"The dragon, which in the Chaldtean account of the creation leads man huo sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos, and he is ihe embodiment of the spirit of chaos, t)r disorder, which was
Sacred Tree, Seated Figure on each side, and Serpent in the liackgronnd. ( From au early Babylonian cyl- inder.)
opposed to the deities at the creation of the world. It is clear that the dragon is included in the cnrse after the fall, and that the gods invcike on the head of the human race all the evils width inflict humanity. Wis- dom and knowledge shall injure him fliue 2'2); he shall have family quarrels (line 23); he shall submit to tyran- ny (line 24) ; he will anger the gods (line 2,5) ; he shall not eat ihe fruit of his labor (line 20); he shall be disappointed in his desires (line 27); he shall have trouble of mind and body (line 29 and 31); he shall commit future siu (line 32). No doubt suhsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are prepjiring for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamal, which war probably arose from the part played by Tiamat in the fall of mau."
See Snake.
SERPENT, Chkistian SvMBOt.iSM of. As a symbol, the serpent was used by the early Chris- tians in three different senses.
1. To signify the victory of Jesus Christ over the devil. This was represented by a coiled serpent at the foot of the monogram on the cross to show "ut qui in ligno vincebat, in ligno quoque vinceretur." Antique gems bearing this device have been dis- covered, but their date cannot be earlier than the i„o-.) time of Constantine. The type is somewhat altered on medals of this emperor, having a dragon pierceil by the staff of the labarum.
Ancient iconography often represented the saints as treading upon the serpent to express their victory over the spirit of darkness,
2. 'J'he figure of the serpent was also employed to sig- nify the virtue of prudence or wisdom as commanded by Christ, " Be ye wise as serpents;" and as it was sup- posed that bishops should exemplifj' this virtue in its highest form (1 Tim. iii, 2), we often tind the pictures of early bishops surrounded by a serpent as by a frame. For the same reason, in the early Latin Church the pas- toral staff was terminated at the top by a serpent's head.
3. The serpent was used as a symbol of the cross and of Christ himself. These allegories have been devel- oped by Gretzer and Giacomo Bosio in their works on this subject {l)e Crvce and J>e Cruce Triumphale). This use of the symbol, derived from the teachings of Christ (John iii, 14), soon degenerated into a worship of the serpent itself. This reached its climax among the Ophites (q. v. ), who set it in the place of Christ himself (Augustine, I>e Hares, c. 17, 4(j).
In times of persecution, when the exhibition of the cross was interdicted, the early Christians made use in its stead of the emblem of the serpent, as of the lamb, the good shepherd, and many other.s. These they wore as amulets and in other ways to show their confidence in the Saviour which they typified. Thej- are found made of precious stones, on some of which is cut the figure of Moses, a rod in his hand, and an enormous ser- pent before him; a second person on the other side of the serpent represents the .lewish people.
In the commentary upon the 37th I'salm. Ambrose makes use of the type of the serpent principally as a symbol of the resurrection and of immortality. — Mar- tigny, Diet, des A ntiq. Chretiennes, s. v.
Serpent of Brass (Prnrn irn:; Sept. o(piQ o ;!^;«X/cort,-, Numb, xxi, 9; 2 Kings xviii, 1). In addition to the treatment of this subject under Bhazen Seh- TENT and Nehushtan, some important particulars may here be enumerated. The familiar historj- of the brazen serpent need not be repeated here. The nature of the fierj' snakes by which the Israelites were attacked has been discussed under Serpent. The scene of the his- torj', determined by a comparison of Numb, xxi, 3 and xxxiii, 42, must have been either Zalmonah or Punoii. The names of both places probably coimect themselves with it, Zalmonah as meaning " the place of the image," Punon as probably identical with the <^aivoi mentioned by (ireek writers as famous for its copper-mines, and therefore possibly snpfilying the materials (liochart, llieroz. ii, 3, 13). See Punon ; Zalmonah. The chief
SERPENT OF BRASS
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SERPENT OF BRASS
interest of the narrative lies in the thoughts which have at different times gathered round it. We meet with these in four distinct stages, embodied in as many widely separated passages of Scripture. We have to ask by what associations each was connected with the others.
1. The Formation of the. Object (Numb, xxi, 8, 9).— The truth of the history will, in this place, be taken for granted. Those who prefer it may choose among the hypotheses by which men halting between two opinions have endeavored to retain the historical and to elimi- nate the supernatural element. The theory which as- cribes the healing to mysterious powers known to the astrologers or alchemists of Egypt may be mentioned, but hartlly calls for examination (Marsham, Can. Chrun. p. 148, 149 ; K. Tirza, in Deyling, Kxercitt. Sacr. ii, 210). Unbelievers may look on the cures as having been ef- fected by the force of imagination, which the visible symbol served to heighten, or by the rapid rushing of the serpent-bitten from all parts of the camp to the standard thus erected, curing them, as men are said to be cured of the bite of the tarantula by dancing (Bauer, Heb. Gesch. ii, 320; Paulus, Comm. IV, i, 198). They may see in the serpent the emblematic sign-post, as it were, of the camp-hospital to which the sufferers were brought for special treatment, the form in this instance, as in that of the rod of /Esculapius, being a symbol of the art of healing (Hoffmann, in Scherer, Schrift.Forsch. i, 576). Leaving these conjectures on one side, it re- mains for us to inquire into the fitness of the sj'mbol thus employed as the instrument of healing. To most of the Israelites it must have seemed as strange then as it did afterwards to the later rabbins that any such sym- bol should be employed. One of the Jewish interlocu- tors in the dialogue of Justin Martyr with Trypho (p. 322) declares that he had often asked his teachers to solve the difficulty, and had never found one who ex- plained it satisfactorily. Justin himself, of course, ex- plains it as a type of Christ.