The comparison of Christ with the serpent is more authentic than that with the fish

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The comparison of Christ with the serpent is more authentic than that with the fish: For instance, the symptoms may be distinctly correlated with the cerebrospinal and the sympathetic nervous system. The Sethians may have guessed something of this sort, for Hippolytus mentions, in connection with the serpent, that they compared the “Father” with the cerebrum (cy/ce^aXov) and the “Son” with the cerebellum and spinal cord . The snake does in fact symbolize “cold-blooded/* inhuman contents and tendencies of an abstractly intellectual as well as a concretely animal nature: in a word, the extra-human quality in man

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