Sometimes it is interesting how two random events could intersect with each other at just the right moment to make one think, even if it's just a few minutes.

I will begin with a question: What does the Garden of Eden and a research paper from the Journal of Evolutionary Biology have in common? The answer is a serpent's fate.For those not versed in the Bible, specifically the book of Genesis, the first few chapters are descriptions of the creation story.The first chapter is a poetic interpretation of the creation, a litany so to speak, while the second chapter is more an account of how humanity had and lost paradise because of some lies, disobedience and a serpent.While we could debate these stories forever and their factualness, I find the following detail quite interesting considering the creation story exceeds perhaps 4,000 years. We are talking a time far removed from modern scholarly knowledge of biology and evolution.While I'm not going to rehash the whole story from the beginning, it just so happened to be the subject of part of the lectionary last Sunday.In essence the subject was a description of the fall of man and the roles Adam, Eve and the serpent played in the loss of paradise.As most of you probably know, Adam and Eve lived in Eden, and there was a tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the middle of it.They were allowed to eat from any of the trees in the Garden except that one. God told them if they did, they would die.Eve is in the garden alone one day. Adam was out counting animals or something and was not around.The serpent sidles up to Eve and convinces her to try a piece of fruit from the forbidden tree. She does, and the Bible says "her eyes were opened."Later when Adam returns, she convinces him to have some fruit as well. From there things take a vicious slide downhill, because God shows up after the fact looking for Adam, and we have the first recorded conversations of "It wasn't my fault."Obviously things go poorly for Adam and Eve, and they are punished by God by losing the privilege of living in the garden. He doesn't stop there, however.He goes after the serpent that tempted Eve as well, and in the words of the author of the story, God punishes him as follows: "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."Of course most scientists look down on the Bible as a collection of stories, myths and folklore interspersed with Jewish history and poetry and many believe the first several chapters of Genesis especially to be a collection of myths that describe the origins of humanity.Yet the interesting thing is the Journal of Evolutionary Biology now reports that the serpent or snake may have had ankles and feet on its body millions of years ago.Scientists are not sure how useful these appendages may have been to the snakes which they studied by comparing living snakes with fossil of snakes found from over 128 million years ago.They do believe that these creatures may have been nocturnal predators in the past and most likely were venomous.They believe they would attack their prey from beneath and may not have evolved any constrictive abilities at that point in time.This new research counters an alternate theory that snakes evolved in the oceans, which explain their adaptations of no eyelids and lack of legs.The traditional belief is the snakes originated in the ocean and eventually evolved and adapted to be land dwellers.This theory was developed because scientists felt if the snake had evolved on land, it would have been more likely to have had features or characteristics that would be similar to other land creatures like external ears and appendages.What caught my attention however is within days not only do I hear the story of the fall again, but it is followed by a scientific article that supports God's punishment of the serpent.In the Bible we have the serpent losing his legs as punishment for tempting humans to sin, and within a day or two, I find an article in an evolutionary biology journal in which scientists claim there is a fossil record that shows that snakes at one time had legs and they evolved to lose them.I know the literalists on one side claim the Earth is only 6,000 years old and the agnostics and scientists argue that is foolhardy in that the Earth is hundreds of millions of years old or longer, so how could this coincidence be meaningful.To tell the truth, the number of years is irrelevant, and as for the seven-day Creation story, it is a poetic litany that uses days figuratively to discuss periods of time, but the key point here is that the author of the prose version of the Creation somehow knew or assumed snakes may have had legs at one time and they were lost.That was used as a "punishment" for deceiving Adam and Eve, and now thousands of years later we have a possible confirmation that this punishment may have some basis in evolutionary fact.All I can say, to quote Spock, is "Interesting …"Till next time …