The Serpent and the Serpent Slayer (eBook)

Introduction

Why We Love Dragon-Slaying Stories

Who doesn’t love a good dragon-slaying story? There is a reason that classic literature features such stories—we love them! But why?

Dragon-Slaying Stories Echo the Greatest Story

We love good dragon-slaying stories because they echo the greatest story—the grand story of the Bible. Stories that parallel the greatest story make our hearts soar with delight. Those stories are often fiction, such as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Epic stories resonate deeply with us because they echo the greatest story. And the greatest story is true.

A pithy way to summarize the Bible’s storyline is “Kill the dragon, get the girl!”1 The storyline features three main characters:

1. The serpent (the villain—Satan)

2. A damsel in distress (the people of God)

3. The serpent slayer (the protagonist and hero—Jesus)

The serpent attempts to deceive and devour the woman, but the serpent slayer crushes the serpent.

Serpent is an umbrella term that includes both snakes and dragons. It’s the big category. Snakes and dragons are kinds of serpents. The Greek word δράκων (drakōn), explains an expert Greek linguist, refers to “a monstrous serpent”—“the ancients Greeks did not visualize it as a winged, fire-blowing creature with claws.”2

A serpent has two major strategies: deceive and devour. As a general rule, the form a serpent takes depends on its strategy. When a serpent in Scripture attempts to deceive, it’s a snake. When a serpent attempts to devour, it’s a dragon. Snakes deceive; dragons devour. Snakes tempt and lie; dragons attack and murder. Snakes backstab; dragons assault (see table 1).

Table 1. The strategies of snakes versus dragons

Here’s how the greatest story unfolds:

• The story begins with bliss. The damsel enjoys a beautiful garden in a pristine world. (Adam and Eve enjoy the garden of Eden.)
• But the serpent employs the strategy to deceive, tempt, lie, and backstab. (The snake deceives Eve.)
• As the story develops, the serpent craftily alternates between deceiving and devouring. (For example, sometimes Satan attempts to deceive God’s people with false teaching. At other times Satan assaults God’s people with violent persecution.)
• At the climax of the story, the dragon attempts to devour the hero but fails. (The dragon murders Jesus but merely bruises Jesus’s heel while Jesus decisively crushes the serpent’s head.)
• For the rest of the story, the dragon furiously attempts to devour the damsel. (The dragon attempts to deceive and destroy the church.)
• The hero’s mission: kill the dragon, get the girl. He will accomplish that mission. (The Lamb will consummate his kingdom for God’s glory by slaying the dragon and saving his bride.)

That story never gets old.

Six Dragon-Slaying Stories That Echo the Greatest Story

Fiction is filled with dragons.3 In what follows, I highlight six of the most popular dragon-slaying stories in English literature.4 These stories echo the greatest and true story. (Spoiler alert: The following summaries highlight some turning points in the plotlines.)

Saint George and the Dragon

A staple children’s book in our home is an illustrated version of Saint George and the Dragon.5 It adapts the legendary story from Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queene,6 which flows from legends about King Arthur such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is the classic dragon-slaying story in English literature.

Saint George was a Roman soldier who died as a Christian martyr in 303. Later traditions venerated him as a legendary dragon killer. The story has many variations in different countries and cultures, but this is the gist: A dragon terrorizes a community, which offers sacrifices to the dragon in order to access water to survive. (In some versions of the story, the people sacrifice all their farm animals and then desperately resort to sacrificing their children!) The dragon’s next victim is a royal young lady. A knight (e.g., Saint George or Arthur) arrives on his horse, and the community’s spirit transforms from despair to hope. The knight slays the dragon and thus saves the damsel. Then the knight marries her.

How does that story echo the greatest story? “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). Satan, the devouring dragon, is the ultimate thief who terrorizes God’s image bearers. The dragon’s next victim after Christ is the church, the bride of Christ (Rev. 12). A knight will arrive on a white horse (Rev. 19:11) to defeat the dragon (19:11–20:15) and rescue his bride (19:7).

Beowulf7

Beowulf is an epic Old English story that may be as old as the 700s. A monster named Grendel is slaying warriors at night in the mead hall of the king of the Danes over a twelve-year period. Beowulf, a Scandinavian prince, arrives and heroically slays Grendel with his bare hands by ripping off Grendel’s arm. The next night another monster—Grendel’s mother—attacks the hall to avenge her son, and Beowulf decapitates her with a sword he finds in her cave under a lake.

Beowulf later reigns as king of his own people for fifty peaceful years, but then a dragon terrorizes his realm. Beowulf slays the dragon with the help of Wiglaf, one of his men, but the dragon mortally wounds Beowulf, who gives his life for his people.

How does that story echo the greatest story? Satan and his minions are monsters who seek to destroy God’s people. Jesus unselfishly and sacrificially fights the monsters, and he gives his life for his people.

The Pilgrim’s Progress8

The Pilgrim’s Progress is one of the bestselling books of all time. Its author, John Bunyan (1628–1688), was an English Puritan preacher who started to draft the allegory while he was in prison for preaching without the Church of England’s sanction. The famous preacher Charles Spurgeon read The Pilgrim’s Progress over one hundred times.

The allegory features a pilgrim named Christian who perseveringly journeys from his hometown, the City of Destruction, to the Celestial City. He starts off with a great burden on his back, and the burden falls off at the cross. He encounters many obstacles on his journey, including one with a dragon named Apollyon. Leland Ryken, professor emeritus of English literature at Wheaton College, argues that this horrifying serpent is likely “a composite of details that [Bunyan] found in his acquaintance with fictional chivalric romances and in various parts of the Bible, including the description of Leviathan in Job 41 and various monsters in the book of Revelation.”9

Apollyon is lord of the City of Destruction, and he claims that Christian is his subject. Apollyon accurately accuses Christian of a series of sins, but Christian replies in a disarming way. He basically says: “You’re right, Apollyon. I’m actually even worse than that. But the Prince I serve and honor is merciful and forgiving.” Christian and Apollyon fight for over half a day, and Christian finally gives Apollyon a mortal thrust with his sword, declaring, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). This key scene in Bunyan’s allegory ends with a retreating serpent: “When he heard these words, Apollyon spread out his dragon wings and flew away, and Christian saw him no more.”10

The King enables Christian to finish the journey. Christian and his companion Hopeful receive a rich welcome (cf. 2 Pet. 1:11) when they enter into the Celestial City and, more importantly, the joy of their Lord.

How does this story echo the greatest story? Jesus mercifully forgives his people of their sins, and he enables them to persevere in the faith. Jesus is the ultimate serpent slayer, and he enables his people to fight the serpent. Christians must put on the whole armor of God so that they can stand against the serpent’s schemes (Eph. 6:11–18). “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

The Chronicles of Narnia11