Jesus’
description of the devil (διαβολος)
as “a liar and the father of lies” in John 8:44 could possibly be an indirect
allusion to Gen 3:4, and perhaps reflects a line of understanding in the NT
that identifies the serpent as the devil who told the very “first” lie in human
history. In Gen 3:4, the serpent explicitly denies God’s death warning (Gen
2:17): “you will surely not die” (לֹֽא־מ֖וֹת תְּמֻתֽוּן). Such an
understanding, holding the devil responsible for the introduction of death to humanity,
is also found in Wis 2:23-24, and therefore this is not unprecedented: “For God
made man as incorruptible/immortality . . . but by the envy of the devil (διαβολος), death came into the world.” . . . If we
take John 8:44 as a possible allusion to the Genesis incident, then Jesus’ view
of the devil as a “liar” further reflects his and/or his contemporary’s
understanding of the serpent’s retort in Gen 3:4 as a “lie” in contrast to
God’s command, which by logic must have been understood as a true statement. In
the Genesis narrative, however, it appears that it is actually the prediction
of the serpent that turned out to be true: “For God knows that in the day you
eat from it your eyes will be opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen
3:5-7). . . . According to this view, them, the divine command, “on the day you
eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die” (Gen
2:17) must have been fulfilled in a certain way (regardless of the nature of
the death) in order for it to be true. Perhaps Paul’s description of Satan as
one who “disguises himself as an angel of light” in 2 Cor 11:14 is an
indication of his acknowledgment of a similar understanding. Cf. also Rev
12:9; 20:2, the author of Revelation describes Satan in these verses as ο οφις ο αρχαιος
(“ancient serpent”). Such a line of interpretation, which assumes the serpent’s
retort in Gen 3:4 to be a lie, will logically lead to the understanding that
God was right, that Adam and Eve indeed died, either spiritually or in the
sense that they became mortal. Paul’s promise to the Roman church in Rom 16:20
that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” echoes one of
God’s punishments directed at the serpent in Gen 3:15: “I will put enmity
between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise
you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” Paul’s description of
Satan in this verse echoing the language in Gen 3:15 is a likely indication of
Paul’s identification and association of the serpent with Satan, which fits
with Jesus’ description of the devil as a “father of lies.” The likelihood that
Paul is considering the garden narrative is supported by the previous verse
(Rom 6:19), where another implicit allusion to the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil is found in Paul’s exhortation to the church “to be wise with
respect to the good and pure with respect to evil” (v. 19). See also Hebrews
6:8 for an NT allusion to the agricultural aspect of God’s punishment of Adam
in Gen 3:18. The author of the Hebrews describes a land that yields “thorns and
thistles” as a “curse.” (Chris W. Lee, Death Warning in the Garden of Eden [Forschungen
zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe 115; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020], 149-50 n. 37)
