Why I Think Adam was a Real Person in History

[Bill_II]

@bluebird

If the account referred to a spiritual being, that is fine. I presume the “snake” was somehow “possessed,” at any rate

@bluebird It is not referring to a physical snake. Michael Heiser says in “The Unseen Realm”

But it’s also true that the story is told as it is for a reason. As odd as it sounds, the vocabulary and the imagery are designed to alert readers to the presence of a divine being, not a literal snake.

You can find more here
https://discourse.biologos.org/t/michael-heiser-serpent-son-s-of-god-nephilim-watchers-and-genesis

@bluebird

but still the developer of this pericope knew snakes once had legs

And when did snakes lose the ability to speak? To think? To know what God had said?

Then you make the assumption that when the snake is cursed to “On your belly you will go” this means it originally had legs. But this is followed by “And dust you will eat”. We know snakes “smell” by using their tongue so it certainly appears they are eating dust but we know that they are not. So the author got the vestigial legs right but the snakes diet wrong? Better solution is to realize that a real snake is not in view here.

@bluebird

Any of these is possible but I do think it interesting that the author of this biblical pericope would have known these things about two rivers besides the Tigris and Euphrates. The area is a desert now …and snakes slither along on their bellies. .

But the river existed in “mid-fourth to third millennium BC” which means it was have been known to the people writing Genesis. How is this surprising?