[VRWC_minion]

The real reference in the Bible is to Satan,

This article seems to indicate that the change to a crawling creature happened to creatures that were formerly ground based animals and the scripture is consistant with that. That to me is interesting.

However, how do you know both things cannot be true. Couldn't God have changed snakes from having legs to crawling on their bellys at the same time he cursed Satan ?

As an aside, later in the scripture, God curses the ground which means the snake/Satan is fully exposed to the cursed ground from head to tail.

[ZULU]

"Couldn't God have changed snakes from having legs to crawling on their bellys at the same time he cursed Satan ?"

NO!!

Snakes appeared in the fossil record LONG before modern man did. As a matter of fact, they may have appeared before even our predecessors like the Australopithecines did. The time frames are all wrong!!

The passage has allegorical and symbolic significance wnad relate to the Hebrew perspecitve of serpents, and their worship by neighboring pagan tribes. The ancient Minoans worshipped snakes, so did the Greeks and Romans. Ever see the symbol for medicine? It has two snakes intertwined on a staff as a symbol of Aescupalius, the Ancient Roman God of medicine. Its OBVIOUSLY symbolic. We DON'T worship snakes.