Satan and the Snake

"And what is up with the snake in the garden of eden. Did Satan really morph into a snake or is it some Hebrew explanation of how Satan is sneaky like a snake. And if it wasn't a real snake then why did God condemn it to eat the dust of the earth...by losing it's legs I presume. It seems like a literal snake that had legs at some point.
That's another one that athiests throw at you. "Do you really believe a Satan was a talking snake" is usually the jibe."

If we understand the Creation story of Adam and Eve as mythical and to have certain allegorical and symbolic meanings, then it yet remains to trace and illustrate each symbol and its meaning so that the story's inherent truths are revealed.

Adam, for example, is a name that means both Earth as in dirt, or dust, and Mankind, or humanity, etc. Adam could be an individual human, as the story says, or he could be a representation for all humanity, or an individual human who was all of humanity, etc. There are layers of meaning, but in each case, Adam's role is that of a representative of Mankind.

Eve, by the same token, is the Mother of Nations. She could be an individual person in a more literal interpretation of the story, she could also be a symbolic figure of the earliest women, or the earliest mothers, etc., or even of the earliest woman of the Hebrew people, from whom the tribes of Israel descended, the Ishmaelites descended, and spiritually the Christians descended.

The fruit that they ate of is specifically called "the knowledge of good and evil." There are few more blatant examples of symbolism in any kind of literature anywhere. Adam and Eve ate from the tree whose fruit is the knowledge of good and evil. This too can be understood to have a symbolic and spiritual meaning, for example, the act of disobeying God has the fruit of experiential knowledge of evil, something Adam and Eve, ie all humanity to that point, had not yet known. They knew, intellectually, that God did not want them to commit a given action, in the symbolic terms of the story, that action was probably something sinful, certainly something proud.

The snake in the story, if interpreted literally, is just that, a snake. It is a talking snake, certainly, and it has been understood since the earliest days of the Church to be a reference to Satan, the enemy of humanity, for its role in tempting Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge, by promising her equality with God. Hence the nature of the sin being pride, and the realization that it was the Devil, who fell through his own desire to be equal to God.

But we don't have to understand the story literally, which means the snake too is a symbol, a representation of the way the Devil operates, which is to whisper slyly in our ears and tempt us to disobey the commands of God which we know in our heart we should obey. If you think about it, the voice of temptation always has the softly sibilant aspect of a serpent's hiss, which is probably why the snake was selected as the animal to represent Satan in the story.

As for God's condemnation of the snake, the Hebrews did not have a natural explanation for the origins of any creature, let alone the snake. What they did have was an understanding of the world as they saw it in spiritual terms. They understood that humanity had been born to a paradise, Eden, and lost it through sin. They saw human misery and difficulties, the hard work needed to survive and the pain associated even with child birth, as consequences of this Fall from Grace, and so they are. And they saw a natural enmity between women, who were the ones organizing and running hearth and home and serpents, who could slide under tent flaps and door ways and hurt those inside.

Remember, the Hebrews were largely a desert people, and they lived in an area of the world filled with dangerous, poisonous animals, of which the snake was a primary example. The snake was extraordinarily dangerous to them, and thus the Hebrews would likely have been very wary of it. Just look at the story of the serpents that afflicted the Israelites in the desert after they escaped from Egypt and disobeyed God. Serpents were an excellent example of a dangerous animal, particularly to women who were generally at home or with the children all the time, and had the same slithering and soft sensibilities of Satan.

As for losing its legs, the Hebrews again would not have a naturalist explanation for the snakes unusual shape. They would see most animals having arms, legs, wings, etc, while the snake has none, and so would explain it through a myth, not through science. Yet there is still some interesting fruit to be had in examination of this idea, since Satan himself is often considered "earth-bound" so to speak. Satan, because he fell, is no longer able to be a part of Heaven, and some Christian understandings link him specifically to the planet Earth. Read CS Lewis' Space Trilogy to get an understanding of this concept. As such, the snake again makes an excellent allegorical representation because the snake too is earth bound, it cannot rise up to the heavens, it cannot even run on two feet, it must wriggle through the dirt, lowest of the creatures the Hebrews would be most vitally aware of. An excellent representation of Satan if I do say so myself.