Автор: Корч(агин) (213.221.18.---)
Дата: 22-04-04 23:15
Yahweh with serpent legs; inscription on Jewsih amulets of Hellenistic and Roman periods, second-first century BC.
Once before, Yahweh had (strictly) not appeared to Moses as a serpent, but rather, in the precise language of transcendence, his appearance had manifested itself in the form of a serpent. Moses asks the Lord for a sign, saying:
. . . they will say, The Lord hath not appeared to thee.
And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod
And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand. (Exod. 4:1-4)
This is the same rod with which Yahweh commanded Moses to tell Aaron to smite the waters of Egypt and turn them to blood, cause frogs to come out of the waters, and make the dust of the earth into lice. But it was only when Moses himself ‘stretched forth his rod toward heaven’ to bring down hail that the hard heart of Pharaoh relented. Later, in the desert, the Lord commanded Moses to strike the rock with his rod to release water for his people to drink (Exod. 17:5-6). (14)
Sumerian serpent god. Early Balybonian cylinder seal, c. 2300-2150 BC.
The relationship between Yahweh and the serpent is somewhat baffling, given, firstly, the prohibition against graven images and, secondly, the unflagging attempts of the prophets to eradicate all trace of the Canaanite religion, in which serpents belonged to the priestesses as signs of their power of prophecy. None the less, by the second and first centuries BC seals of Yahweh appeared in which the Almighty had the legs of a serpent. ‘Serpent gods’, explains Campbell, ‘do not die.(15)
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