"Libertarius" wrote

Weatherwax wrote:

< CLIP >

Jesus obviously overlooked that Doves were sacrificed in the
temple, while serpents were not. It's not good to be too
harmless.

===>That's why the serpent characteristic is needed! ;-)

Anyway, the poor "pastor" refuses to see that the "serpent"
character was not always perceived by all writers as a
symbol of evil! Some even quote Jesus as using it as an
example of WISDOM!

Like the majority of Christians, the poor "pastor"
is also unaware that in fact the OT authors
use several different words that are sloppily
translated as "serpents", some of those words
representing creatures that are more
"evil" than others.
One of those words is the TANNIN, same as the TNN, the
sea monster of Ugaritic mythology. In the Hebrew material
(e.g. Job 7:12) it is any large sea creature or reptile
a "monster," "dragon," "sea serpent," even "crocodile"
(SEE: Genesis 1:21, Exodus 7: 9-12,Deuteronomy 32:33, etc.)
THIS IS THE WORD that is used to represent the enemies
of YHWH. In Isaiah 51:9 it is Egypt the "dragon", in
Jeremiah 51:34 it is Nebuchadnezzar, and in Ezra 29:3 the
Pharaoh is said to be "the great monster that lies in the

midst

of his rivers, and in Ezra 32:2 the Pharaoh is "the monster in
the seas."

Christians are misled by translations and equate NAHASH,
the clever serpent of Genesis (3:1, 2, 4, 13, 14) with
TANNIN, the "dragon", which the author of Revelation 12:9
and 20:2 equates with Greek DIABOLOS ("devil") and
SATANAS ("Satan"), an obvious reference to AHRIMAN,
the Spirit of Darkness, the Zoroastrian enemy of the Good
Lord ORMUZD, who, after Judaism adopted the dualistic
notions of Zarathustra, was equated with the Hebrew
YHWH.

BTW, the bronze serpent set on a standard by Moses
and shown as symbolizing Jesus was a NAHASH, same as
the talking snake of Genesis 3!

Well, I hope this helps to clear up a few things, even if not
the the mind of the "pastor". -- L.

I agree with you completely. In the Old Testament, TANNIN, also
referred to as Leviathan and Rahab, is more of a sea monster than
a dragon. The sea is formless, while the earth has form. To
put it another way: The sea is uncreated, while the earth is
created. The sea is the antithesis to creation and there is a
constant battle between the two. The sea-serpent represents the
sea. The parallelism in Job 26:12 shows the identity of the
serpent with the sea:

26:12 By his (God's) power he stills the sea;
by his wisdom he cut the great sea monster to pieces.

And the necessity of a constant watch over the serpent can be
seen in your citation of Job 7:12:

Am I the sea, or Tannin, that you must set a watch
over me?

This has nothing to do with the serpent in the Garden of Eden.