Board Thread:Series general discussion/@comment-28601337-20170518051547/@comment-18014300-20170519183036

The Wikia Editor wrote: Another modern mainstream perception is that the Serpent in the Garden was also supposed to be Satan. There is nothing in the actual text to suggest that this creature was supposed to be anything other than a talking snake.

The idea comes from that one time that Jesus referred to Satan as "that old serpent", but he also referred to the Pharisees at one point as a "den of vipers", which is obviously not meant to be taken literally.

The serpent was cursed to forever crawl on its belly and eat dust until the end of its days, indicating that this was supposed to be a mortal creature who would one day die (not to mention the fact that Satan was depicted as walking in the Book of Job, which is supposed to take place later).

The connection between the serpent and the Devil was definitely not made in early Christianity. However, the Qur'an explicitly calls the serpent the Devil or Satan when recalling the tale of Adam & Eve, meaning that it had entered mainstream even among Christians of Arabia by the 7th century CE and may not be as modern as we think. Note that that is still 600 years after Christianity's foundation after all.