Me? I like those obscure Scandinavian ones that are like... a gnome that steals your extra raisins or whatever
Also mothman is pretty cool but he's totally real so he doesn't count 😤
Me? I like those obscure Scandinavian ones that are like... a gnome that steals your extra raisins or whatever
Also mothman is pretty cool but he's totally real so he doesn't count 😤
I can't find it for the life of me, but I can recall once reading this interesting paper that argued the vilification of snakes in Christianity was as a rejection of a lot of superstition in bronze age Europe where snakes were seen as a symbol of wisdom (for example, in some variations of the myth of Asclepius he gained his healing powers from observing snakes caring for each other).
Certainly, after all, early Christianity was pretty concerned with depicting God not as divinity itself as we see today but as just the strongest deity that could give all the others a swirly. There were a lot of religious politics to consider back then. Just look at Islam and its origin involving a town that made its money selling figurines of Gods, Mecca, throwing out that pesky monotheist Muhammad who was gonna ruin their economy. The early storytellers who are responsible for what became Judaism could easily have been aware of the political significance of demonizing certain tropes associated with other (pagan) traditions.