The Bible is filled
with all sorts of interesting stories and parables. Surprisingly, it also includes stories of
herps! For a while, I was considering
different areas of literature and culture that cover herps. There are many medical symbols, strange
myths, and cultural traditions involving the use of snakes or other herptiles. I couldn’t quite settle on any specific topic
when it occurred to me while at church, the Bible has lots of herp
stories! The following paragraphs are
some sweet accounts of herps from the Bible.
First
and foremost, we find herps in Genesis 3.
This chapter takes place after the creation of the Earth and of
man. The Devil, in the form of a
serpent, appears to Eve and deceives her by convincing her to eat the fruit of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God
forbade Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of this tree, but the Devil told Eve that
if she ate of the fruit, she would have her eyes opened and she would know good
from evil. Eve saw the fruit to be
pleasing and ate. She also shared the
fruit with Adam. Later when God found
out, He was greatly disappointed and said to the serpent (Devil), “Cursed are
you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your
belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the
woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you
will strike his heel.” Look at that, a
snake is stated to forever be striking at the heel of man way back in
Genesis. I find that really neat.
Another
great account of herps in the Bible is leviathan. The leviathan is mentioned six times in
total, but given a detailed description in Job 41. Job says, “His back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together; each is so close to the next that no air can pass
between… His chest is as hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.” That sounds an awful lot like scales to
me. I think it is quite possible that
leviathan was in fact a form of reptile.
Some scholars deem leviathan to be interpreted as a certain dragon or
sea monster. I can’t really argue with
those conclusions or speculations. The
facts look rather straight forward and plain to me.
A fun one similar to
the leviathan is the behemoth. Behemoth
is described in Job 40:15-24. Job
describes the behemoth as “limbs as strong as copper, his bones as a load of
iron… Does he lie under shadows, in the cover of the reeds and the swamp? …Behold,
he plunders the river…” By this description,
I could also see there being an argument for behemoth also being a
herptile. Who knows? What do you think?
Did you know Moses and
Aaron were some of the first herpetologists?
Exodus 7:8-13 gives an account of Aaron throwing down his staff in the
presence of Pharaoh and it becoming a snake.
Pharaoh’s magicians did the same, but Aaron’s staff, now a snake,
swallowed the other serpents. In the
next chapter (specifically 8:2-14), God sent a plague of frogs upon the land of
Egypt. “The Nile shall swarm with frogs
that shall come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and
into the houses of your servants and your people and on all your servants… and
the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.” Dang.
Can you imagine how many frogs that was?
I would say, “Frog legs for dinner!”
But I don’t think the presence of these frogs was a pleasant scenario… I guess even back in the times of the Bible
people didn’t like herps. Frogs don’t seem
to have a very good rep going for them.
I really don’t see why people don’t like them so much. I think they’re rather cute (when they’re not
peeing on me).
These are simply a few
of the accounts of herps in the Bible.
This Bible is not limited to just this list of stories about snakes,
dragons and frogs. There are plenty more
really interesting stories. There is a
cool story in Numbers 21 of Moses raising a staff with a serpent wound around
it. Any of the Israelites bit by
venomous snakes that looked upon this staff were healed. Another cool story is when Paul, a founder of
the early church, was making a fire when he was bit by a viper (Family
Viperidae??). Then he suffered no harm
from the bite and simply shook off the snake!
That’s pretty cool. Look up these
stories! You might be surprised at what
you find! Happy searching!
Work Cited
Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI. Zondervan. 1984.
1 comment:
Interesting! Also interesting that most of them seem to be viewed with fear or a bad thing. No wonder western religions have failed to appreciate them. I wonder if Paul received a dry bite? He'd be interested in the Gibbons & Dorcas study we discussed!
Post a Comment