Apopis

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”  Genesis 3:1 NIV

Serpent – Some years ago I shared a lecture session with Michael Heiser, author of The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible.  Following that session, I wrote some reflections on his thesis.

Heiser’s basic position is that the biblical text, including the apostolic writings, rests on cultural and religious ideas that arise from Mesopotamian and Egyptian origins.  In this view, research shows that imagery used in the Bible is either derived directly from, or in polemic opposition to Mesopotamian and Egyptian constructs about gods, earth, heaven and many religious practices and rituals.  Essentially this means that our contemporary ideas about the spiritual cosmos are not what the authors of the Bible had in mind.   In their world, gods and other divine beings (elohim and angels) occupy a spiritual but real realm under the sovereignty of the one supreme God, YHVH.  This unseen spiritual world intersects in various ways with our earthly world and when it does there are representations (manifestations) of spiritual beings or sacred places in our world.  According to Heiser, the biblical view of this real spiritual realm is the explanation for many odd passages in Scripture because the authors of the text presuppose its existence, its population, and its influence in our physical world.

What this means is that understanding the actions and events of the Bible requires a deep appreciation of the Mesopotamian and Semitic view of the world.  Scattered throughout Scripture are references to this worldview, from Eden to Paul’s description of a third heaven vision.  The Mesopotamian backdrop implies that the biblical text is in many ways a polemic against prevailing worldviews of Mesopotamian peoples.  It is not a declaration of absolute truth independent of its cultural origins.

Heiser’s insights are useful in explaining some of the details of familiar but disturbing stories.  For example, Heiser helps us realize that the “serpent” in the Garden is more likely to be one of the members of the spiritual realm, a “divine” being, one of the elohim, than anything like a snake.  Set against an Egyptian and Mesopotamian backdrop, the idea that a disgruntled spiritual being attempted to undermine the connection between the first human couple and YHVH makes perfect sense, while reading the story as if the tempter is either a snake or the Devil makes little or no sense.  Abraham’s encounter with the strangers, Moses’ encounter at the burning bush, and other experiences of divine beings all make sense within the context of Mesopotamian cosmic geography.

But this raises a serious question.  If what Heiser suggests is true, including his proposal that scribes edited the texts during the Babylonian exile in order to fortify the message of this cosmic geography, then we might reasonably ask, “In what sense can we consider any of these stories actually true of reality rather than just another version of an ancient cultural explanation of the world?”  In other words, even if we find that Heiser’s conclusions about the cosmic geography of these texts helps us understand them within their own culture and history, how are we to know that this paradigmatic view isn’t simply one of the many cultural explanations of reality from the ancients?  Why should we believe that it is the correct view, the one that actually describes reality?

This question cannot be answered by examining the texts.  The textual material is merely evidence that this particular paradigm needs further explanation.  The question about the veracity of this particular biblical view is one step beyond the text.  We are now asking a question about the truth of the paradigm, not simply how to understand the assertions within the paradigm.

Applied to this verse in Genesis, we might encounter Apopis (you were wondering about that word, right?).  “Apopis, also called Apep, Apepi, or Rerek, ancient Egyptian demon of chaos, who had the form of a serpent and, as the foe of the sun god, Re, represented all that was outside the ordered cosmos. Although many serpents symbolized divinity and royalty, Apopis threatened the underworld and symbolized evil.”[1]  For the original audience of this story, Apopis was as real as the stranger in the shadows at the end of the street.  The attempt by Apopis to undermine God’s plans for humanity made perfect sense in a world filled with good and bad spirits.  All you needed for confirmation was the head of the cobra mounted above Pharoah. Heiser helps us see the reasonable interpretation of these strange passages, but he does not help us deal with the larger paradigm question.  Perhaps our predilection for the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is also paradigmatic.  Apopis just becomes Satan.  Egypt is converted into Holy Roman Empire.

Topical Index:  Michael Heiser, gods, Apopis, Egypt, serpent, Genesis 3:1

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Apopis-Egyptian-god