ffect of wickedness: they
raise in man doubts as to the love of God, in order thereby to seduce
him to apostasy, and bring about the execution upon him of the fearful
threatening, "On the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die." The serpent does not stand in the truth; it speaks lies; it
represents to man as the highest good, that which in truth is the
highest evil. Such language cannot proceed spontaneously from a being,
the creation of which falls within the work of the six days during
which the whole animal creation was made. For everything created within
this space of time was _good_, according to the remark constantly
repeated in the history of creation. To this we must add the nature of
the curse itself, in which a higher reference to an invisible author of
the temptation shines clearly through the lower reference to the
visible one; and, further, the remark in iii. 1, "Now the serpent was
more subtle," etc., evidently points to something beyond the natural
subtlety of the serpent, as the result of which the subsequent words
cannot be understood, but behind which we may discover the intimation:
let him who reads, understand.

The view, that the serpent was the sole independent agent in this
transaction, is thus refuted by internal reasons. It is set aside by
the testimony of tradition also. It was an opinion universally
prevalent among the Jews, that Satan himself had been active in the
temptation of the first man. It is found in _Philo_; and in the Book of
Wisdom, ii. 24, it is said, "By the envy of _Satan_, death came into
the world." In the later Jewish writings, _Sammael_, the head of the
evil spirits, is called [Hebrew: hnHw hqdmvni] "the old serpent," or
simply [Hebrew: nHw] "serpent," because in the form of a serpent he
tempted Eve. (See the passage in _Eisenmenger's entdecktes Judenthum_
i. S. 822.) In the sacred books of the Persians also, the agency of
Satan in the fall of our first parents is taught. According to the
_Zendavesta_ (ed. by _Kleuker_, Th. 3, S. 84, 85), the first men,
Meshia and Meshianeh, were created by God in a state of purity and
goodness, and destined for happiness, on condition of humility of
heart, obedience to the requirements of the law, and purity in
thoughts, words, and actions. But they were deceived by Ahriman, "this
mischievous one who from the beginning sought only to deceive, were
induced to rebel against God, and forfeited their happiness by the
eating of frui