1) Snakes played an important religious role in ancient Egypt and were depicted widely in art and iconography. When Moses was in Egypt, snake imagery would have been everywhere. 2) Some scholars propose that the Levite tribe, including Moses and Aaron, may have originated as Egyptian priests who followed Moses out of Egypt and had connections to snake handling and worship. References to snakes in the Bible may relate to this. 3) In the Bible, Moses was instructed by God to make a copper snake idol to cure snakebites, contradicting idol worship bans. This later developed into a snake cult in Jerusalem until being destroyed centuries later. Ancient Near Eastern snake cults and worship were common.

1. Snakes in the bible
Dave Shafer
CHJ

2. Themes:
1) Snakes and Religion
2) Snakes and medicine
3) Snakes and Sex
4) A Snake in the Garden of Eden

3. Snakes and religion
The Jewish time in Egypt

4. Egyptians had
many gods and
very important
ones were the
snake god Apeps
and the cobra
goddess Wadjet
The symbol of the cobra was central to
images of the Pharaoh and his crown and
surroundings. It appeared everywhere in
ancient Egypt.
According to the bible there were many generations of the Jews living in Egypt
before the Exodus and they would have been in the midst of a country steeped in
religion - and snake statues, snake icons, snake rites and imagery.

5. There was even an ancient Egyptian board game,
far right here, based on a coiled snake pattern.
When Moses was in
Egypt, snake imagery was
absolutely everywhere,
as well as 37 different
kinds of actual snakes.

6. Hollywood and artists love the dramatic scene of Moses parting
the waters during the Exodus. Nothing like the actual very shallow
Sea of Reeds which was the probable site.
Who was Moses and what was his genealogy?
Moses father Amram married his own aunt – kind of creepy.

7. And the 12 tribes of Israel
Descendants of Levi
Moses is a Levite

8. The Levite tribe has a lot of Egyptian names. No other tribe has any, that are mentioned in
the Torah. The name Moses is usually given a Hebrew derivation but there is an equally valid
Egyptian language one. He was, after all, raised in the Pharaoh’s household. Maybe only the
Levites were ever in Egypt, and not the other tribes. But there is a more likely possibility.

9. All the Levites were priests.
Perhaps some were originally
Egyptian priests who followed
Moses out of Egypt in the
Exodus, hence those Egyptian
names among the Levites.
The 10 Plagues must have
impressed them quite a bit.

10. The tribe of Levi has a name that could
be the same Hebrew word root as the
Leviathon – the giant sea serpent that God
created in the early days of the Creation
(Genesis 1:20-23). Later God killed the
giant serpent Rahab in an epic battle,
Isaiah 27:1. Two possible “Levi” name
derivations are from one root meaning
“joined” or another meaning “coiled”.
There may be some good reasons to link
the Levites and snakes, aside from this
linguistic connection. Moses and Aaron
were Levites and the Rod of God (Moses’
almond branch staff) was turned into a
snake twice in the Torah.

11. God turns the Levite Moses’ rod into a snake (Exodus
4:2-4) and Levite Aaron does the same. Pharaoh’s
magicians respond with their own snakes (Exodus 7:9-
12). Snakes were sacred to the Egyptian God Thoth.
Maybe these same magicians left Egypt with Moses, as
co-priests with the Levites, hence the Egyptian names
among the Levites.

12. The Ouroboros – a snake,
lizard or dragon eating its
own tail, was a very popular
image in antiquity.
The German chemist Wilhelm Korner
searching in vain for the organic
chemical structure of benzene had a
dream, of a snake biting its own tail.
He woke up to realize that this is the
structure of the benzene molecule,
now known as the benzene ring.
“Levi” / “Leviathon”
= joined or coiled

13. “Levi” / “Leviathon” = Joined or coiled
1st American political cartoon Serpent joined at
mouth and tail
Minoan
snake
handler
Maybe the Levites were
religious snake handlers and
became head of the snake
cult that Hezikiah purged in
2nd Kings 18:4, destroying
the brass snake idol that
Moses made.

14. Hopi snake
dancers
If the Levites, like Moses and Aaron were religious
snake handlers it would not be such a strange thing.

15. This proposed connection
between the Levites, like
Moses, and snakes explains a
lot of otherwise mysterious
biblical details - like the copper
snake that Moses made. That
is discussed next.
This also shows how important it is to put biblical details in
the context of the surrounding cultures, like Egypt and Canaan,
which helps explain some textual puzzles in the bible.
Moses with the “Rod of God”

16. Snakes and medicine

17. In the book of Numbers 21, 5-9 we read about the Jews wandering in
the desert after the Exodus. To punish them for constant kvetching
God sent a plague of “fiery serpents” to kill them off. This would have
been the deadly Palestinian viper, the most poisonous snake in Israel
today, which lives in a rather small area of the Near East. The obvious
meaning of “fiery serpents” would be a dragon, but the text implies
many and biting, not roasting, people. An alternate reading is “burning
serpents” which may refer to the feeling the venom produces on the
body. These vipers are, today, greatly feared by the desert Bedouins.

18. The bible then says that Moses intervened on
behalf of his dying people and that God told
him to make a copper or brass serpent and
mount it on a pole. All those bitten who
looked at it would then recover. This story
directly violates the commandment against
making any graven images, a big no-no. But I
guess if God tells you to do it, it doesn’t count.
It is not clear
why the snake
idol was made of
copper or brass.
One theory is
that that metal
matches the
color of that kind
of viper.
And what then happened
to that snake idol after its
use was finished of curing
people of their fatal bites?
I’m glad you asked. It led to
a snake cult that lasted for
many hundred of years,
with its center in Jerusalem.
The biblical Jews have
always worshiped more
than one god.

19. Archaeologist have found many copper snake idols throughout the Near East, due
to an ancient religious snake cult. Some date to the time of Moses. The copper
snake that Moses made may simply have been something that everyone already
knew about and not something started by Moses. About 800 years after Moses
King Hezikiah of Judah went on an idol smashing spree (2 Kings:8) and cleansed
Jerusalem of the snake idol Moses had made as well as destroying many wooden
idols to Asherah (wife to the Hebrews’ god Yahweh). Archeologists have found
many Asherah idols in Israel. Through most of the history described in the bible
the Jews were polytheistic, although with Yahweh always as the supreme deity.

20. As a mark of reverence for the serpent, it was reported, the snake took part in the sect's communion service. The
following was reported by Epiphanius (fourth century Church Father) who called the service abominable. “The snake
was kept in a chest. At the beginning of the service the snake is summoned out. He then rolls among the loaves of
bread which are on the table after which are broken and eaten. Following this each of those present kiss the snake on
the mouth for it has been tamed by a spell. They have then fallen down and worshipped the snake as a part of the
Eucharist service”. Religious snake cults existed throughout the ancient Near East and there are biblical hints of it too.
The Ophites were a bizarre early Christian heretical sect, devoted to a snake god, and elements of it
already existed within Judaism. They thought the Jewish God was an evil influence and power from
which mankind needed to be liberated. From this point of view the serpent in the Garden of Eden was a
benefactor to mankind when he urged Adam and Eve to revolt against such a God. Therefore, other
enemies of Jehovah in the Old Testament became heroes of the sect.

21. In Exodus 4:24 we read that very soon after God had sent Moses from
Midian to Egypt, to address the Pharaoh, “The Lord met him and sought to
kill him” This is one of most puzzling passages in the whole bible. A late
rabbinic midrash commentary on it says that God or an angel of God took on
the form of a giant serpent and swallowed up Moses up to his waist
(genitals). This alerted his wife Zipporah that the threat was related to
circumcision and she resolved the situation. This is a link between snakes and
sex (genitals) that is explored later in the next section. It also taps into the
religious snake cult imagery.
What counts for us here is not if this biblical event (God trying to kill Moses)
ever happened, or even if the bible passage has been correctly translated or
understood. We are interested in how this event, imagined or real, was seen
by ancient commentators and what imagery they used to talk about it – like
this snake midrash and other accounts in Ginzberg’s folklore book “Legends
of the Jews”.
This is all a detour away from explaining why the copper snake
idol that Moses made cured the people bitten by deadly snakes.
We will now return to that topic and the role of snakes in
healing. Notice the snakes in the nurses logo, twined around a
staff.

22. Many cultures associate snakes with healing and medicine, in addition to
their sometimes deadly characteristics. One reason for this is that it was a
common belief in earlier times that snakes were immortal. Several times
during their lifetime a snake sheds its skin and emerges with a youthful
appearance. It seems to never die. Hibernating animals were also viewed as
having defeated death. Hence snake’s role in ancient medicine and healing.
For several millennia there
was a religious bear cult
throughout northern Europe,
based partly on the way a
bear seemed to survive a
winter in a cave with no food
or water while hibernating
and then miraculously come
to life in the spring.

23. The twin snake staff was sacred to the
Greek god Hermes and is his symbol.
Hermes and this symbol have nothing to
do with medicine and its very widespread
use is based on a mistaken understanding.
The correct symbol for medicine is the
single snake staff that is the Rod of
Asclepius, Greek god of medicine and
healing. It is sometime used correctly, like
by the AMA.

24. In Exodus 15:26 God says to Moses that if they will obey his laws and commandments then he will
not bring on them any of the diseases (plagues) he brought on the Egyptians for “I am the Lord your
healer”. The Egyptians wore amulets and talisman to ward off disease or evil. An Egyptian medical
patient would wear a headband with the name written on it of the god being invoked for protection and
healing. Does this suggest anything to you? The word “tefillin” is not in the Torah. The word used
there is “totafot” and has a puzzling linguistic origin. Some experts think it is an Egyptian loan word.
What is clear is that early Judaism was strongly influenced by their stay in Egypt and then later by
their neighbors the Canaanites. Egyptian medical snake amulet
Medical folklore from
Egypt would have
been carried by the
Jews into their Exodus
journey out of Egypt.

25. Navaho healing ceremony with snake
In magical thinking a snake’s power to cause death
is linked to a similar ability to ward off death.

26. Snakes and Sex
Snake takes a smoke, after sex

27. Snakes as sexual symbols
In Western civilization any time
a snake is shown or described as
having contact with a man it is
always a dangerous hostile one,
like in the Greek myth of
Laocoon and sons struggling with
a python. Or Hercules slaying
the Hydra.
By contrast almost all contacts shown between women and snakes are
of a sexual nature, sometimes of a dangerous type. Here is an example.
In ancient Egypt the pharaoh Cleopatra killed herself in 30 BC by having
an asp or cobra bite her. The classical authors back then, like Plutarch
and Suetonius, clearly state that she was bitten on her arm. Yet almost
all artists have depicted this scene, a very popular subject, with the asp
biting Cleopatra on the breast – linking the snake to sexual imagery.
Some take it a step further and have the snake bite her on the nipple!

28. Cleopatra gets bit on
the nipple
The phallic shape of the snake and its
head make it inevitable that it would
come to be associated with sex in
myths and religion.

29. Cleopatra did research on poisons, using slaves, and was an expert on what
the bite of an asp or cobra could do. To this day people die in Egypt from
snake bites in considerable numbers. Both in Egypt and back in Israel the
ancient Hebrews were very familiar with poisonous snakes.

30. The snakes that
snake charmers use
are mostly from India
and Pakistan.

31. In medieval Western Europe, especially
France, there was the myth of Melusine.
She changed from an ordinary woman each
Saturday to a woman who was a snake from
the waist down, the sexual part. When she
married she had her husband promise to
never enter enter her chamber on
Saturdays. In some versions she was a fish
on the bottom half instead of a snake. Her
husband spied on her one Saturday and
discovered her secret.
The symbolism of a half woman, half snake person is ambiguous. But it
skirts the edges of a much more direct image – that of a snake and woman
having sex. This was of considerable Jewish interest in the Babylonian Talmud
and in commentaries on it, like the Mishnah. The rabbis thought that in the
Garden of Eden the Snake and Eve had sex before Adam did.

32. The rabbis poring over texts basically had too much time on their
hands and came up with a lot of completely imagined backstories to
the biblical narrative. But sometimes they based their imaginings, like
about Lilith, on very ancient folklore and non-biblical mythology.

33. The Greek goddess Lamia and
also Echidna are just some of
the many worldwide mythical
figures that combine a woman
and a snake into one body.
Often there is a link between
the danger from a snake and
the perceived danger from a
woman’s sexuality.
Medusa
head with
hair of live
snakes.
Medusa gets
them all
straightened
out at the
hairdresser.

34. If you like creepy
snake/woman
paintings you will be
hard pressed to find
any better or creepier
than those by the
German painter Franz
Stuck from around
1900. The one on the
left, with Eve and the
Snake is called “Sin”.
The one on the right is
called “Sensuality”.
He seemed to have
had a thing about
snakes. And nudes.

35. There is much art from the
medieval and Renaissance
times that shows the snake
twined about a tree in the
Garden of Eden and urging Eve
to eat the forbidden apple. But
this is not correct. The text of
Genesis clearly states that God
condemned the snake to crawl
on its belly, as punishment, but
only after Eve has tried the
apple. The two paintings on the
right have it wrong, showing
the snake looking like a snake.
The painting on the left is
correct. The snake was some
other kind of creature first,
when it tempted Eve, and then
later was turned by God into
what we now know as a snake’s
body, with neither arms nor
legs and crawling on the
ground.

36. This creepy painting
by Franz Stuck from
about 100 years ago
conveys both the
menace and the
sexuality inherent in
the snake/apple gift
that Eve is offering
Adam. But it also
has the timing
wrong, with the
snake looking like a
snake prematurely,
before God’s
punishment.

37. The ancient Mediterranean region shared
many common themes in their myths and
religions. Eve and the snake having sex is not
at all an odd idea. In Roman mythology
Jupiter seduced Olympia, shown here in a
1530 painting, in the guise of a snake. In
Greek mythology Zeus rapes his own daughter
Persephone, after first turning into a snake
The painting on
the right, titled
“Persephone” is
by Thomas Hart
Benton
Notice Jupiter’s lower body, with tail

38. Moses received instructions from God, including a prohibition in Leviticus 18:23 and
20:15,16 against bestiality. Two points: 1) you don’t bother to prohibit something
unless people are already doing it, and 2) it is not so much sin as it is religious sin that
the Torah constantly condemns (whoring after false gods, etc.). World myth has many
examples of bestiality, such as Zeus in the form of a swan raping Leda, who then gives
birth to Venus. Or Pasiphae, who climbed into a model cow so as to copulate with a
bull, and then gave birth to the Minotaur monster. Herodotus, in his “Histories”, tells of
Egyptian women who had sex with goats in public squares, for money. Those randy
Canaanites were known for ritual temple prostitutes (men and women), homosexuality,
bestiality, and general licentiousness. It is possible that the railing against that, in the
Torah, was mostly based on purely religious objections – like against pagan sexual
fertility rites (Baal was a god of fertility). Canaanite priests of Baal engaged in ritual
sex with heifers as part of fertility rites to head off dreaded droughts and famine.
Herodotus

39. Probably the most explicit link between snakes and sex occurs in the Greek
story of the sage Tiresias. He saw two snakes mating and beat them apart
with a stick. This displeased the goddess Hera who then changed Tiresias into
a woman. He lived as a woman for 7 years and had children. With first hand
experience of both sexes he declared that a woman’s sexual pleasure was 10X
greater than a man’s. Later he again beat apart coupling snakes and was
changed back into a man. Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando” was inspired by
the story of Tiresias.

40. In some versions of the Greek Tiresias story he, after his
encounter with the coupling snakes and being changed
into a woman, was a prostitute for 7 years.
Returning now to the bible the name “Rahab” occurs
twice. In the book of Joshua it refers to a woman,
Rahab, who was a prostitute. It is also the name of a
giant sea serpent, Rahab – the Leviathan – mentioned in
Job, Isaiah, and Psalms. Another snake/sex link.

41. We already discussed earlier the biblical serpent Rahab the
Leviathan, defeated by God in an epic battle at the dawn of
Creation, similar to the much older Babylonian creation myths.
In the Gemara (about 1600 years ago) part of the Babylonian
Talmud there is an odd section (Shabbat 110a) where the
rabbis debate various aspects of snakes having sex with
women. They seem convinced that this is a high priority with
snakes. They give a method of coaxing a snake out, after it has
entered a woman, by having her crouch over a small fire into
which certain herbs have been thrown. When the snake
emerges it is to be grabbed with tongs and thrown into the fire.

42. In that same Talmud
passage the ever practical
(??) rabbis advised a way to
protect oneself from snakes
at night – put a big barrel
under each bed leg to
elevate it and tie a cat to
each barrel. Why didn’t I
think of that?

43. We and all primates are genetically wired to have an innate fear of snakes.

44. A snake in the Garden of Eden

45. The Garden of
Eden had many
animals and
plants but all it
is known for, for
most people, is
Adam, Eve, and
the Snake.
Equally
important are
two trees, but
we will first
focus on the trio
of the couple
and the snake.

47. The ancient rabbis must have had a lot of time on their hands
because they speculated endlessly about the Adam and Eve story, which
only takes up a few lines in the bible. There is a tradition among these
commentators that there is more to the simple story than meets the
eye.
In the text the snake first occurs talking to Eve (a talking snake – who
knew?). There is an imagined back story here where Eve and the snake
had sex before Adam. Furthermore her son Cain had the snake as his
biological father. When Cain kills his brother Abel he is showing his evil
genetic background. The rabbis speculated that since Adam lived for a
while in the garden before God created Eve to be his companion, that
he had sex with all the animals during that time before Eve.

48. Satan or Lucifer is supposed to be a
fallen angel, expelled from heaven,
shown here by at left by Gustave Dore.
There is no mention of Satan or Lucifer
in the Jewish bible. One Hebrew word
in Isaiah 14:12 which means “morning
star” = Venus came to be much later
interpreted as meaning a fallen angel
and the character of Satan was then
created, but the text itself never says
this. In the book of Job, Christian
translations have Satan talking with
God about Job but the actual Hebrew
only refers to a nameless accuser.
Satan is not an important concept in
Judaism but it is in Christianity and
Islam.
The Snake in the
Garden of Eden is
only linked to
Satan in Christian
or late Jewish
Kabbalah
traditions.

49. The Book of Baruch, around the same time as the Book of
Maccabees (story of Hannukah), 50 BC (neither is in the
canonical Hebrew bible) - claims that the Serpent had sexual
relations with both Adam and Eve.
A Jewish tradition, also found in
some Gnostic texts, holds that
God originally created Adam as a
hermaphrodite (Midrash
Rabbah, Genesis 7:1) so that
Adam was both male and
female. God later decided that
"it is not good for 'it' to be
alone," and brought the
feminine Eve out of Adam,
leaving Adam as masculine only.
Original male/female Adam
(It’s tough going on the gym treadmill)

50. After Eve gave birth to her first child Cain
she said “I have gotten (created) a man
(child) with Yahweh (the Lord)
Genesis 4:1
No matter how you slice it there is no
mention here by Eve of Adam. It was, in Eve’s
view, she and God who produced a child.
Those ancient rabbis and commentators who thought that Eve had sex with
the snake and that Cain was the result of that union could find Eve’s words
here (no mention of Adam) significant. But the situation is much more
complicated than this. There is a long Jewish tradition that Eve was the second
wife of Adam and his first wife was Lilith, who is mentioned just once in the
bible in Isaiah. Furthermore Lilith was closely identified with snake imagery in
surrounding cultures. She is described as a demon in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

51. The classic James Thurber cartoon here
show’s Adam’s situation. In the Jewish legends
God makes a woman at the same time as
Adam, as equals, and not from his body (rib).
That is actually the first of the two creation
stories in Genesis. In the Jewish legends, but
not spelled out in the bible, she is Lilith - not
Eve - and she and Adam quarrel. She refuses
to be treated by Adam as under him. Literally
under him physically, as during sex – when she
wants to be on top. She storms off, leaves
Adam, and becomes a night demon. In the
second creation story in Genesis Eve is created
from Adam’s body (rib).
The rabbis back then, not known for close observation of Nature (Woody
Allen: “Nature and I are two”) declared that all creatures copulate in a
belly to back position with three exceptions – people, snakes, and fish.
Again snakes and people are put in the same sexual category.

52. In art Lilith is usually shown is association with a snake. God called Eve “Woman” but Adam gave her the
name “Eve”. This is usually translated as meaning that she is the mother of all living things. That is nonsense!
At that point she was not even the mother of a child. Her name Eve is “Chavvah” in Hebrew. The translation
of chavvah as ‘life’ becomes more interesting when it is noted that in the cognate Arabic and Aramaic
languages the word havvah (and which sounds as a pun of chavvah) means ‘serpent’ (in Aramaic hiwya).
Snakes alive! They are everywhere! So Lilith and Eve and snakes (and also sex) are always closely associated.
Lilith becomes a night demon (incubus) after leaving Eden and preys sexually on sleeping men.

53. Snakes and nudity together are
sexual images that are still with us
today.

54. Night demons like Lilith are evil spirits that visit you in your sleep and cause
nightmares. The Swiss artists Henry Fuseli painted these creepy examples in 1781.

55. The mythology surrounding
Lilith said that as a night
demon she would visit men
in their sleep, cause them to
have wet dreams and then
collect their semen to use in
creating half human/half
demon beings, with the man
as their unwitting parent.
But they never write, they
never call, etc…

56. Lilith was closely associated with both the snake and
the owl (a night creature). She was thought to be a big
threat to newborn babies, who she would try to
strangle with her hair. Mothers would put amulets
around the necks of their newborn babies to protect
them from Lilith – especially boys up until their bris.
This practice still exists today

57. Medieval texts describe charms and amulets to
protect both the new baby and its mother from Lilith.
Some amulets would contain small pieces of highly
decorated paper with messages.

58. Jewish incantation bowls
from the Sassanid period (226-
636 CE) protect against Lilith.
The bowls were buried face
down and were meant to
capture demons. They were
commonly placed under the
threshold, courtyards, in the
corner of the homes of the
recently deceased and in
cemeteries.

59. These are contemporary Lilith
protection amulets. Some very old
ones were in the shape of a snake
because of Lilith’s association with
snakes.
All use of amulets and other
superstitious practices are strongly
condemned in the Torah. Oh well.

60. anti-Lilith
protection
amulet for
girl babies
For boy
babies
More contemporary baby amulets
Another ancient Lilith trapping
bowl, to be buried upsidedown.

61. In late rabbinic literature, like the
Kabbalah, Lilith is assumed to have
a mate – Samiel, prince of demons
and the archangel of death. His
name in Hebrew means the “venom
of God” and he slays people with a
drop of poison, like a snake might.

62. God (Yahweh) had a wife – Asherah, who was a fertility goddess.
Archeologists in Israel have discovered numerous statues to her as
well as household icons but almost all mention of her has been kept
out of the bible. King Hezekiah around 700 BC had Asherah poles
destroyed to purify the religion and make it have a single deity.
Ancient mold for making
Asherah statues
Asherah was a
fertility goddess and
her statues seemed
to have been sacred
trees or wooden
pillars. She was
called the Mother of
Heaven. Sort of like
Eve being called the
mother of all living
things. Eve, Lilith,
Asherah, the snake,
and the Tree of Life
are all connected

63. Asherah was the wife or consort of the Canaanite god Baal and
the Israelis seems to have adopted her as the wife of their own
god Yahweh. She was a fertility goddess and her rituals had three
main elements in the Canaanite religion–
1) Ritual prostitution, 2) snake worship and 3) human sacrifice –
specifically child sacrifice. The bible has many statements that
show that Yahweh expected all first born, whether animals of the
flock or human children, to be sacrificed to him. Eventually this
changed and the story of Abraham and Isaac shows a shift to
having an animal substitute sacrificed. The Canaanites had a god
Moloch that was specifically a god of child sacrifice.
Children were tossed into a large fire as part of the religious rituals. The
bible has many exhortations to the Israelites to stop doing this Canaanite
practice, as the Jewish religion evolved and moved away from Yahweh’s
earlier demand for it. Scholars agree that the practice continued until
relatively late biblical times in Israel. In Israel the child sacrifice was carried
out at special Asherah poles or statues, that were everywhere. Later on the
bible rails against this and forbids the building of Asherah poles anywhere
near altars to Yahweh. The relevance of this to snakes will soon be clear.

64. Psalms 106, 34-43
When an angel stopped Abraham from
sacrificing Isaac, in that famous story, that
was supposed to indicate the end of human
sacrifice, but it continued long afterwards.

65. Child sacrifice was widespread in the ancient world, especially in times of crisis. The Trojan War couldn’t get
started because the Greek ships were all becalmed for many days and couldn’t move. The Greek commander
sacrificed his own daughter to break this impasse. The Canaanite Moloch sacrifices are not described as being
related in any way to a tree but some cultures have a specific tree as a key part. Druid sacrifices were under
the sacred oak tree. The Asherah human sacrifice poles may have been living trees (probably the date palm)
or wooden pillars carved to represent the Goddess or simply sacred poles. Maybe symbols of the Tree of Life.
Date palm
Druid sacrifice

66. Probably every
culture has a Tree of
Life image. The two at
right here are Muslim
ones from Turkey and
Khazakastan. It always
represents the life
principle, growth,
abundance, etc. and
has a spiritual aspect.
In the Garden of Eden God forbids Adam
and Eve to eat fruit from the Tree of
Knowledge (of Good and Evil) but does not
initially forbid them to eat from the Tree of
Life (which would give them immortality).
As we know, the snake tempts Eve to eat
an apple from the forbidden tree.

67. Egyptian Tree of Life
gives suck to young
Pharaoh
Klimt Tree of Life painting 1905
Indian Tree of
Life and 5
headed snake
Mayan Tree
of Life and
Snake
Sumerian Tree of Life and Snake, 2200 BC.

68. In Judaism there are
several important
Tree of Life symbols.
One is the menorah,
with almond tree
branches. One is the
tree in the Garden of
Eden. One is the
burning bush that
Moses sees when
God first talks to him.
The mystical Kabbalah teachings in the Zohar have the
Tree of Life as a central concept and twisted around that
Tree of Life is a serpent. The menorah’s almond tree and
snakes are both sacred to the Egyptian god Thoth. When
Moses is at the burning bush God tells him to throw down
his rod (of an almond branch) and it turns into a snake. So
snakes and trees, especially the Tree of Life, are closely
related.

69. The mystical body of Jewish texts known as the Kabbalah (from
about 1300 AD), with the main book being the “Zohar”, speculates
endlessly over what happened in the Garden of Eden. Did the
demon Lilith return in the guise of a snake, have sex with both Adam
(again) and Eve, as well as tempt Eve with the apple? Was Eve
herself originally a snake goddess figure? The name “mother of all
living things” for Eve sounds exactly like a fertility goddess – like
Asherah, the wife of Yahweh? Etc., Etc.
The mystical Kabbalah expanded the entities
that they obsess over by deciding that there
was a male counterpart to Lilith in the form of
an evil Satan-like creature called Samael. This
is not in the bible but is in the Talmud (about
600 AD) and the Kabbalah (1300 AD). The
Kabbalah claims that Samael was a fallen angel
and that he was the snake that had sex with
Eve, tempted her with the apple, and then
when expelled from the Garden of Eden he
shacked up with Lilith.

70. The bible does not say
“apple”, just “fruit, and it has
been thought to be a fig, grape,
or citron, (more likely for that
part of the world) but not an
apple. God tells Adam and Eve
not to eat the fruit for “as soon
as you eat of it, you shall die”
Genesis 2:17

71. This creepy painting by Von Stuck
inadvertently hits on a key idea. Eating
what kind of fruit would make you die
“as soon as you eat of it” – (Genesis
2:17)? The obvious answer = poison
fruit! Some modern scholars think it was
a deadly hallucinogenic mushroom. In
any case, it was widely thought in the
ancient world that snakes could and did
transfer their venom to plants and fruits,
especially mushrooms. Von Stuck, 100
years ago, showed this idea here very
clearly. It was also widely believed that
certain mushrooms could bring the dead
back to life = make you immortal – just
as the snake was thought to be immortal
because of shedding its skin periodically.

72. In summary, snakes and snake symbols are intimately connected with various biblical topics like
Asherah, Adam and Eve, the Tree of Life, healing, the rod of Moses and Aaron, Levites, Lilith, and
human sacrifice. Everything seems to be interconnected. For example Lilith, in her demon mode,
was a strangler (like a boa constrictor) of children. The same figure, Lilith, that embodied voracious
sexuality was also an agent of death. Likewise the venomous snake was also key to some healing
rituals, like the copper snake that Moses made. It is rare in religion and mythology for symbols to
have just one meaning.

73. The role of snakes in the religion and culture of the ancient
world, like this Minoan snake goddess here, or the sacred
python at the Oracle at Delphi, the Nagas of India, etc., etc, is a
very big one and even this restricted survey here does not
begin to do justice to a small piece – snakes in the Jewish
bible. Archaeology as well as close textual analysis of ancient
texts continue to throw new light on this fascinating topic.