Serpent

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Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. - Genesis 3:1

Bible

The serpent tempted Eve with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” ... “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” She succumbed, and when she told God she had been deceived, He cursed him to crawl on his belly, eat dust, face enmity from the woman, and ultimately be defeated by her offspring.

  • “Because you have done this,
  • cursed are you above all livestock
  • and above all beasts of the field;
  • on your belly you shall go,
  • and dust you shall eat
  • all the days of your life.
  • I will put enmity between you and the woman,
  • and between your offspring and her offspring;
  • he shall bruise your head,
  • and you shall bruise his heel.”

(Genesis 3)

"The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's good. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain," says the LORD. (Isaiah 65:25)

Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? (Matthew 7:10)

The Elder Scrolls

The Stars of Tamriel are divided into thirteen constellations. Three are the major constellations, known as the Guardians - the Warrior, the Mage, and the Thief. Each of the Guardians protects its three Charges from the thirteenth constellation, the Serpent.

The Serpent has no season, for it moves about in the heavens, usually threatening one of the other constellations. It's motions are predictable to a degree. No characteristics are common to all who are born under the sign of the Serpent. Those born under this sign are the most blessed and the most cursed.

(The Firmament by Ffoulke)

Hinduism

Ruru is the name of a creature much more cruel than a serpent. There is a realm of hell called Raurava, where murderers are tortured. Rurus in Maharaurava are Kravyadas (carnivorous flesh-eaters) which kill for the sake of flesh those who are given solely to the nourishment of their bodies.

(Bhagavata Purana Pg. 767)

Paradise Lost

Milton compares Ophion to the serpent in Paradise Lost. "And fabled how the serpent, whom they called / Ophion, with Eurynome, (the wide-/ Encroaching Eve perhaps,) had first the rule/ of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven."

(Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch, 1796. Page 10.)

Milton in next describing Satan's return to Pandemonium, changed to a dragon, finely distinguishes this hellish monster from the snaky tribe out of which it has grown, in these verses from Paradise Lost (10: 519):

  • For now were all transformed
  • Alike, to serpents all, as accessories
  • To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din
  • Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
  • With complicated monsters head and tail,
  • Scorpion, and asp, and imphishaena dire,
  • Cerastes horned, hydrus and ellops drear,
  • And dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the soil
  • Bedropt with blood of gorgon, or the isle
  • Ophiusa); but still greatest he the midst,
  • Now dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
  • Engendered in the Pythian vale on slim,
  • Huge Python; and his power no less he seemed
  • Above the rest still to retain.

Sumerian

The features of the original Sumerian, of pre-Sumerian, myth of the struggle of Marduk with Tiamat had become considerably modified by that time in Babylonia. Dr. Ward mentions a cylinder on which Bel-Marduk is depicted as chasing and killing the Evil One--an unmistakable serpent.

(https://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/ddl/ddl14.htm - Dragons and Dragon Lore, by Ernest Ingersoll, [1928], chapter 12)

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