q had been preserved in the ark, and accordingly had come to Noah as innocuous to men, and had been as well received and dismissed by him as any other living creature of the world; so that I do not see the least ground to imagine that Adam apprehended, in what God now said, any thing was intimated, that there should subsist between men and serpents a perpetual enmity, to be always biting and destroying one another. If we look into the ages after the flood, we find that serpents were, before Moses' days, becoming noxious animals ;' and men, when Moses lived, were in general afraid of them. There might ere this time be poisonous juices in many of the herbs and plants which grew The Hebrews had a different word for serpents of the water, from that which they used for the land kind. The river serpent they called [tennin]. Thus, when Moses' rod was turned into a serpent before Pharaoh, it was turned r♪♫ [letennin] into a water-snake, as Pharaoh probably was now where he usually went in the morning, to the river. But the serpent which had tempted Eve was not a tennin, but a nachash, a land serpent. It may perhaps be observed, that the serpent called tennin is also called nachash. See Exod. vii. 9, 10, 12. To which it may be replied, that nachash was the first general word used for a serpent, before the different kinds of them were distinguished: therefore the water-kinds may be sometimes called by this general name; but it will not follow, that where nachash is used above, we should think a water-snake intended. As in English, though we may say a water-snake is a snake; yet if we should name a snake or serpent only, we would not be thought to mean a water-snake. ↑ Gen. vi. 20. vii. 9. . ! Gen. xlix. 17. Exod. iv. 3. t on the earth. The same alteration of the world, which began from the flood, and conduced to the shortening the lives of men, might cause such an alteration in many herbs, that men might not perhaps now find every green herb and tree as wholesome, as they had found all in the first world: and the nourishment of some in the concoction of some animals, might breed in them, what to man and other creatures might be malignant poison. At the going out from the ark, none of the living creatures of the world appear to have been hurtful or destructive to man. But time produced in many a ferocity, and in others, other qualities, which made them terrible; and serpents were in general such objects of terror in Moses' days, that when the miracle which God gave him to assure him, that he sent him to Egypt, took effect; Moses, we read, when he saw his rod turned into a serpent, fled from before it." But, notwithstanding any thing that may be said of men's natural fears, from their apprehensions of the venom of serpents, a thought of God's having ever given any order in particular for man to destroy serpents, seems to be a mere modern imagination. We can find no traces of such a sentiment in all antiquity; rather, the sages of the early times, who searched into antiquity, and added to it what they thought the religion of nature, to be above the common notions of the vulgar, X t See Connect. vol. i. b. i. Exod. iv. 3. * See Connect. vol. iii. b. xi. The sentiments that led them to their notions of the divinity of the serpents, are said to be, πνευματικώτατον το ζωον παίων τῶν ἑρπετων καὶ πυρώδες-παρεδόθη, held serpents in high honour, had introduced them into their temples, delineated their figures in their ancient tables and formalities of worship; and gave many, such as they thought reasons, for thinking them endow παρ ο καὶ ταχὺ ἀνυπερβλητον διὰ τε πνευματος παρίτησι, χωρίς πόδων τε καὶ χειρων η αλλά τινος τῶν ἐξωθεν ἐξ ων τα λοιπα ζωα τας κινήσεις ποιεῖται· καὶ ποικίλων σχημάτων τυπες ἁπὸτελεῖ, καὶ κατα τὴν πορείαν ἑλικοειδεις έχει τας ὁρμας ἐφ ̓ ὃ βέλεται ταχο καὶ πολυχρονιώτατον δε ἐσιν, & μονον τω ἐκδυομενον το γηρας νεάζειν, αλλα καὶ αυξησιν ἐπιδεχασθαι μείζονα πήρυκε· καὶ ἐπειδαν το ωρισμένον μητρον πλήρωση, εἰς ἑαυτον ἀναλίσκεται· ως ἐν ταῖς ἱεραις ὁμοιως αυτος ὁ τααυτῷ κατέταξε γραφαις. διο καὶ ἐν ιερούς τοῦτο το ζωον καὶ ἐν μυςηρίοις συμπαρείληπται. Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. 1. c. 10. We cannot sufficiently despise the beggarly elements of this philosophy; but yet it ought to be observed, that it was reputed a height of wisdom in its day. A plain demonstration this, what may be the trifles of mere human reasoning, when it has not been enlightened by any better information. But my intention, in the citation above, was to shew, that no notions had traditionally prevailed to intimate that the serpent had been originally a cursed creature, ap, pointed every where for men to destroy; for that the most ancient speculative and more curious enquirers had no bias against theories which might represent them to be representatives of the most high God. Η πανίες ἐφυσιολογησαν ωσπερ προκειται· καὶ τά μεν πρωτα τοιχεια τα δια των οφεων ναυς κατασκευασάμενοι ἐν ἀυτοις αφιερώσαν, καὶ τετοις θυσιας καὶ ἑορτας ἐπὶετελεν καὶ θεως τές μεγισες νομιζοντες καὶ ἀρχηγος των υλων. Id. ibid. όργια, z Id. ibid. See the table of Isis. Montfauc. Antiq. vol. i. part 2. b. ii. c. 1, ed with a kind of divine nature. And what is remark d . able, they had no notion of the serpent's being the representative of an evil being, in opposition to the good God; for the Egyptians, we are told, reputed the serpent to be an emblem of their god, Cneph, by which word they meant the Anayos, we might render it the workmaster, or maker of all things. The Phoenicians translated it αγαθον Δαίμονα, the good deity, and from their most ancient symbols it may be thought, that they intended to represent in their σχηματα, or mystic figures of the serpent, what some of them called the συνεκτικον ; I might render it, the Power by which all things consist. I do not pretend to trace the time of the rise of these heathen superstitions; they being brought out of one country into another. They were thought to have been introduced into Greece by Pherecydes, who was con a Vide quæ sup. Το Αιγύπλιοι Κηφ ἐτονομαζεσι. Euseb. ubi sup. c. 11. τον δημιεργον, ον Κηφ οι Αιγυπτιοι προσαγορεύ8σιν. Id. lib. 3. d See Wisdom xiii. 1. • Φοινικες δὲ ἀυτο ἀγαθον δαίμονα καλεσιν. Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. 1. c. 10. μεσον τετα § Ετι μεν οι Αιγυπῖοι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀυτης ἔννοιας τὸν κόσμον γραφοντες περιφερη κυκλον ἀεροειδη καὶ πυρωπον χαρασσεσιν, καὶ μ μενον οφίν—καὶ ἔτι το παν σχημα ως το παρ' ήμιν Θητα. τὸν μεν κυκλον Κόσμον μηνυολες τον δὲ μεσον οφιν συνεκλικον τοῦτον αγαθον Δαίμονα σημαινοντες. Id. ibid. 8. Παρὰ φοινίκων δὲ και Φερεκύδης λαβών τας αφορμας εθεολόγησε περί του παρ αυτώ λεγομενα Οφιωνεως Θες και των Οφιωνίδων. Euseb. Praep. Evang. lib. 1. c. 10. k temporary with Thales," and did not flourish there earlier than about 1000 years after Moses; but Pherecydes had them from the Phoenicians, and the Phoeni cians from the books of the Egyptian Taautus; and, I think, I may represent these notions about the serpeut as having been in vogue in Egypt in, and before, Moses' time. For it is much to be observed, that, though Moses, when he first saw his rod turned into a serpent, was terrified and fled from it, until God bade him put forth his hand and take it; yet, when the same rod was, in like manner, turned into a serpent before Pharaoh, and when all the rods of his magicians were turned into serpents likewise, neither Pharaoh nor his ma gicians appear to have been under any consternation." They knew the arcana of their temples, that serpents were at this time amongst the sacra in their worship, and reputed the representatives, not of a malign, but of their good god. They might therefore think, that m h Pherecydes was thought to have flourished about the fifty-ninth Olympiad, Thales to have died in about the fiftyeighth. i Moses died A. M. 2554. The fifty-ninth Olympiad was about A. M. 3555. * Euseb. ubi sup. προσαγορεύεσι 1 Τααυτοί οι Αγυπλιο θαν την μεν εν το Δράκοντα φυσιν και, των Οφεων αυτος ἐξεθείασεν ὁ ΓάαυτΘ, και μετ' αυτον αύθις Φοινικες. Euseb. We are to observe of Agano, that a serpent was called draco when consecrated, and put into a temple. Vide ubi sup. quæ sup. Exod. iv. 3, 4. " Ibid. vii, 10-13. |