived by such a creature's claim to god-like wisdom and eternal life? But if in fact she found herself confronted by a gloriously radiant heavenly being, majestic and awe-inspiring in his splendour, her acceptance of his deception is much easier to understand. His power of speech would excite no doubt; his professed knowledge of the ways of God would seem to be logical. His insinuation that he was in a position to reveal knowledge being withheld by God would seem reasonable. Somehow such an interview seems a more natural occurrence that a conversation with a six-foot snake standing erect upon the tip of its tail.

Heavenly visitants to mankind throughout all history, as narrated in the Bible, have appeared in a variety of fashions suited to the circumstances, the outward visible body serving as the means of communication for the celestial being, which must by its nature be imperceptible to human senses. Thus an angel appeared to Joshua in the form of a soldier with drawn sword in his hand; to Jacob as a wayfaring man who engaged him in a tussle of strength; to Abraham and Hagar and others as casual travellers passing by; and to Daniel as a gloriously resplendent being which to Daniel may have presented an appearance closely akin to the traditional seraphim which Isaiah before him had seen in vision and described. Is it conceivable then that the celestial Lucifer did in fact visit the woman, not in the form of an earthly serpent, which was not in all probability likely to impress, but as a shining apparition from the skies, one of the seraphim which most certainly would impress. The Latin word Lucifer in Isa.14 means the shining one; seraphim in Hebrew means the shining one; sirussu in Akkadian-Sumerian means the shining one; and the historian in Gen.3 added the attribute "enchanter", more subtle, crafty, cunning, than any of the beasts of the field. 'Arum', rendered 'subtle' in Gen. 3.1 means to be crafty or cunning as in Job 5.12, Job 15.5, Psa.83.3 and "dealing very subtly" in 1 Sam. 23.22. The subtlety of the serpent is cunning, deceitfulness, exemplified in the seeds of doubt which he implanted in the mind of Eve.

So the Devil came to earth with the express intention of seducing the newly created human pair from their allegiance to God and transferring that allegiance to himself. There is little doubt that this was the intention and the true fact behind the story of the two trees. The Tree of Life ‑ loyalty to God and continuing life. The Tree of Knowledge ‑ disloyalty to God and inevitable death, for nothing that is not in complete harmony with God and his creation can endure eternally. And here this impressive visitor from the courts of God comes to tell them they are being deceived by their Creator and that Divine law is a chimera. They can forswear God and still live. There is an ancient Sumerian epic, dating in its present form from the 22^nd century before Christ but evidently recording a much older story, a story of the time God created man. There was a garden ‑ more properly a fertile luxuriant parkland ‑ in which there were two temples or shrines, the "temple of the plant of life" and the "temple of the pleasant fruits" . The man ‑ in the epic the woman is not mentioned except as the wife of the man ‑ the man went into the temple of the plant of life to worship. But he left that and went into the other temple, the temple of the pleasant fruits; "and there he sat down". Then a deity whose name means "the god of the earth" came along and knocked on the door. "Who art thou?" asked the man. "I am a gardener rejoicing in the tree. I will give thee the knowledge of a god", Joyfully, the man opened the door. The story goes on to detail seven plants of which the man could partake and one other which was forbidden. But the man approached the forbidden plant. "He plucked, he ate" and the goddess-wife of the God of Heaven pronounced the sentence. "He shall not see life all his days but shall certainly die".

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