Satan and corrupting serpent

Meaning

Satan appears as a prowling adversary ready to devour, a religious figure applied to the corrupting matter that surrounds and wears down life. II.3.8 uses the image to dramatize the spread of corruption through generations and nourishment; it does not make every inherited condition incurable, since remedies are said to arrest its progress. In II.3.14 the serpent hides in desirable food, joining the forbidden morsel to temptation and bodily mortality. These are the author’s theological and medical constructions, not modern accounts of inheritance or diagnosis. Most importantly, the spiritual renewal urged there does not require bodily death: the passage explicitly denies that inference.