What is the major scholarship on the notion that Lucifer/Satan is the Serpent from Th

[robrecht]

I think most scholars rightly see the identification of Satan with the serpent as a largely Christian theological distortion of the serpent character in Genesis. But there may be links in the earlier Hebrew tradition and later apocalyptic Judaism that preceded the later Christian emphasis on the doctrine of original sin and the role of Satan and other evil powers over the world. Nahum Sarna, in his JPS commentary on Genesis points to Isaiah 27,1 reflecting an ancient belief within Israel of the serpent as "a monster representing primeval chaos, [that] challenged, to its own ruin, God's creative endeavors." He cites K.R. Jones, Serpent Symbolism in the Old Testament, 1974. Against this background, Sarna sees the author of Genesis reducing the serpent as a mere mortal creature ("all the days of your life") that, that unlike the man and Eve, is not even interrogated by God. He further notes that earliest identification of the serpent with the devil occurs only in the first century BCE in the Wisdom of Solomon 2,24. Claus Westermann, in his voluminous commentary on Genesis, also identifies the pre-Christian origins of the idea of the Fall of man and original sin in 2 (4) Esd 7,118 (48). Perhaps the biggest objection to any identification of the serpent with Satan is that Satan in the Hebrew scriptures bears no resemblance to the Christian idea of Satan as the personification of all evil or as the eternal ruler of all demons and evil spirits. This idea would only have developed in later apocalyptic Judaism, out of which Christianity arose, but which is not found in the Hebrew scriptures.