If you cannot believe the genesis account....

[lucaspa]

And why, of all the animals in the Garden of Eden was the Serpent gifted with the same language of Adam and Eve? Did he really speak their language, or was it ventriloquism?

And if he lost his legs and made to eat dirt, does that mean serpents can still Speak? NO mention of losing tongue.

Good questions. I think we are missing some things that were commonly known at the time but have been lost since. There was a reason, that the people at the time recognized, that the tempting animal was the serpent and why it was capable of speech and thought. My hypothesis is that serpents were an important part of one of the religions of the peoples around Israel. A religion that was tempting to the Hebrews and that was making converts among the Hebrews. So we have a serpent tempting Eve but then having serpents ending up as punished creatures. But those subtleties are either lost entirely or we simply aren't aware of the relevant historical and anthropological research. So we try to impose our meaning on the text.

 

[Mistermystery]

This is from Strong's Lexicon for the word, almah, used in Isaiah:

"virgin, young woman

1. of marriageable age
2. maid or newly married ++++ There is no instance where it can be proved that this word designates a young woman who is not a virgin"

http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=05959&version=kjv

It appears that you are bearing false witness against the Bible, FoC!! How can you do this?

When the OT really wants to say "virgin", then it uses the word "bathuwlah" http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=01330&version=kjv

Are you aware that there was considerable dispute among the early Christians as to whether Jesus really was born of a virgin?

INstead of this lenghty explaination you could have just said that he should watch the beginning of the movie Snatch.