This essay takes it’s approach in the role of the Serpent in the Garden story based on the Jewish and Christian tradition’s view of the Serpent in that narrative. The question the study is based on is whether the Serpent has changed character from the creation of the Garden story until about 400 years AD in Christian tradition. My conclusion in this reception-historical analysis of the Serpent is that it has different meanings in Jewish and Christian tradition. The Gnostic texts that began to emerge a couple of hundred years BC were not recognized in the Jewish tradition, while in the Christian tradition they lived with the interpretations, which is not least seen in the Book of Revelations, which is canon in the Christian tradition today. Augustine uses the Book of Revelation’s interpretations of the Serpent, where the Serpent is Satan, which the Gnostic texts write and the Book of Revelation is influenced by. Augustine is so wrapped up in the fact that the Serpent is Satan that he misses what it says in the most important and introductory sentence of Genesis 3:1. 

My conclusion is that because God created the Serpent, and therefore the Serpent can not be Satan because God is not evil. The dualistic worldview that emerges from God does not appear in the text, but the Christian interpretations of the Serpent have departed from the text, while the Jewish tradition has remained in the text’s view of the Serpent. The Serpent is not Satan based on Genesis 3.