Snakes

[Clive]

It isn't just a reference to Genesis. Thar be many many myths in this ere tale of shipwreck

It were a cold and stormy night, and the captain said to the bosun, tell us a tale ....

[Clive]

There is another puzzle - why did Paul go to Kos?

It was only possibly the major healing centre with a huge hospital complex for thousands of miles. The theatre he allegedly spoke at was the equivalent of appearing at Glastonbury.

It would appear to me to be quite reasonable to conclude that this hero's journey is precisely that.

[iskander]

It isn't just a reference to Genesis. Thar be many many myths in this ere tale of shipwreck

It were a cold and stormy night, and the captain said to the bosun, tell us a tale ....

Snakes are very naughty and devious . It was one unpaired lusting serpent who undid the work of a provident mighty God in the Garden of Eden.

Now the serpent was cunning: What is the connection of this matter here? Scripture should have juxtaposed (below verse 21): “And He made for Adam and for his wife shirts of skin, and He dressed them.” But it teaches you as a result of what plan the serpent thrust himself upon them. He saw them naked and engaging in intercourse before everyone’s eyes, and he desired her— [from Gen. Rabbah 18:6] .

Bereishit - Genesis - Chapter 3 , with Rashi
http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo ... rashi=true

[rakovsky]

It can be a reference to Mark 16 and surviving snakebites - ie not getting hurt by snakes in that passage, vv 10-20.

[Clive]

Bill Moyers: What do you make of it - that in these two stories the principal actors point to someone else as the initiator of the Fall?

Joseph Campbell: Yes, but it turns out to be the snake. In both of these stories the snake is the symbol of life throwing off the past and continuing to live.

Bill Moyers: Why?

Joseph Campbell: The power of life causes the snake to shed its skin, just as the moon sheds its shadow. The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.

http://sunrec.tumblr.com/post/490429282 ... -by-joseph

[Clive]

represents the primary function of life, mainly eating. Life consists in eating other creatures. You don’t think about that very much when you make a nice-looking meal. But what you’re doing is eating something that was recently alive. And when you look at the beauty of nature, and you see the birds picking around — they’re eating things. You see the cows grazing, they’re eating things. The serpent is a traveling alimentary canal, that’s about all it is. And it gives you that primary sense of shock, of life in its most primal quality. There is no arguing with that animal at all. Life lives by killing and eating itself, casting off death and being reborn, like the moon. This is one of the mysteries that these symbolic, paradoxical forms try to represent.

Now the snake in most cultures is given a positive interpretation. In India, even the most poisonous snake, the cobra, is a sacred animal, and the mythological Serpent King is the next thing to the Buddha. The serpent represents the power of life engaged in the field of time, and of death, yet eternally alive. The world is but its shadow — the falling skin.

The serpent was revered in the American Indian traditions, too. The serpent was thought of as a very important power to be made friends with. Go down to the pueblos, for example, and watch the snake dance of the Hopi, where they take the snakes in their mouths and make friends with them and then send them back to the hills. The snakes are sent back to carry the human message to the hills, just as they have brought the message of the hills to the humans. The interplay of man and nature is illustrated in this relationship with the serpent. A serpent flows like water and so is watery, but its tongue continually flashes fire. So you have the pair of opposites together in the serpent.

Bill Moyers: In the Christian story the serpent is the seducer.

Joseph Campbell: That amounts to a refusal to affirm life. In the biblical tradition we have inherited, life is corrupt, and every natural impulse is sinful unless it has been circumcised or baptized. The serpent was the one who brought sin into the world. And the woman was the one who handed the apple to man. This identification of the woman with sin, of the serpent with sin, and thus of life with sin, is the twist that has been given to the whole story in the biblical myth and doctrine of the Fall.

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