SNAKES ON A TREE????

World Magazine had a very interesting article discussing the symbology of snakes (or serpents) in cultures all over the world. In the Judeo-Christian world-view the serpent shows up in the creation story. The true story starts as follows:

• Genesis 3:1-3
  Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
  The woman said to the serpent, " From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
  but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"
  

I do believe we know how the story ends (or rather continues), but I wanted to focus folks on the serpent image.

Other cultures have the serpent and tree symbology as well (but the details vary some):

• Early Sumerian artificats: Show pictures of a tree at the center of the world guarded by a snake or a pair of intertwined snakes. A Chaldean poem that is perhaps 4,500 years old tells of how Gilgamesh recovered from the bottom of the ocean a plant that would give eternal life, but while he rested briefly a snake ate it: The serpent became immortal, and Gilgamesh went home to die.
  

• Chinese lore: at that time told of a wonderful garden with a tree, guarded by a dragon or winged serpent, that bears fruit of immortality and wisdom. The winged serpent here is a force for good, protecting also a mother-goddess.

• Hindu scripture: tells of good and evil celestial beings fighting until Vishnu grabbed a divine serpent, wound him around the holy mountain, and had the celestial beings pull on both ends for 1,000 years so that the great snake served as a stick that churned the milky ocean into the butter of immortality.

• The Toltecs, Mayans, and Aztecs worshipped a "feathered serpent," and residents of the Solomon Islands offered the first coconut from each tree to a great serpent god. Inhabitants of Fiji spoke of a serpent god that nurtured two tiny human beings who emerged from a hawk's egg, and taught them how to cultivate bananas and root crops.
  

• Bassari people of west Africa: speaking of a great god, Unumbotte, who made Man and made Snake; when Snake proposed the eating of fruit, "Man and his wife took some of the fruit and ate it. Unumbotte came down from the sky and asked, 'Who ate the fruit?' The first couple admitted eating the fruit and said Snake had told them to do so."

It would be impossible to to have similar stories around a serpent from such disparate cultures around the world without them all having a common family and origin (or dare I say... a common GENESIS)... now where did Adam go??