parshanut torah comment - Do religious Jews generally believe the serpent of Garden of Eden was Satan?

Upon reading the recent CNN article, That Actually Isn't In The Bible, one not-really-in-the-Bible misconception they cite is the idea that serpent in the Garden of Eden was the Satan.

The article cites several biblical scholars who correctly say that the Satan is not mentioned in the creation account, and indeed, not at all in Genesis. (Of course, the Satan is mentioned in the Tenakh, in particular, in Chronicles and Job.)

Even though Genesis doesn't explicitly call out the serpent as the Satan, this nonetheless seems to be a reasonable conclusion among some theologians, particularly in light of the Satan's dealings with G-d in Job.

My question is, what is the general consensus about the serpent in the Garden of Eden? Do scholars believe this was the Satan mentioned in Job?

Whether the creation account is interpreted literally or allegorically, we are left with this figure, represented by a snake, that draws humans towards evil. Who is that figure, according to religious Jews and Jewish scholars?

Answer

Among the classical Torah commentators, there are those that interpret that whole Garden of Eden story as being literal historical fact, while others interpret it allegorically.

The main authority who treats it as allegory is Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim (Volume 2, Chapter 30), and according to his interpretation, the snake represents a person's "appetitive faculty" (the part of the Aristotelian model of the psych that controls a person's emotions and desires).

Those that interpret the story literally, though, differ in how they explain the talking snake:

• The snake from creation was an intelligent animal that talked, thought, and walked upright like a human. Only after its sin was it downgraded to the level of all the other animals (or perhaps below the level of most animals). [See Ibn Ezra (Bereshis 3:1).]


• The snake is actually the Torah's way of referring to Satan. (As @avi noted, the Satan is traditionally believed as being the evil inclination and/or the angel of death.) In this case, either there was no actual snake at all, or the Satan appeared in the form of a snake. [R' Saadia Gaon brought in Ibn Ezra.]


• There was an actual snake, but it never really spoke. The Torah "speaks in the language of Man" when it writes "The snake said...", the same way one would say "That food is saying 'Eat me'". The snake, by climbing on the Tree of Knowledge and eating its fruits was "telling" Eve that the fruits were good and harmless. [See Abarbanel (Bereshis 3).]