Fiery flying serpent


The fiery flying serpent is a creature mentioned in the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible or in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.

Name

The term "fiery flying serpent" is an English translation of the Hebrew words שרף מעופף, ' '.

Biblical accounts

Book of Isaiah

In the History of Herodotus, Book 2, Herodotus describes flying winged serpents.

Cicero

In Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods Book 1 XXXVI, Cotta describes how the Egyptian ibis was deified because it "protects Egypt from plague, by killing and eating the flying serpents that are brought from the Libyan desert..."

Identification

Ronald Millett and John Pratt identify the fiery serpent with the Israeli saw-scale viper or carpet viper based on ten clues from the written sources: the serpents inhabit the Arava Valley, prefer rocky terrain, are deadly venomous, extremely dangerous, have an especially painful "fiery" bite, reddish "fiery" color, lightning fast strike, leaping/"flying" strike, and cause death by internal bleeding. A Roman account dated 22 AD about the deserts of Arabia indicates the presence of the saw-scale viper, reporting that "there are snakes also of a dark red color, a span in length, which spring up as high as a man's waist, and whose bite is incurable." Other candidates include desert horned viper and the desert black snake or black desert cobra.