Biblical Hebrew Forum

["George Athas" <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>]

>
> What deception occurred, from the text it is clear that the serpent did not
> deceive anyone, he merely put a temptation in front of Eve ( and possibly
> Adam for the text could be read as inferring that he was present throughout
> the whole thing, it certainly does not rule it out. )  It is only through
> interpreting Death as being either the Death of Innocence or that one of
> Gods days was a 'thousand years' that you could argue that the Serpent
> deceived anyone.
>

The snake claims that Eve and Adam would not die. However, once they've eaten 
of the fruit
and Yahweh finds it out, he expels them from the garden and declares that 
they would
"return to the ground" as dust after having worked laboriously hard their 
entire lives.
This seems like death to me. So, the snake did deceive. Adam, the narrative 
goes on to
say, did die.

Best regards,
George Athas
 Dept of Semitic Studies,
 University of Sydney
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