101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

64
yth #28:
The serpent was more subtle than any beast.
The Myth: Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the
LORD God had made. (Gen. 3:1)
The Reality: Genesis modeled the clever serpent after the Egyptian God Set, who
took the serpent form of Aphophis, enemy of Re.
Adam and Eve were ordered not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil. As the story unfolds, Eve came upon the tree and found a serpent dwelling there.
The serpent encouraged Eve to taste some of the fruit, but she told him about God’s
prohibition and the threat of death. The serpent replied,“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” (Gen. 3:4–5).
The serpent, who may have already eaten from the tree himself, obviously knows
the secret of the fruit, that it represents the Egyptian concept of Ma’at, (i.e., moral
order, see Myth #20) and eating of it gives one eternal life.
In our discussion of the Trees of Knowledge and Life, we observed that the Egyptians
had a mythic image of the serpent in a tree. In pictures from this story, the
Egyptian artists showed a cat with a stick bruising the head of a serpent that dwells in
a persea tree. The cat in this myth is Re, the sun god, and the serpent is Aphophis, the
enemy of Re who tries to swallow the sun at the end of each day. The bruising of the
serpent’s head, incidentally, represents exactly what God directed Adam to do to the
serpent and its progeny after the expulsion from Eden.
The Egyptians often identified Aphophis with the god Set, a clever and ambitious
deity who wanted to seize the Egyptian throne from his brother Osiris. Towards this
purpose, he conspired with allies to assassinate Osiris and usurp the monarchy.
First, he feigned friendship with his brother and offered him a gift of a chest. After
presenting it to him, he asked Osiris to lie down inside and see how it fit. Right after
Osiris lowered himself inside, Set and his allies killed him, sealed the chest shut, and