The "Cultural Context" Excuse

[Cyberman]

Humanoid =/= human. Just wanted to point that out.

[Angrboda]

First of all, get the idea of the serpent being a reptile out of your head, it was humanoid. The serpent was cursed to crawl on his belly as punishment for what he had done, that tells you right there that is had a completely different form than it currently does.

How exactly do you know that its 'different form' was humanoid?

[Rev. Rye]

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And why can it not have been metaphorical? After all, the famed "son of God" remark actually started off as an expression that had been applied to others as a metaphor.

For instance:

• Psalm 2 is built around the 'King of Israel as Son of God' motif, and Psalm 82 calls the Judges of old "sons of the Most High", and Psalm 89:26-8 has the psalmist (presumably King David) called God's son.
  
• In Jeremiah 31, God calls himself the father of Israel, with Ephraim as his firstborn son.
  
• Going into the apocrypha, Sirach 4:10 says: "Be as a father unto the fatherless, and instead of an husband unto their mother: so shalt thou be as the son of the most High, and he shall love thee more than thy mother doth." (And, yes, the people behind the King James Bible actually translated the Apocrypha)
  
• It should also be noted that this epithet was actually applied to certain rabbis in the Talmud.
  

And that's not even pointing out the many non-Hebrew instances in history of powerful people being termed sons of god, more or less as metaphor, dating back to at least around a millennium before Christ.

With all this in mind, Huggy Bear, why is it not possible that my interpretation of it as a metaphor (meaning roughly what was bracketed in the Amplified version I posted) is more plausible than a Eve having sex with a reptile, having a child with it, the Bible never bringing it up in anything more than obliquely worded phrases (especially considering that, from my readings, if a Biblical set of siblings has a different father, they tend to bring that up up front, especially with a conclusion as dramatic) that are ultimately still consistent with Cain and Abel being full siblings?

*emphasis mine*
First of all, get the idea of the serpent being a reptile out of your head, it was humanoid. The serpent was cursed to crawl on his belly as punishment for what he had done, that tells you right there that is had a completely different form than it currently does.

Humanoid or not, Huggy Bear, it would still be a reptile. It may be something out of David Icke's wet dreams, but, damn it, a humanoid reptile is still a goddam reptile. Its biology would still be too different for Eve and the serpent to procreate. Also, I love it that you use that one passage as an excuse to ignore everything else I wrote. All it does is make your position look like it was built on the sand.

[Huggy Bear]

First of all, get the idea of the serpent being a reptile out of your head, it was humanoid. The serpent was cursed to crawl on his belly as punishment for what he had done, that tells you right there that is had a completely different form than it currently does.

How exactly do you know that its 'different form' was humanoid?

It had the ability to reason, could talk, but mainly Because it could sexually reproduce with humans.

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Humanoid or not, Huggy Bear, it would still be a reptile. It may be something out of David Icke's wet dreams, but, damn it, a humanoid reptile is still a goddam reptile. Its biology would still be too different for Eve and the serpent to procreate. Also, I love it that you use that one passage as an excuse to ignore everything else I wrote. All it does is make your position look like it was built on the sand.

*emphasis mine*
Which is why it wasn't a reptile as I have already stated.

The Hebrew word for serpent is "Nachash" which means "shining one", that doesn't describe a reptile at all.

[robvalue]

This is the first time I've ever heard this, in all the discussions with theists I've listened to over the last few years. Quite an imagination.

Let's face it, this is what the authors more likely had in mind:

It was a talking snake. Its head was off the floor, with part of its body being vertical to support it. Then God cursed it, and the whole thing went flat.

[Huggy Bear]

This is the first time I've ever heard this, in all the discussions with theists I've listened to over the last few years. Quite an imagination.

Let's face it, this is what the authors more likely had in mind:

It was a talking snake. Its head was off the floor, with part of its body being vertical to support it. Then God cursed it, and the whole thing went flat.

Talk about having an imagination...

[Nihilist Virus]

This is the first time I've ever heard this, in all the discussions with theists I've listened to over the last few years. Quite an imagination.

Let's face it, this is what the authors more likely had in mind:

It was a talking snake. Its head was off the floor, with part of its body being vertical to support it. Then God cursed it, and the whole thing went flat.

Talk about having an imagination...

Man, you just keep dodging my questions. You made no real attempt to answer Numbers 5 other than to seemingly say, "Well, it uses the phrase 'her thigh will rot' and instead of thinking about what that means I'll just pretend it's not addressing abortion whatsoever regardless of what the NIV says."

Meanwhile, I said this on the other page:

The text in the KJV says that her "thigh will rot." Given that it says if she's cleared of charges she will be able to procreate, this implies that if she's guilty she will become barren.

If a woman is already preggers and then is cursed so that she will never be able to bear children, what do you think happens to the precious little bundle of joy in her womb? Are you going to tell me that this passage, which clearly describes itself as being about marital jealousy, actually means to say that the woman will be allowed to give birth to her current child (provided she's preggers) even though the child is the result of adultery?

[Rev. Rye]

How exactly do you know that its 'different form' was humanoid?

It had the ability to reason, could talk, but mainly Because it could sexually reproduce with humans.

Huggy Bear, your arguments to back up the whole "serpent sexually reproducing with humans" thing are still absurdly thin. It's based on readings of verses that take so many absurd liberties, reinterpreted to support the conclusion you were using them to support (does the term circular reasoning mean anything to you?), and the closest thing to a solid allusion is still perfectly compatible (and certainly makes more sense) with the offending passage read as a metaphor than literal, and even that verse still states that Cain and Abel were full brothers.

If you want to make a David Icke-meets-Marquis de Sade OTP Bible fanfic, that's fine, but if you're claiming it's canonical with the Bible, you're going to have to give a better argument. And having your argument hinge on the KJV being the sole arbiter of textual accuracy, despite being based on a text that is, by this point, considered by the vast majority of scholars to be inaccurate.

And zeroing in on one small sentence fragment and using it as an excuse to ignore the rest don't make your position look any better.

[robvalue]

It didn't have one form, so you can make up whatever you want?

Sure, you can make up whatever you want. It looked like an elephant before. How's that? Then it became a flat snake.

If a snake humanoid had to crawl on its belly, it would still be a snake humanoid. And I'm pretty sure they would have made mention of the fact that it was a humanoid.

I can't believe I'm discussing what is and isn't likely, about a talking snake story. Seriously, I've been doing this stuff too long.

[LadyForCamus]

It had the ability to reason, could talk, but mainly Because it could sexually reproduce with humans.

Huggy Bear, your arguments to back up the whole "serpent sexually reproducing with humans" thing are still absurdly thin. It's based on readings of verses that take so many absurd liberties, reinterpreted to support the conclusion you were using them to support (does the term circular reasoning mean anything to you?), and the closest thing to a solid allusion is still perfectly compatible (and certainly makes more sense) with the offending passage read as a metaphor than literal, and even that verse still states that Cain and Abel were full brothers.

If you want to make a David Icke-meets-Marquis de Sade OTP Bible fanfic, that's fine, but if you're claiming it's canonical with the Bible, you're going to have to give a better argument. And having your argument hinge on the KJV being the sole arbiter of textual accuracy, despite being based on a text that is, by this point, considered by the vast majority of scholars to be inaccurate.

And zeroing in on one small sentence fragment and using it as an excuse to ignore the rest don't make your position look any better.

Aaaand, welcome to the mind of Huggy. Happy to shout "context!" When it supports his position, and just as happy to completely disregard it when it doesn't. I honestly think he makes this stuff up as he goes along. I'm still waiting for answers on my point of the injustice of universal punishment (sexual slavery for all women) based on the deeds of one person. Guess I shouldn't hold my breath.