What's that thing in my garden?

The Israelite reader would have thought of the serpent [in Gen 3] as a sort of disruptive free agent with less of a thought-out agenda. The Old Testament does not give the serpent an ongoing role. Like the serpent in the Gilgamesh Epic who did what its nature led it to do and then disappeared from the scene, no continuing role or place is recognized for the serpent in the Old Testament, though the consequences of the human act remain in place (again as in Gilgamesh).—The Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 134