Was the serpent in Genesis real?

Faith & Science Conversation
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He is not the God of what really didn’t happen. That would be the other little god
John 5:47
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?
‘His’ writings include Genesis
God is not a man that He should lie

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Do you want to see a neat trick? Find where Moses wrote about Jesus or the Messiah in Genesis … without interpretation.

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Ezekiel 23

And you never said how you tell which are symbolic and which are not. That was the point.

See above.

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A quick look at the chapter you posted looks like a few women were talked about who were immoral. Then it gets into how Israel was also similar. Then it tells of how God will bring a captivity. So what part did you think was just symbolic?

Since real names are mentioned, explain why they were not real women?

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The first place that comes to mind is the seed of the woman

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Those look like “real names” in English but aren’t actually names in Hebrew, they are phrases meaning “her tent” and “my tent is in her”.
They’re not real women because the text says they are Samaria and Judah/Jerusalem.
It’s a parable, with an interpretation and some commentary.

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  • I asked St. Roymond: “Do you want to see a neat trick? Find where Moses wrote about Jesus or the Messiah in Genesis … without interpretation.”
  • dad answered: “The first place that comes to mind is the seed of the woman.”
  • Is he referring to Genesis 3:15 or not? If he is, Genesis 3:15 does not say “Jesus,” “Christ,” or “Messiah.” It speaks of the woman’s “seed” or “offspring.”
  • Getting from “the seed of the woman” to “Jesus the Messiah” requires interpreting the text. Biblically and theoretically, I’m among the offspring of Eve, but that obviously doesn’t make me the Messiah. Identifying Jesus as the particular referent of Genesis 3:15 is therefore an interpretation, not something the text explicitly says.
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The names are symbolic. The sisters represent Judah and Israel.

This just shows how easy it is to confuse “real” with symbolic.

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169

And reading Christ back into the OT is something that Christians do with great regularity, correctly or not.

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Could real women with sleazy names and occupations have been an illustration of Judah/Samaria?

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Prophesy is like that.

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What if they were real women that were used to represent Israel? God has a habit of renaming people. Could these gals have been renamed? Why not they were being used to illustrate a point.

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Probably not enough

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  • @jpm: Now that dad has conceded that “Prophecy is like that” means prophecy requires interpretation, it’s time to close this thread too.
  • Genesis 3:15 does not uniquely identify one particular person as the Jewish Messiah, much less identify that person as Jesus. Christians identify Jesus as its ultimate referent by interpreting the passage within a Christian interpretive framework.
  • dad’s “Prophecy is like that” is prima facie evidence that the interpretive framework one brings to Scripture matters considerably.
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Prophesy being subject to some interpretation neither means it is not real, or that events and names given elsewhere in Scripture is subject to interpretation.
I would not even discuss prophesy with someone that did not believe the bible. Someone that pretended (or was deluded enough to believe) that people and events in Genesis and elsewhere were not true and real. Nothing in prophesy changes that. Prophesy is about the future not a record of the past.

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  • dad’s response misses several distinctions that matter here:
  • I have not argued that interpretation makes something unreal.
  • Whether a text requires interpretation and whether what it describes actually happened are two different questions. Interpreting the sentence “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” does not imply that Caesar didn’t cross the Rubicon.
  • dad has already demonstrated that Scripture requires interpretation. Genesis 3:15 says “seed” or “offspring of the woman.” It does not say “Jesus,” “Christ,” or “Messiah.” dad identified that expression as referring to Jesus and then explained the difference by saying, “Prophecy is like that.” Yet he seems to be unable to grasp that he interpreted the words in order to identify their referent.
  • Calling Genesis 3:15 “prophecy” is itself an interpretation. The verse does not announce: “This is a prophecy about the Messiah.”
  • Recognizing it as prophecy and identifying Jesus as its ultimate referent require interpretive judgments. dad doesn’t understand that or simply refuses to believe that he does that.
  • “Prophecy is about the future” does not rescue the distinction. If different kinds of biblical literature are to be read differently, we must first determine what kind of literature or discourse we are reading and how it functions. That, too, is interpretation for normal people.
  • Finally, “people and events … were true and real” is not an interpretation of the text; it is dad’s conclusion about the text. Before reaching that conclusion, he had to decide what the author is asserting in the first place.
  • None of this establishes that the serpent was unreal, that Genesis records no historical events, or that Genesis 3:15 cannot legitimately be read christologically. It establishes something much more elementary: reading Scripture requires interpretation, and interpretation is logically prior to deciding whether what we think Scripture asserts is true.
  • Calling someone who disagrees with your interpretation a person who “did not believe the Bible,” “pretended,” or was “deluded” does nothing to resolve the problem. It simply substitutes a judgment about the reader for an argument about the text.
  • dad’s latest response isn’t merely a hermeneutical argument. He’s again equating disagreement with his interpretation with disbelief in the Bible which is why, IMO, this thread has outlived its usefulness.
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Good place to end.

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