Again the command was explicit to the Israelites: “Thou shalt not plant thee an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee. Neither shalt thou set thee up a pillar; which the Lord thy God hateth.”[[611]]
From the earliest historic times the serpent seems to have been accepted as a symbol of the nexus of union between the two sexes, and to be associated, therefore, with the pillar and the tree, as suggestive of the desire that may be good or evil, according to its right or wrong direction and use. Its place as a symbol has been at the threshold of palace and temple and home, with limitless powers of evil in its misuse.[[612]]
“Mighty snakes standing upright,” together with “mighty bulls of bronze” were “on the threshold of the gates” in ancient Babylon.[[613]] A serpent wreathed the phallus boundary stone (as if suggestive of its being a thing of life) on the threshold of Babylonian domains.[[614]] As a symbol of life and life-giving power the serpent stood erect above the head of the mightiest kings of Egypt, who gave and took life at their pleasure,[[615]] and it even accompanied the winged sun-orb in its manifestation of light and warmth and life over the grandest temples of ancient Thebes.[[616]] The Egyptian goddess Ket, or Kadesh, “Mistress of Heaven,” a divinity borrowed from the Semites, was represented as standing on a lioness, with lotus flowers, their stems coiled in circular form, in her right hand, and two serpents in her left hand, as she came with her offering to Min, or Khem, the god of generative force.[[617]] A similar representation of a goddess of life is found in ancient Assyrian remains.
In the representation of Nergal, the lord of the under world, in the ancient Babylonian mythology, the phallus and the serpent were identical.[[618]] Beltis-Allat, consort of Nergal, and lady of the under world, brandished a serpent in either hand. She was guardian of the waters of life which were under the threshold of the entrance of her realm.[[619]]
That which was primarily a holy instinct became, in its perversion, a source of evil and a cause of dread; hence the serpent became a representative of evil itself, and the conflict with it was the conflict between good and evil, between light and darkness. This is shown in the religions of ancient Babylonia, Egypt, and India, and Phœnicia and Greece, and Mexico and Peru, and various other countries.[[620]]
Vishnoo and his wife Lakshmi, from whom, according to Hindoo teachings, the world was produced, and by whom it continues or must cease, are represented as seated on a serpent, as the basis of their life and power.[[621]] Siva, also, giver and destroyer of life, is crowned with a serpent, and a serpent is his necklace, while the symbol of his worship is the linga in yoni.[[622]] A mode of Hindoo worship includes the placing of a stone linga between two serpents, and under two trees, the one a male tree and the other a female tree.[[623]] And in various ways the serpent appears, in connection with different Hindoo deities, as the agent of life-giving or of life-destroying.[[624]] A suggestive representation of Booddha as the conqueror of desire shows him seated restfully on a coiled serpent, the hooded head of which is a screen or canopy above his head.[[625]]
Apollo, son of Zeus, was the slayer of the man-destroying serpent at Delphi; yet the serpent, when conquered, became a means of life and inspiration to others.[[626]] Æsculapius, the god of healing, a son of Apollo, was represented by the serpent because he gave new life to those who were dying. Serpents were everywhere connected with his worship as a means of healing.[[627]] The female oracle who represented Apollo at Delphi sat on a tripod formed of entwined serpents.[[628]] Serpents on the head of Medusa were a means of death to the beholder; and these serpents were given to Medusa instead of hair because of her faithlessness and sacrilege in the matter of the Threshold Covenant.[[629]] Thus the good and the evil in that which the serpent symbolized were shown in the religions of the nations of antiquity, and serpent worship became one of the grossest perversions of the idea of the primitive Threshold Covenant.
As in the matter of phallic worship and tree worship, so in this of the worship of the serpent, it would seem unnecessary to multiply illustrations of its prominence in various lands, when so many special treatises on the subject are already available.[[630]] It is only necessary to emphasize anew the fact that the evident thought of the symbol is an outgrowth or a perversion of the idea of the primitive Threshold Covenant.
The form of the Bible narrative, portraying the first temptation and the first sin, seems to show how early the symbolism of the tree and the serpent was accepted in popular speech. From that narrative as it stands it would appear that the first act of human disobedience was incontinence, in transgression of a specific command to abstain, at least for a time, from carnal intercourse. Desire, as indicated by the serpent, prompted to an untimely partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree, and the consequences of sin followed. The results of this act of disobedience, as recorded in the sacred text,[[631]] make evident the correctness of this view of the case. When the Bible narrative was first written, whenever that was, the terms “tree,”[[632]] “fruit” of the tree,[[633]] “knowledge,”[[634]] “serpent,” were familiar figures of speech or euphemisms, and their use in the Bible narrative would not have been misunderstood by readers generally. Probably there was no question as to this for many centuries. It was not until the dull prosaic literalism of the Western mind obscured the meaning of Oriental figures of speech that there was any general doubt as to what was affirmed in the Bible story of the first temptation and disobedience.[[635]]
Philo Judæus at the beginning of the Christian era, seems to understand this as the meaning of the narrative in Genesis, and he applies the teachings of that narrative accordingly.[[636]] There are indications that the rabbis looked similarly at the meaning of the Bible text. There are traces of this traditional view in different Jewish writings.[[637]]