Summary by Claude.ai of the BAS article “How the Serpent in the Garden Became Satan” Shawna Dolansky | Biblical Archaeology Society. The PDF file of the article is in Dropbox/Satan.
Below the summary is the prompt “How do critical bible scholars view the position of the writer of that article?” and the response. Claude says the overall response from her colleagues would be positive.
Core Argument
The serpent in Genesis 2–3 is simply a serpent — not Satan. The concept of the devil did not yet exist when the story was written, making any such identification an anachronism imposed by later readers.
The Hebrew Bible’s Use of Satan
The noun satan (Hebrew: “adversary” or “accuser”) appears nine times in the Hebrew Bible, never as a proper name:
- Five times referring to human opponents (military, political, or legal)
- Four times referring to a divine being — always with the definite article (“the satan”), functioning as a role, not a name
- In Numbers 22, the satan acts as YHWH’s messenger to stop Balaam
- In Job, the satan is a member of the divine council who wagers against Job’s righteousness — but acts within God’s framework, not against it
- In Zechariah 3, the satan accuses the high priest Joshua before the divine tribunal
- In 1 Chronicles 21:1, satan appears without the definite article — the one instance that could be read as a proper name — but Dolansky argues nothing in the surrounding literary context or in texts for another 300 years supports the idea of an evil prince of darkness
How the Identification Developed
Two separate developments eventually merged in the post-biblical period:
- Satan became a proper name for a supernatural opponent of God, leader of demonic forces
- The Eden serpent came to be identified with Satan
These emerged in Second Temple Jewish literature:
- 1 Enoch names the angel who led Eve astray as Gadreel — not Satan
- Wisdom of Solomon may be the earliest text connecting the devil with Eden, but even there the serpent is not explicitly identified as Satan
- Qumran texts depict Satan as leader of the forces of darkness, but still without a clear Eden connection
- By the first century C.E., Satan is fully integrated into early Christianity as deceiver of Jesus, prince of demons, and eschatological enemy — but the Eden link remains implicit at best
The Revelation Problem
Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 call Satan “the ancient serpent,” but Dolansky argues this more likely draws on ancient Near Eastern combat mythology (the Marduk/Tiamat and Baal/Yam-Mot traditions) in which the villain is characteristically serpentine — as in the Leviathan imagery of Isaiah 27 — rather than on a deliberate identification with the Genesis garden narrative.
Paul and the Patristic Tradition
Significantly, when Paul retells the Adam and Eve story in Romans 5:18 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, he assigns blame to the humans, not to Satan or fallen angels. The explicit conflation of Satan with Eden’s serpent comes only with later patristic writers — Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, Irenaeus, and Augustine — and reaches its fullest literary expression in Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Conclusion
The serpent-as-Satan equation is a post-biblical theological development, not a reading native to Genesis or even to the New Testament. The connection was historically conditioned, emerging from a changed apocalyptic worldview, and was then retrojected onto the original text by later interpreters.
Prompt: How do critical bible scholars view the position of the writer of that article? Cite their names inline and any links.
Response:
Dolansky’s position lands squarely in the mainstream of critical biblical scholarship, though with a few points that remain genuinely contested. Here’s how the field receives her:
Broad Scholarly Consensus: Her Core Thesis Is Uncontroversial
From a biblical studies point of view, Dolansky is for the most part stating the obvious. Few biblical scholars today would defend an identification of the serpent with Satan using historical-critical exegesis of Genesis 3. The dianoigo blog (a careful theological review site) put it bluntly in its detailed response to her article.
This is corroborated by major independent scholarly voices:
Henry Ansgar Kelly (UCLA Distinguished Research Professor, author of Satan: A Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2006) arrives at virtually identical conclusions through exhaustive textual analysis. Kelly argues that “nobody in the Old Testament — or, for that matter, in the New Testament either — ever identifies the serpent of Eden with Satan,” and that “the ancient serpent” in Revelation refers to Leviathan, not the garden snake of Eden. Kelly concludes that “Satan was not associated with Adam until the second century A.D., when the Samaritan philosopher Justin Martyr identified him with the serpent.” You can read more about Kelly’s work at UCLA’s newsroom.
Elaine Pagels (Princeton, The Origin of Satan, 1995) similarly traces Satan as an evolving concept. Pagels traces the evolution of Satan from its origins in the Hebrew Bible, where Satan is at first merely obstructive, to the New Testament, where Satan becomes the Prince of Darkness — the bitter enemy of God and man. More about her work at Google Books.
Gerhard von Rad, the eminent OT scholar, stated that the snake in Eden was more an expedient to represent the human impulse to temptation rather than an evil spirit or personification of the Devil, and that the snake is neither a supernatural being nor a demon, but one of the wild animals created by God.
Modern historiographers of Satan such as Henry Ansgar Kelly (2006) and Wray and Mobley (2007) speak of the “evolution of Satan” or “development of Satan,” framing that is entirely consistent with Dolansky’s approach.
Where Scholars Push Back
The main critique of Dolansky comes not on her core claim but on her handling of the New Testament evidence, where she arguably understates the case for implicit links:
Dolansky’s assertion that “the reference in Revelation 12:9 to Satan as ‘the ancient serpent’ probably reflects mythical monsters like Leviathan rather than the clever, legged, talking creature in Eden” is a false dilemma. Both form part of the background. The dianoigo reviewer notes that Revelation 12 is dense with Genesis 3 allusions — the woman, the serpent, the conflict between the serpent and the woman’s seed — making it hard to argue the Eden serpent is entirely absent.
The reviewer further notes that in Romans 16:20, Paul’s statement that “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” may allude to Genesis 3:15, and that in John 8:44 the reference to the devil as a murderer “from the beginning” and the father of lies seems to implicate the devil in the events of Genesis 3.
There is also the matter of rabbinic tradition: the ninth-century rabbinic work Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer clearly identifies the serpent with Samael, a satanic angel figure — and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gestures in that direction earlier, suggesting the identification has Jewish as well as Christian roots that Dolansky’s framing slightly obscures.
Bottom Line
The scholarly reception would be essentially right on the big picture, slightly overreaching in claiming the NT contains no clear link. Her thesis that the equation of the Eden serpent with Satan is a post-biblical theological development, not native to Genesis itself, is firmly supported by the field.
Where she diverges from some colleagues is in treating the NT evidence as thinner than it may actually be — particularly Revelation 12 and certain Pauline texts where the connection, while implicit, is arguably being presupposed rather than invented.
3rd Prompt: Was the invention of Satan part of the Apocalyptic movement?
Yes, very much so — the development of Satan as a fully realized supernatural adversary is deeply entangled with the rise of Jewish apocalypticism, though the relationship is more nuanced than a simple cause-and-effect.
The Pre-Apocalyptic Background
In the older strata of the Hebrew Bible, as Dolansky’s article shows, the satan is a functional role within the divine council — an accuser or adversary who operates entirely under YHWH’s authority. There is no cosmic dualism, no independent force of evil. YHWH is responsible for everything, including calamity: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am Jehovah, that doeth all these things” (Isa. 45:7, ASV). A fully autonomous Satan would have been theologically incoherent in this framework.
The Apocalyptic Turn
The critical shift comes in the 3rd–2nd century BCE, coinciding precisely with the emergence of apocalyptic literature. Several factors drove this:
The problem of theodicy under empire. The Babylonian exile and then centuries of Persian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid domination created intense pressure on the older Deuteronomistic framework, which held that faithfulness to YHWH guaranteed national prosperity. Faithful Jews were manifestly not prospering. An independent cosmic adversary helped explain why righteous people suffered without implicating God’s justice or power.
Persian/Zoroastrian contact. There has long been scholarly discussion about Zoroastrian influence — Ahura Mazda vs. Angra Mainyu representing cosmic good vs. evil. Most scholars today are cautious about direct borrowing, but the centuries of Persian rule at minimum created an environment where cosmic dualism was a live conceptual option. Kelly noted that the idea of Zoroastrian influence is in limited favor among scholars today, since the satan figure remains subordinate to God even in later texts — never a true equal opponent as in Zoroastrian dualism.
1 Enoch and the Watchers tradition. The earliest clearly apocalyptic texts begin reshaping the satan concept dramatically. The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36, probably 3rd century BCE) introduces a developed demonology with fallen angels, led by figures like Asael and Semyaza, who corrupt humanity. As Dolansky notes, the angel who “led Eve astray” in 1 Enoch is called Gadreel — not yet Satan — but the conceptual architecture of a supernatural adversarial being with demonic subordinates is being built here.
The Book of Daniel (c. 165 BCE, the latest book in the Hebrew canon) introduces angelic princes fighting one another — Michael vs. the prince of Persia and Greece (Dan. 10:13, 20–21) — giving cosmic-dualist framing to historical events. This is the apocalyptic worldview in full flower, and it creates the space Satan needs to inhabit.
Satan Emerges as a Proper Name
By the 2nd–1st century BCE, the figure crystallizes:
- Jubilees (c. 160–150 BCE) introduces Mastema, a chief of evil spirits who tests humans and executes divine punishment — a Satan-like figure with a named demonic role.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls / Qumran community present the most fully developed pre-Christian cosmic dualism: the Prince of Light vs. the Angel of Darkness (Belial/Satan), with all humanity divided between two camps. This is a genuinely dualist cosmology, even if God ultimately wins.
- The Testament of Job and other pseudepigraphical works of the period name Satan explicitly as the instigator of Job’s suffering — going beyond the canonical text.
Why Apocalypticism Generated Satan
The structural logic is tight. Apocalypticism as a genre presupposes:
- A hidden cosmic reality behind visible history — things are not as they appear
- Dualistic conflict between forces of good and evil
- Imminent resolution through divine intervention
All three features demand a cosmic adversary. Without a Satan-figure, there is no cosmic war to resolve, no hidden enemy to unmask, no urgency to the apocalyptic timetable. The genre essentially required the figure to function.
Into the New Testament
By the time of Jesus, Satan is so established in Second Temple Jewish thought that the New Testament writers simply inherit him as a given. The Synoptic temptation narratives (Mark 1:12–13; Matt. 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13), the Beelzebul controversy, and the Qumran-like dualism of John’s Gospel (“ruler of this world”) all reflect a Satan-concept already fully formed in apocalyptic Judaism. Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:4 calls Satan “the god of this age” — language that would have been impossible in the world of Job or Zechariah.
The Key Qualification
It’s worth noting that even within apocalypticism, Satan never becomes a full ontological equal to God — that would be Zoroastrian-style dualism, which Jewish and Christian thought consistently resisted. Satan is always a created and ultimately defeatable adversary. The apocalyptic innovation was giving evil a personal, cosmic face — not elevating it to divine status. The Book of Revelation’s Satan is terrifying, but his defeat is never in doubt.
So to directly answer the question: yes, the invention of Satan in the sense we recognize — a named, personal, supernatural adversary leading forces of evil against God and humanity — is essentially an apocalyptic product, emerging from the particular pressures and conceptual frameworks of Second Temple Judaism between roughly 300 BCE and the first century CE.
