its bulldust. No where in Genesis is satan mentioned by name or title. The text in Gen 3 clearly says it was a snake. THe story also says that God punished the snake for its lying or evil by forcing it to travel on its belly. This does not make sense if the snake was Satan, because no where does it say Satan was a snake that flew around and breathed fire but after the Genesis incident he could only manage to slide on its belly.
Originally the bible says snakes flew and breathed fire. Snakes were just one of the many types of angels that took messages between the earth and heaven or Jehovah.
Read the article on wiki its got a lot of useful insight and scrptures for you to verify. If the serpent was Satan the ancient jews certainly did not know about this. In fact snakes were considered holy in ancient times. They were thought to live forever because they culd shed their skin and be reborn into a new snake. In fact the jews clearly worshipped snakes for hundreds of years until their religion changed. Remember the bronze snake which was worshipped as an idol but then destroyed by Josiah.
And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seraphim
A seraph (pl. seraphs or seraphim ( pron.: / ' s ?r . ? . f ? m / ); Hebrew: ????????? s?rafîm, singular ?????? saraf; Latin: seraphi[m], singular seraph[us]; Greek: σεραφε?μ) is a type of celestial or heavenly being in the Abrahamic religions.
Literally "burning ones", the word seraph is normally a synonym for serpents when used in the Hebrew Bible. A seminal passage in the Book of Isaiah ( Isaiah 6:1-8 ) used the term to describe fiery six-winged beings that fly around God's throne singing "holy, holy, holy". This throne scene, with its triple invocation of holiness (a formula that came to be known as the Trisagion), profoundly influenced subsequent theology, literature and art. Its influence is frequently seen in works depicting angels, heaven and apotheosis. Seraphs are mentioned as celestial beings in an influential Hellenistic work, the Book of Enoch, and the Book of Revelation. Tradition places seraphs in the fifth rank of ten in the Jewish angelic hierarchy and the highest rank in the Christian angelic hierarchy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehustan
Origin
See also: Serpent (Bible)#Serpent of bronze The Israelites set out from Mount Hor, where Aaron was buried, to go to the Red Sea. However they had to detour around the land of Edom (Numbers 20:21, 25). Frustrated and impatient, they complained against Yahweh andMoses (Num. 21:4-5). and God sent "fiery serpents" among them. For the sake of repentant ones, Moses was instructed by God to build a "serpent of bronze" that was used to heal those who looked upon it ( Numbers 21:4-9 ).
In source criticism by Martin Noth, the "bronze serpent" passage in Numbers 21:4-9, proceeds smoothly and is free of doublets, thus it does not appear to divide into different 'sources' even with the unusual juxtaposition of 'God' in v.5. The predominating use of the name Yahweh supposes that its appearance is original. In terms of the documentary hypothesis, the narrative can be allocated to the E source. [7]
[edit] Destruction
In 2 Kings 18:4, a bronze serpent was set up in the Jerusalem Temple sanctuary. [7] The Masoretic text says that "he [Hezekiah] called it Nehushtan". According to Young's Literal Translation, Nehushtan means "piece of brass" (2 Kings 18:4). Karen Randolph Joines makes the distinction that it was Hezekiah who discriminatingly called the image Nehushtan, rather than it being some common term used by the Israelites. [8] When Hezekiah had become King, he tore down the Nehushtan. It has been suggested that Hezekiah's destruction of the Nehushtan was a result of the balance of power moving towards Assyria, which permitted him to remain on the throne of Judah as a puppet ruler. Hezekiah demonstrated his loyalty to the new regime by the destruction of an important symbol with Egyptian associations. [9]
