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Guess the viper

L

Lavender

New member
3 When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. 4 When pthe native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, q“No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, rJustice2 has not allowed him to live.” 5 He, however, sshook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. 6 They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, tthey changed their minds and usaid that he was a god.



Any one wanna play guess the viper?

The european viper maybe?
 
Well, since he suffered no ill effects, I'm going to guess he was bitten by a harmless snake and everyone misidentified it. Since I don't know where Paul was from in this story, I can't wager a guess as to the species. However, since your guess is European viper, I will deduce that the story took place somewhere in Europe. Grass snakes are all I know of from there. So Paul was bitten by a grass snake.
 
Is this by chance from a Biblical story? If it is I remember hearing as a child it was a puff adder. No reason was given though. *shrug*
 
I guessed European viper because they were on an island off of Italy. But the nature of the passage where the men were expecting him to fall dead or swell suggest they may have been a more venomous viper on the island.
 
But you have to remember, some people think corn snakes are venomous. The harmless snakes get confused for "potentially deadly" ones all the time, and I can imagine that far back in history, when they didn't have smart phones to definitely ID every type of snake, that it was a misidentification, and no real miracle or act of any god.
 
I've been able to identify snakes for years without modern technology. But that's an interesting theory I guess
 
Heck, people used to think that tomatoes were poisonous.......
 
The bible uses the words serpent, asp, cockatrice, and viper all used to describe snakes. It's possible that people that lived 2000+ years ago may have been smarter than people today.
 
It's also possible they were quite dumb, and were afraid of tomatoes, wiped with their hand, and thought when it thundered God was moving furniture.
 
Lavender said:
The bible uses the words serpent, asp, cockatrice, and viper all used to describe snakes. It's possible that people that lived 2000+ years ago may have been smarter than people today.
Click to expand...

It *could* be that people 2000 years ago were incredibly gullible, falling easily prey to simple tricks, and easily convinced of "miraculous superiority", by individuals with only a small amount of experience beyond their own.

If you can convince people that something commonplace is actually miraculous, you have a good chance of convincing them you are a god. And if you're REALLY good at it, they will perpetuate your stories for you, using wildly outrageous metaphors to intimidate others into believing.

It might even start a war or three...

But that's just a guess...:bowdown::sidestep:
 
Supernatural occurances follwed that apostles like healing, interpretation, tongues, and raising the dead. So I guess it would make more sense that the viper was one of more deadly nature to prove the annointing of the apostle Paul.
 
Lavender said:
The bible uses the words serpent, asp, cockatrice, and viper all used to describe snakes. It's possible that people that lived 2000+ years ago may have been smarter than people today.
Click to expand...

I don't think people 2,000 years ago were any dumber or smarter than people are today. But I think they may very well have been much more ignorant of the understanding of science we now take for granted that explains to us how things work in this world and universe we live in.

And there is now much more of an experience base available for the asking via the advanced communications now available to us that makes answers to even the most trivial question, well, trivial to find an answer for. 2,000 years is a long time to reap the cumulative benefits of trials and errors that others have had to undergo to bring the knowledge gained by them into becoming "common knowledge" that we all now benefit from.

Heck, just think about how many concepts are necessary to understand in order to grasp how an automobile works. Most of those basic concepts (including electricity itself) were completely unknown 2,000 years ago. So someone today understanding how an automobile works compared to someone 2,000 years ago who would be completely lost concerning the most rudimentary concepts doesn't make them any less smart at all. It would just indicate their lack of exposure, and therefore ignorance, of those concepts needed to understand what you are talking about.

Things just tend to get more and more complex over the years. For instance, when I was a kid, there was just "Cheerios" available along with a couple of other different brands of cereal. Now, there are rows upon rows of just varieties of "Cheerios" at the grocery store. I think someone could spend most of their remaining lifespan just trying out the different varieties of the brands of cereal now available to us.

And don't EVEN get me started talking about the time Connie took me with her to help her buy a new bra. Holy moly! I'm quite surprised that all women aren't insane....... And it certainly does explain why some women will burn the darn things..... :roflmao:
 
I agree about about some technology and accumalitive info. A couple of things, about today is that we have prisons busting at the seams and nuthouses busting at the seams yet we say that we are smarter and wiser nowadays.
 
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