Eve and the Serpent

Intent. This image is intended to complement my illustration of the Great Red Dragon of Revelation 12. Perhaps ideal for background visuals involving “The Seed of the Woman / Serpent.”

1. Dragon and serpent. While trying to draw a visual connection between the Great Red Dragon of Revelation and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, I recalled research I had done on both the Great Red Dragon and the Leviathan. For the dragon, there was some consideration given to the idea that it would likely have been an Eastern interpretation of a dragon, the most ancient interpretation on record: that of a giant snake.
2. A serpent with legs? Eastern dragons are sometimes depicted with small legs that keep their belly off the ground. Even today, some snakes are born with embedded claws in their underbelly, or even with small or partial legs, and the fossil record indicates that snakes may have at one time had legs. Perhaps the Serpent in the Garden had larger, more developed legs that made him more lizard-like?
3. A serpent of great size? When researching the Leviathan, I came across the largest snake known to have existed, the Titanoboa, which reached lengths of nearly 13 meters (40 feet). We might disagree with evolutionary biologists on the age and origin of such a creature, but that it existed is certainly not in doubt! This made me wonder if the original Serpent wasn’t significantly larger than usually depicted, perhaps grand enough that Eve might have respected his words on that basis alone.

“To be clear though, no one knows what the Serpent looked like, or how large or small he might have been. Illustrating images such as this may help us picture and explore these possibilities, but we should be careful not to fully accept the imagery as fact!”

This pairs with the dragon in my Art of the Apocalypse and the Leviathan in the Art of Job. For kids: the Garden of Eden coloring page and craft.