Hi, this is Hank Hennigraph, present of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Incerman broadcast with another Hank on Block Short.

I was reading a critique this morning of a book written by a famous Christian apologist and thinker.

And in that book, he supposes that if we take Genesis literally, then we have to believe that Eve was deceived by a talking snake.

This, however, is far from true. And I couldn't help but think in this context

about the literal principle of biblical interpretation. It's important to me as I read Scripture,

and it is most important to you as well.

It's important for all of us to recognize that when we read scriptural passages in a literal sense,

it doesn't mean that we read scripture in a woodenly literal sense. Rather, to read

scripture literally is to read it as literature. And that means that we ought to interpret the

word of God just as we interpret other forms of communication,

namely in the most obvious and natural sense. So when Moses uses, well, when he uses the symbolism

of a snake, we do violence to his intentions if we interpret him in a, again,

in a woodenly literal fashion. When Moses is describing Satan as a serpent, or for that matter,

when the apostle John describes Satan as a serpent. Or for that matter, when the Apostle John describes Satan as a dragon.

We don't intend that what he is trying to tell us is what Satan looks like. Rather, both authors, the Apostle John and Moses, want to teach us what

Satan is like. Dragons, after all, are the stuff of mythology, not theology. If we think of Satan as either a slithering snake or a fire-breathing dragon,

we not only misunderstand the nature of fallen angels,

but we might also suppose that Jesus triumphed over the work of the devil

by stepping on the head of a snake.

Of course, he triumphed through his passion on the cross.

My point is simply this.

Eve was not deceived by a talking snake.

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