Endnote 4 – Did Eve Fall or Was She Pushed?

D.R. Schultz (“The Origin of Sin in Irenaeus and Jewish Pseudepigraphical Literature,” Vigiliae christianae 32 [1978], p. 184) suggested that the identification of the serpent with the devil first appeared “in the late Jewish literature [that is, the pseudepigrapha] and then passed on to the New Testament.” Further, Schultz writes, “the New Testament simply makes the identification of Satan and the serpent, with no explanation concerning the instrumentality of the serpent.” He concludes that the use of the serpent as the devil’s instrument is “almost certainly derived from pseudepigraphical sources.”