Christians across denominations appear to believe the snake who tempted Eve in Eden was actually Satan. If the being who tempted Eve was actually Satan, why were snakes cursed to crawl on their bellies and eat dust for all time? Do Christians believe God knew the snake was actually Satan? Why do Christians believe snakes have moral culpability for what Satan did?

An academic Theologian recommended to me the *Jerusalem Bible* as the one with the greatest amount of scholarly references. I purchased the "Reader's Edition" with the Dali illustrations (second-hand) and I managed to get all the way through. In its preface, it says that a lot of the commentary in the original French translation had been truncated for this English version. From the Internet Archives I got a copy of the above title (ISBN 2204060631), and I am really impressed by the amount of background information that contains. Alas! my French isn't as fluent as it needs to be for effortless reading of such a dense text, so I was wondering if any of you knew about an edition of the full-blown text (specifically for the scholarly commentary, as I have the core text in English already) in one of the languages I find easier to digest.

**Ancient imagery beasts used in Christian symbolisms?** We have all heard of unicorns! > The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. The unicorn was depicted in ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilization and was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, Aelian and Cosmas Indicopleustes. **The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, which some versions translate as unicorn.** > > Interpretations of the unicorn myth focus on the medieval lore of beguiled lovers, whereas some religious writers interpret the unicorn and its death as the Passion of Christ. The myths refer to a beast with one horn that can only be tamed by a virgin; subsequently, some writers translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary. Unicorn (Wikipedia) A little while ago, I was watching the Harry Potter’s movies and made note that within the series, there are some strange and mythological beasts portrayed in the books/movies. In particular there is the hippogryph and the phenix. Now the phenix is used in medieval imagery to symbolize the the resurrection. > The phoenix symbolized renewal in general, as well as entities and concepts such as the Sun, time, the Roman Empire, Christ, Mary, and virginity. > > The phoenix myth is also part of early Christian traditions. Some scholars have speculated that these early phoenix legends may have their origins in the bennu of Egyptian mythology. In the 19th century, scholastic suspicions appeared to be confirmed by the discovery that Egyptians in Heliopolis had venerated the bennu. However, the Egyptian sources regarding the bennu are often problematic and open to a variety of interpretations. Some of these sources may have actually been influenced by Greek notions of the phoenix, rather than the other way around. > > The Old English Exeter Book contains an anonymous 677-line 9th-century alliterative poem consisting of a paraphrase and abbreviation of Lactantius, followed by an explication of the Phoenix as an allegory for the resurrection of Christ. - Phoenix (mythology) Detail from the 12th-century Aberdeen Bestiary , featuring a phoenix. As for the hippogryph , it used as a symbol of Christ’s two nature. > In Ancient Greek folklore, the **hippogriff**, or sometimes spelled **hippogryph**, is a legendary creature which has the front half of an eagle and the hind half of a horse. > > In some traditions, the hippogriff is said to be the symbol of love, as its parents, the mare and griffin, are natural enemies. In other traditions, the hippogriff represents Christ's dual nature as both human and divine. - Hippogriff Buckbeak the Hippogriff Thus my question is as follows: **What other ancient mythological beasts (if any) have been used in Christian imagery to express Christian beliefs through symbolism?** The more obscure and ancient the better!

I've long assumed the Catholics have always denied the existence of pagan gods, hence allowed them to be represented in art as a fiction reminiscent of a heroic and remote past. However, the strong wording in an addendum to the imprimatur (image below) for an early 1572 edition of the Portuguese epic Os Lusíadas from author Luiz de Camões states clearly that Greek gods referred to in the text are *demons* (Demonios). This choice of words seems very strange to me. So, the question is: how did 16th century man and Catholic doctrine in particular see Greek/Roman gods? Did they acknowledge their existence as true demons who could bring evil or be invoked by a sorcerer? Or only figuratively in that worshiping a false deity would lead to distance from God and so opening space for demons to act? Source: [Os Lusiadas de Luis de Camões by Camões, Luís de, 1524?-1580](https://archive.org/details/oslusiadasdeluis00cam) The text says: "By mandate of the Holy Inquisition, I have reviewed those ten chants [...] However, since this is a work of poetry and feigning, and the author, as a poet, has no further intentions than to follow the poetic style, we found no issue with the fable of foreign deities being told in this work. We know it as being such, and we *always keep the truth of our holy faith, that all Gods of the Gentiles are demons*. And so the book seems to me worthy of publishing and the author evinces in it his great genius and much learning in the human sciences. [...]" Is this truth he alludes to is part of particularly strict contemporary views on mythology or is a point of doctrine?

I'm not asking about what is the dragon, it's the devil okay, but my question is why is it called "dragon", why dragons exists in the Bible, when they are nothing more than mythical creatures. Actually dragons are perhaps the only creatures which appeared in all civilizations thousands of years ago, so I wanted to ask why are there dragons all over the place if it's mythical, usually civilizations have their own monsters except dragons. But why the Bible holds on to such a mythical creature? Saint Michael fighting the dragon. And latter the story Saint George and so on, like why they called it "dragon" and not "locki"? Does the bible claim that dragons are real, regardless of their meaning in the text? I thought that someone had written Saint Michael story after exploring the Chinese society and knowing what dragons are, but it's written in the Bible too. Other religions have events existing in neighboring religions as a part of their holy text, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but I don't think the Bible has done that. In any case, dragons weren't widespread in the Middle East, their inclusion won't serve a purpose like Babylon, the Middle Eastern people have different myths, so how did a mythical creature jump from China to the Bible and why is it described in such details, as if someone is portraying a real animal? If we're assuming that the dragon came from Greek mythology, they didn't have many dragons, and none fire breathing dragons I know of. Fire breathing dragons appeared in east Asia and Norse mythology as far as I know and didn't influence the Middle East. Some people are saying dragons are dinosaurs? Dinosaurs weren't discovered until 1800s. Okay the Bible have prophecies and can make predictions but I don't think the people that lived 2000 years ago would be able to grasp what dinosaurs are, I don't know, something is missing.

The most common debate about Noah's flood is whether the flood was global or local. I want to put this particular debate aside for a moment, and ask a different question: Did the flood happen at all? Reading the views of many (often atheists, sometimes local-flood proponents), there seems to be a pretty strong scientific case against a global flood. However, as I read about this view, I have to wonder: Wouldn't (at least according to the skeptics) a flood of sufficient scope to threaten the existence of any given animal species also suffer from most of the scientific problems associated with a global flood? And if there were a flood of limited enough scope that some species' existence were not threatened, why not just send Noah and his family across some mountain to escape the local flood? So this makes me wonder if there is a Christian theological model in which the flood, or at least the ark, is non-literal. I realize there might me more than one competing model, so I'm just asking for one. Does such a model exist? If so, please point me to whomever has proposed it. I imagine that such a model would include either or both of the following tenets, but please don't limit answers to these if there is some other approach to the theory that I have not considered: - Noah and his family escaped the flood by some means less drastic or miraculous than a boat, and the boat and animal rescue was added by later generations or authors as an embellishment to the story. - Noah and his family never existed, the world was never flooded as God's judgement, and the story is a non-real myth, meant to make a point about something other than history.

I would like to know what Christianity says about the phoenix (also spelled phenix). Do Christians believe in such an immortal bird? Is there a biblical basis for belief in the phoenix?