Episode 188 – Satanists Read the Bible III (Year of the Serpent)

Black Mass Appeal — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 01:18:10 +0000

In honor of the auspicious year of the snake, we’re revisiting our favorite scriptural serpent with a Satanically subversive perspective on Genesis.

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From Genesis 2-3, King James Version: And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree; the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God commanded, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. tNow the serpent was more subtle than any beast 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, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, 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: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, The woman whom thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Unto the woman he said, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Unto Adam he said, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And the Lord God said, man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

The Bible and the ancient Near East, Gordon & rendsburg, revised 1998 Ed: Man is intelligent because he ate magic fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, gaining knowledge that up to that time had been a monopoly of divinity. It is interesting to note that the knowledge imparted by the fruit of this tree is the “knowledge of good and evil,” a much misunderstood phrase. The antonyms “good and evil” represent “everything.” The same expression in inverted order occurs in Egyptian, where “evil-good” means everything, and from Greek literature we may cite the words of Telemachus, “I know all things, the good and the evil”. The only reason that readers of the Bible have failed to grasp the proper understanding of “the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil” is that the traditional interpretation is so deeply entrenched. Thus man obtained universal knowledge and to that extent shares with god a divine prerogative. Mankind was driven out of paradise because God saw that man could not be trusted to obey His will and to refrain from eating the fruit of another tree in the Garden of Eden that would give man immortality. God decided that man should not obtain immortality lest he become like the gods. Accordingly, if we examine the story in Genesis objectively, we see that, while many elements go into making up the whole picture, it is not so much an account of the “Fall of Man” but rather of the rise of man halfway to divinity. He obtained one of the two prerogatives or characteristics of the gods: intelligence; but he was checked by God from obtaining immortality, which would have made him quite divine.

From The Knowledge of Good and Evil as the Knowledge, Nathan French: A range of commentators suggest that the primary interpretation should be toward a contextualized meaning of “beneficial” and the “harmful.” I will demonstrate that the principle of divine retribution, in relation to ‘some’ experiences of ‘good and bad/evil,’ assumes the divine agency of reward and punishment through blessing and cursing. Additionally, it will be shown that these texts reveal an interplay between human and divine retribution as indication of divinely sanctioned retribution through ‘blessing and cursing.’ Thus, the words that generally mean “knowledge of good and evil” in their target languages often appear within these literary contexts signifying the whole of the retributive process, from discrimination to response, the fruit of the knowledge of reward & punishment. It is the knowledge for administering reward and punishment that empowers humans to become judges with ultimate power, like Yahweh himself. The divine knowledge is forbidden since it is ultimate power for retribution. In this way, Yahweh’s reward and punishment serve as his tools for establishing a particular political and social order, a body politic. Knowledge of good and evil represents the advancement from childlike innocence to moral decision.

From Loss of Immortality, Konrad Schmid, University of Teubingen, 2008: Especially within the Christian tradition, there is a widespread notion that the first human beings were created to be immortal, making physical death the bitter consequence of human sin. However, there are also some newer approaches that see death as a natural part of creation, while death only becomes a frightening and threatening element under the influence of sin. At first glance, the traditional notion of an original immortality which was lost after the fall would fit perfectly into the Paradise story: This would be just another element contrasting the situations before the fall and after. In addition, God’s threat “you shall surely die” would be narratively fulfilled. Humankind, after its fall, has to die. But upon further review, there are far too many problems for such a thesis. First, Gen 2:7 states: “YHWH God formed man from the dust of the ground.” “Dust” in the Hebrew Bible functions clearly as a metaphor for transience, for being mortal. Secondly, in the punishment sentences in Gen 3:14-19, there is only one instance where the topic of death is brought up. This verse does not claim that humankind from now on has to die in contrast to the situation before. Death is not mentioned among the elements of punishment themselves. In Gen 3:22 God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of lif, and eat, and live forever. “‘ This sentence apparently does not reckon with the possibility that the human beings could again become immortal after having lost their original immortality a short while earlier. Rather, the prohibition of the tree of life is now mandatory, because after the humans have gained knowledge, immortality is the main element which still very clearly distinguishes God and humans.

The prevalent Christian interpretation which sees the primitive status of humankind as immortals is the result of an apocalyptic perspective on the paradise story which was historically alien to it. Genesis 3 is probably one of the most non-eschatological texts of the Bible, as is evident especially from its final verse: “[The Lord God] drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.” The angels with their sword stand for the conviction that paradise is lost forever. The Paradise story tries to explain how the present conditions of human life outside the paradise came about. lt is not interested in painting out a model for eschatological expectations. The common Christian interpretation has thoroughly transformed this, as can be seen for example from a famous German hymn by Nicolaus Hermann which ends with the words: “Today, Christ unlocks the door to the beautiful paradise, the cherub no longer stands in front of it.” But in Genesis, there is no way back, never ever. The Bible obviously sees no problems in determining human life – as it was designed by the creator – as substantially limited. Genesis 2-3 seems to present the wish to become immortal as a real wish only for fallen humanity. Immortality as such does not seem to be theologically important.

From Adam & Eve & The Serpent, Elaine Pagels: In their arguments from Scripture, Jewish teachers often avoided speaking directly about sexual practices but engaged in heated discussions about Adam, Eve, and the serpent, and in this metaphorical way revealed what they thought about sexuality and about human nature in general. The Book of Jubilees, for example, written about 150 years before Jesus’ birth by a Palestinian Jew, retells the story of Adam and Eve to prove, among other things, that Jewish customs concerning childbirth and nakedness were not arbitrary or trivial but actually built into human nature from the beginning. As this author tells it, Adam entered Eden during the first week of creation, but Eve entered the garden only during the second week; this explains why a woman who gives birth to a male child remains ritually impure for one week, while she who bears a female remains impure for two weeks. The author goes on to recall that God made garments for Adam and Eve, and clothed them before expelling them from Paradise; this shows that Jews must “cover their shame, and not go naked, as the Gentiles do,” in public places like the baths and the gymnasia. Throughout subsequent generations, what Jews and Christians read into the creation accounts of Genesis came, for better and worse, to shape what later came to be called tradition. Meanwhile certain radical gnostics, railed against marriage and procreation and against the God who had created such impurities. This radical teacher dared to tell the story of Paradise from the serpent’s point of view, and depicted the serpent as a teacher of divine wisdom: ‘For the serpent was wiser than any of the animals that were in Paradise. . . . But the creator cursed the serpent, and called him devil. And he said, “Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing evil and good.’ What kind of God is this? First, he envied Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge. . . . And secondly he said, ‘Adam, where are you?’ So God does not have foreknowledge, since he did not know this from the beginning. And afterwards, he said, ‘Let us cast him [out] of this place lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.’ Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious envier. And what kind of God is this? Great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know it.’” What church leader would not bridle at a critic who turned the Genesis account upside down?

From Justin Martyr, Dialogues, Second Century: Then what is next said in the Psalm —’For trouble is near, for there is none to help me. Many calves have compassed me; fat bulls have beset me round. All my bones are poured out and dispersed like water,’— was likewise a prediction of the events which happened to Christ. For on that night when some of your [Roman] nation, who had been sent by the Pharisees and Scribes, and teachers, came upon Him from the Mount of Olives, surrounded Him. And the expression, ‘Fat bulls have beset me round,’ He spoke beforehand of those who acted similarly to the calves, when He was led before your teachers. And the expression, ‘For there is none to help,’ is also indicative of what took place. For there was not even a single man to assist Him as an innocent person. ‘They opened their mouth upon me like a roaring lion,’ designates him who was then king of the Jews, and was called Herod, a successor of the Herod who, when Christ was born, slew all the infants in Bethlehem born about the same time, because he imagined that among them He would assuredly be of whom the Magi from Arabia had spoken; Or He meant the devil by the lion roaring against Hi,: whom Moses calls the serpent, but in Job and Zechariah he is called Satan, and by Jesus is addressed as devil, showing that a compounded name was acquired by him from the deeds which he performed. For ‘Sata’ in the Jewish and Syrian tongue means apostate; and ‘Nas’ is the word from which he is called by interpretation the serpent. We may perceive that the Father wished His Son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes, and may not say that He, being the Son of God, did not feel what was happening to Him and inflicted on Him.

From How the Serpent Became Satan, Shawna Dolansky, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2016: Introduced as “the most clever of all of the beasts of the field that YHWH God had made,” the serpent in the Garden of Eden is portrayed as just that: a serpent. Satan does not make an appearance in Genesis for the simple reason that when the story was written, the concept of the devil had not yet been invented. Explaining the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan would have been as foreign a concept to the ancient authors of the text as referring to Ezekiel’s vision as a UFO. In fact, while the word satan appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, it is never a proper name; since there is no devil in ancient Israel’s worldview, there can’t yet have been a proper name for such a creature. After the canon of the Hebrew Bible closed beliefs in angels, demons and a final apocalyptic battle arose in a divided and turbulent Jewish community. In light of this impending end, many turned to a renewed understanding of the beginning, and the Garden of Eden was re-read—and re-written—to reflect the changing ideas of a changed world. Satan became the proper name of the devil, a supernatural power now seen to oppose God as the leader of demons and the forces of evil; and the serpent in the Garden of Eden came to be identified with him. In 1 Enoch, the “angel” who “led Eve astray” and “showed the weapons of death to the children of men” was called Gadriel, not Satan. Around the same time, the Wisdom of Solomon taught that “through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who are on his side suffer it.” Though this may very well be the earliest reference to Eden’s serpent as the devil, in neither text, nor in any document we have until after the New Testament, is satan clearly understood as the serpent.

Although the author of Revelation describes Satan as “the ancient serpent”, there is no clear link anywhere in the Bible between Satan and the serpent in the garden. The ancient Near Eastern combat myth motif, exemplified in the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, typically depicted the bad guy as a serpent. The characterization of Leviathan in Isaiah reflects such myths nicely: “On that day YHWH will punish With his hard and big and strong sword Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisted serpent, And he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.: So the reference in Revelation to Satan as “the ancient serpent” probably reflects mythical monsters like Leviathan rather than the creature in Eden. In the New Testament, Satan and his demons have the power to enter and possess people; this is what is said to have happened to Judas. When Paul re-tells the story of Adam and Eve, he places the blame on the humans and not on fallen angels or on the serpent or Satan; still, the conflation begged to be made, and it will seem natural for later Christian authors—Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus and Augustine, for example—to assume Satan’s association with Eden’s snake. Most famously, in the 17th century, John Milton elaborates Satan’s role in the Garden poetically, in great detail in Paradise Lost. But this connection is still not forged anywhere in the Bible.

- From Commentary on the Bible, Matthew Henry, 1706: It is certain it was the devil that beguiled Eve. The devil and Satan is the old serpent, a malignant spirit, by creation an angel of light and an immediate attendant upon God’s throne, but by sin become an apostate from his first state and a rebel against God’s crown and dignity. Observe here: He does not discover his design at first, but puts a question which seemed innocent: “I hear a piece of news, pray is it true? has God forbidden you to eat of this tree?” Thus he would begin a discourse, and draw Eve into a parley. Those that would be safe have need to be suspicious, and shy of talking with the tempter. He quotes the command fallaciously, as if it were a prohibition, not only of that tree, but of all. God had said, Of every tree you may eat, except one. He, by aggravating the exception, endeavours to invalidate the concession: Hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree? The divine law cannot be reproached unless it be first misrepresented. He seems to speak it tauntingly, upbraiding the woman with her shyness of meddling with that tree; as if he had said, “You are so nice and cautious, and so very precise, because God has said, ‘You shall not eat.’ The devil, as he is a liar, so he is a scoffer, from the beginning: and the scoffers of the last days are his children. That which he aimed at in the first onset was to take off her sense of the obligation of the command. “Surely you are mistaken, it cannot be that God should tie you out from this tree; he would not do so unreasonable a thing.” See here, That it is the subtlety of Satan to blemish the reputation of the divine law as uncertain or unreasonable, and so to draw people to sin; and that it is therefore our wisdom to keep up a firm belief of, and a high respect for, the command of God. In answer to this question the woman gives him a plain and full account of the law they were under. It was her weakness to enter into discourse with the serpent. She might have perceived by his question that he had no good design.. But her curiosity, and perhaps her surprise, to hear a serpent speak, led her into further talk with him. Note, It is a dangerous thing to treat with a temptation, which ought at first to be rejected with disdain and abhorrence. The garrison that sounds a parley is not far from being surrendered. “You shall not die,” he says, so the word is, in direct contradiction to what God had said. Thus Satan endeavours to shake that which he cannot overthrow.
- From the Book of Adam & Eve, Anonymous, Sixth Century: Then Adam said unto God, “Lord, Thou didst create us, and make us [fit] to be in the garden; and before I transgressed, Thou madest all beasts come to me, that I should name them. Thy grace was then on me; and I named every one according to Thy mind; and Thou madest them all subject unto me. But now, Lord God, that I have transgressed Thy commandment, all beasts will rise against me and will devour me, and Eve Thy handmaid; and will cut off our life from the face of the earth. I therefore beseech Thee, God, that, since Thou hast made us come out of the garden, and hast made us be in a strange land, Thou wilt not let the beasts hurt us.” When the Lord heard these words from Adam, He had pity on him, and felt that he had truly said that the beasts [of the field] would rise and devour him and Eve, because He, the Lord, was angry with them [two] on account of their transgression. Then God commanded the beasts, and the birds, and all that moves upon the earth, to come to Adam and to be familiar with him,† and not to trouble him and Eve; nor yet any of the good and righteous among their posterity. Then the beasts did obeisance to Adam, according to the commandment of God; except the serpent, against which God was wroth. It did not come to Adam. Then Adam and Eve came out at the mouth of the cave, and went towards the garden. But as they drew near to it, before the western gate, from which Satan came when he deceived Adam and Eve, they found the serpent that became Satan coming at the gate. And whereas aforetime [the serpent] was the most exalted of all beasts, now it was changed and become slippery, and the meanest of them all, and it crept on its breast and went on its belly.

When the accursed serpent saw Adam and Eve, it swelled its head, stood on its tail, and with eyes blood-red, did as if it would kill them. It made straight for Eve, and ran after her; while Adam standing by, wept because he had no stick in his hand wherewith to smite the serpent, and knew not how to put to death. But with a heart burning for Eve, Adam approached the serpent, and held it by the tail; when it turned towards him and said unto him:– “Adam, because of thee and of Eve, I am slippery, and go upon my belly.” Then by reason of its great strength, it threw down Adam and Eve and pressed upon them, as if it would kill them. But God sent an angel who threw the serpent away from them, and raised them up. Then the Word of God came to the serpent, and said unto it, “In the first instance I made thee glib, and made thee to go upon thy belly; but I did not deprive thee of speech. “Now, however, be thou dumb ; and speak no more, thou and thy race31 because in the first place, has the ruin My creatures happened through thee, and now thou wishest to kill them.”* Then the serpent was struck dumb, and spake no more. And a wind came to blow from heaven by command of God, that carried away the serpent from Adam and Eve, threw it on the sea shore, and it landed in India.