Who deceived Eve?

The serpent was more clever…and said to the woman, “Did God really say…?” (Genesis 3:1)

Here are the keys to the entire castle. You can open all the rooms and look at everything. But I forbid you to open one particular room, which this little golden key can unlock. If you open it, you will pay for it with your life. What could he be hiding behind that door? What was he trying to keep from her? Riches, silver and gold, no doubt. Indescribable treasures and wonders that he was hoarding for his own enjoyment. She bit her lip. Then she thrust the key into the hole. Her jaw was set, her hand steady, her determination sure. The key turned. The tumblers in the lock clicked over. Slowly, slowly the door creaked open… (Bluebeard, Brothers Grimm). Eve and the serpent are recurring in historical lore.  The story twists and turns with every telling, achieving the stature of an epic tale. The narrative shares similarities with the much older Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, where a serpent steals the plant of life, denying immortality to humans. The biblical account take place beneath a tree, it’s spreading canopy a vision of vibrant green, every branch laden with ripe fruit. Just like the Brothers Grimm fairytale Eve wonders, “Why is this tree forbidden?” “What is God hiding from me?” To uncover the truth we must return to the garden for a closer look. “Trust in me, just in me. Shut your eyes and trust in me” (Disney).

Context:  What did the original audience know and understand?

 Modern discussions of Eve and the serpent often surmise that in the distant past snakes had legs and wings and could talk.  This view assumes the serpent was created on the sixth day and then imports modern science and evolution for an explanation.  But neither of these disciplines were concepts in antiquity. So who was the snake to the original audience? In the ancient Near East, people believed in an unseen spiritual world governed by divine beings. In this spiritual realm, the temples of the gods were portrayed in several ways, most commonly as gardens or mountains. The ancients reasoned that the gods must live in a place with no conceivable lack, therefore that place must be a paradise. As you may recall, Eden encompasses both. The famous hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, are an example. The snake language in Genesis is illusory, insinuating that the story points to something far loftier than a slithering reptile. The word translated snake or serpent is nachash. The nachash was commonly imaged as a divine throne guardian. His appearance is associated with copper and bronze— shiny when polished. Furthermore, the verb form for this being is the diviner. The Bible describes this creature as a glorious guardian cherub, an angel who protects the throne of God. “Every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings were made of pure gold” ( Ezekiel 28 : 12-15 ). The biblical perception of the divine snake was shared by the nations around Israel. In Babylon the throne guardians were sphynx-like beings. In Egypt, the parallel was a serpentine being known as a seraph, plural seraphim. The Pharaonic headdress resembling a cobra’s hood is a representation of a seraph. With these details in place we can identify the snake as a cunning, divine being, with a bronze serpent-like appearance. See video here.

Genesis telegraphs the truth of an all-powerful God who not only creates human beings as his representatives, he also creates a supernatural host of divine beings. One member of that divine entourage is not pleased by God’s decision to create humanity and give them dominion. This seraph communes with the supernatural world, he is a dispenser of divine knowledge. This includes information in the form of omens and oracles. Divination, one of his attributes, is indeed on display in the Eden story. Eve is getting information from this being, as evidenced by her conversation with him. She does not suspect treachery, because she is accustomed to seeing the seraph right where he is supposed to be-- in the garden guarding the throne of God (Genesis 3:1-6). The seraph exploits Eve’s trust, then closes in on his quarry with the final phrase, “If you eat from the tree, you shall be like God.” Given her status as God’s imager, the seraph’s statement has the ring of truth. After all, God wants humans to be like him, to accurately represent him. We know the rest of the story. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and God renders judgment. Adam becomes subject to his source— the ground, and Eve becomes subject to her source—the man. The seraph is judged and cast down. His role as God’s throne guardian ends and, consequently, his access to God’s divine council. Ezekiel and Isaiah describe the fall of this angelic being: “Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you ruined your wisdom because of your splendor.” “How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! Jesus corroborates this event, “I saw the devil himself fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18). The divine being who wanted to be most high would be most low instead. God cast the deceiver down to the ground (‘erets), a term that refers literally to the dirt and metaphorically to the underworld. In this realm the seraph is lower than the beasts of the field. His domain is death. He is hidden from view and from life in God’s world.

Historical Progression: The Genesis story was an oral tradition, handed down for more than a millennium, before it transitioned into its final telling (400 BC). Within a few centuries a counter story emerged as the accepted narrative, exercising Adam from the incident, and indicting Eve as the sole sinner. Ben Sirach (180 BC) said, “From a woman was sin’s beginning, and because of her, we all die.” Paul’s epistles in the New Testament correct the story, noting Eve was deceived, but Adam sinned. Put simply, the woman disobeyed out of ignorance, but the man knowingly sinned. Within a century of Paul’s death, the church embraced the counter tale, condemning the woman once again. Tertullian (200 AD) proclaimed, “[The woman} opened the door to the devil….and destroyed the image of God, namely, man.” This statement is reminiscent of Adam’s response to God’s question, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” To which Adam replies, “The woman you put here with me…” And so the serpent slithers away, down the passageway of time, sowing division while masquerading as an “angel of light.” 

In 1928, in historic Ugarit (Syria), 1400 clay tablets were discovered that put the Old Testament history into context. This ancient alphabetic language is closer to biblical Hebrew than any other ancient language. In many cases the two are almost identical. This tranche of cuneiform sheds light on how the ancients understood their world and the supernatural realm. It clarifies previously unknown and misunderstood words and concepts in the Bible. Context is the load-bearing wall of understanding. Without it inquiry arrives at incorrect conclusions. Case in point, the serpent in Eden is not a reptile. He is a divine being— the throne guardian of God. This new discovery exposes the twisted truth of a tale disconnected from its historical context. Eve has my sympathy. For over two-thousand years she’s been portrayed as a feckless featherbrain, sandbagged by a snake. All the while, we’ve been gullably gob-smacked by a talking reptile.

When Paul penned, “It was the woman who was deceived,” he had no idea the reach of slithering interpretations, twisted to encompass to all women. The allegation is usually rendered like this: because Eve was deceived, all women are easily deceived. We’re expected to believe, based on the commonly held paradigm starring a slithering reptile, that one woman sandbagged by a talking snake guarantees every other woman will be sandbagged too. This defies the basic rules of logic. It also ignores the well-known reality of female intuition. Yet, this deception trope is regularly transmitted in the church mostly by men who deliberately lack knowledge. It is the epitome of “eyes wide shut” when faced with exhaustive biblical research and scholarship that provides evidence to the contrary (here). The Bible regularly demonstrates both men and women are susceptible to deception, including self-deception. One modicum of real-time observation confirms this is true. Denying a reality that is plainly visible is not naivete’, it is willful ignorance. Paul says the cure is education (1 Timothy 2:11). Paul further alludes to the cause of Eve’s deception when he states, “Adam was not deceived” (1 Timothy 2:14). The Genesis account makes clear that Adam was present during Eve’s dialogue with the seraph. Adam, who knows the backstory of the forbidden tree and God’s command regarding it, remains silent. He fails to educate Eve thereby participating in the deception (Genesis 2:17). Why? Regardless of his motive, Paul holds Adam culpable for sin entering into the world (Romans 5:12). The Genesis ‘saga of the seraph and the sin’ ends with this statement, “God banished him from the Garden of Eden… he drove the man out” (Genesis 3:23-24). Clearly God holds Adam responsible for the sin as well.

Conclusion: Why is it that the forbidden room is always the room we simply must see? The forbidden gold the treasure we have to touch? The forbidden fruit the food we just can’t live without? That, at any rate, is the way it usually turns out in fairy stories, suggesting there is no view from nowhere. In a world overwhelmed by the material, we are underwhelmed by the spiritual. The grandeur and complexity of the divine realm illumines and informs, but this knowledge is absent without historical context. We can only see Eden clearly when we view it through God’s paradigm—paradise, where once upon a time creation was very good, until deception slithered in.

Sources:  https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/wholecounsel/2018/12/05/who-is-the-devil/ ; The Unseen Realm, Michael Heiser; https://drmsh.com/new-cherubim-and-seraphim-video/ ; https://margmowczko.com/blaming-eve-alone/ ; The Religion of the Apostles, Stephen De Young; Paul and Gender, Cynthia Long Westfall; Paul, Women & Wives, Craig S Keener; How God Sees Women, Terran Williams; God of the Fairy Tale, Jim Ware