Marduk

A leviathan is a Bio-Mechanical Star Ship (Farscape fans all know this)
I thought in the Bible it meant Whale.
Doesn't Apsu mean abyss or the heavens?

Answerer

Leviathan is just a whale to me.

lpetrich

Except that that's the name that some early Greek travelers to Egypt gave that beast -- which looks much more like a pig than horse, at least to me.

The Egyptians themselves had called it hheb. I'm not sure what the vowel really was; e is a common placeholder vowel in transcribing ancient Egyptian words. And I've transcribed a throaty sort of h as hh.

But some traveler from Greece would think "Sounds like 'horse'" (hippos), thus the name. "But it does not look like the usual kind of horse. And it likes to live in rivers, so I'll call it 'river horse'" (hippopotamos).

A little Latinization, and we're done.

And these travelers had less trouble with a storklike bird called hheby, however; they turned that into "ibis".

Jeremy Pallant

Oh, I don't know. Ever seen an aroused male elephant? That's enough to give you a complex. It's certainly something that an observer would remember.

On the other hand, I must admit that I don't know much about the mating habits of hippos, but don't they mate in the water? If so, the average observer wouldn't get to see how big the penis was.

excreationist

Mageth:
Interesting.... I've also heard things like the NIV study Bible saying it possibly means "trunk".
BTW, John Wesley's Explanatory Notes say this about Job 40:17:
"Tail - Which though it be but short, yet when it is erected, is exceeding stiff and strong."

This would be more true of a penis - or a trunk.

This is from the Jamieson, Fausset, Brown commentary
"As the tempest bends the cedar, so it can move its smooth thick tail [UMBREIT]. But the cedar implies straightness and length, such as do not apply to the river horse's [hippo's?] short tail, but perhaps to an extinct species of animal"

bible.crosswalk.com - Job 40:17 - KJV with Strong's Numbers.
He moveth his tail like a cedar....
Only 3 of the words from that phrase are based on Hebrew words (the high-lighted ones) and those Hebrew words can be translated in many different ways.

The first word, translated as "moveth" can mean "to delight in, take pleasure in, desire, be pleased with" or "to move, bend down". The second word can mean "tail, end, stump" and in the word origin area it says it involves flapping or wagging. The third word always means cedar but it would probably be figurative in this passage. Anyway, I think that crosswalk site is a good way of investigating the translations yourself.


I think the leviathan in Job and crocodiles are an extremely close match (except for the fire-breathing).

Note that I don't know all there is to know about crocodiles...

Job 41 (NIV)
1 "Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down his tongue with a rope?
2 Can you put a cord through his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
3 Will he keep begging you for mercy?
Will he speak to you with gentle words?
4 Will he make an agreement with you
for you to take him as your slave for life?
5 Can you make a pet of him like a bird
or put him on a leash for your girls?
Well I've visited the Crocodile Hunter's "Australia Zoo" and it seems that crocodiles are extremely aggressive and territorial - and they can't really be made tame. (Their reptilian brain would also have something to do with it) Verses 1 and 2 would be true because of its aggressiveness and toughness of its skin/scales. And it has a nose (with nostrils). It also has a tongue, but according to this, its tongue is "attached to the roof of its mouth and cannot move it" (I guess the tongue verse isn't a good fit.. but maybe it is consistent to what ancient peoples thought about crocodiles)

6 Will traders barter for him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his hide with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
this site says "The scales of a crocodile are made of ceratin, the same substance that hooves and fingernails are made of." so it is very hard.

8 If you lay a hand on him,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
They thrash about and try to bite you...

9 Any hope of subduing him is false;
the mere sight of him is overpowering.
The Crocodile Hunter can subdue them (assuming they aren't too huge) but perhaps ancient peoples in the middle east like the writer didn't think so.

10 No one is fierce enough to rouse him.
Who then is able to stand against me?
11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.
12 "I will not fail to speak of his limbs,
his strength and his graceful form.
So he has legs...

13 Who can strip off his outer coat?
Who would approach him with a bridle?
It would be very hard to "skin" a crocodile, although it is done in modern times. Having a bridle is yet another thing that suggests a land animal. (Which crocodiles are a lot of the time)

14 Who dares open the doors of his mouth,
ringed about with his fearsome teeth?
A crocodile obviously fits that description.

15 His back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together;
16 each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.
17 They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.
An excellent description of a crocodile.

18 His snorting throws out flashes of light;
his eyes are like the rays of dawn.
19 Firebrands stream from his mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.
20 Smoke pours from his nostrils
as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.
21 His breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from his mouth.
They snort - but I can't explain the rest.

22 Strength resides in his neck;
dismay goes before him.
23 The folds of his flesh are tightly joined;
they are firm and immovable.
24 His chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.
25 When he rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before his thrashing.
26 The sword that reaches him has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
27 Iron he treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.
28 Arrows do not make him flee;
slingstones are like chaff to him.
29 A club seems to him but a piece of straw;
he laughs at the rattling of the lance.
The neck and the chest are perhaps its strongest areas... (its jaws snap down with a lot of force, but they are weak while opening their jaws up). It talks about the chest being different from its back - which is true. It talks about "thrashing" which is a good description.

30 His undersides are jagged potsherds [broken pottery],
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing [thrashing] sledge.
Again it distinguishes the top of the crocodile from its bottom. I thought the bottom was a bit smoother (less jagged) though.... they can't support their body weight on their legs, they just drag their body along - like a sled.

31 He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 Behind him he leaves a glistening wake;
one would think the deep had white hair.
They can move fast while underwater... and some can live in the sea I think. The Contemporary English Version translates verse 32 as ".....and it leaves behind a trail of shining white foam."

33 Nothing on earth is his equal-
a creature without fear.
34 He looks down on all that are haughty;
he is king over all that are proud."
Perhaps it is true that they have no fear - that they will protect their territory no matter what.

Isaiah 27:1 says "Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea."
Perhaps the Leviathan in Job is a different creature with the same name - although crocodiles can sometimes live in the sea, and they would swim a bit like a snake. They wouldn't coil very much though (like an anaconda).

Nataraja

Of course, the writer may well have taken signs of the presence of whales to signify the presence of a crocodile. Most people in those times may never have gotten a chance to actually see a whale up close, so it would be an understandable error. Leviathan comes from Loten and Loten comes from Teitan, a form of Tiamat, and Tiamat was a dragon. The Greeks, however, do not seem to associate the first Titan, Gaeia, with any animal. I suspect that one of the earliest versions of Tiamat might have been a snake because it would figure in with the aboriginal Australian creation myth. Of course, the image of a dragon might have been introduced from what is now China or the islands to its southeast. I suggest that it originates in this region because the aborigines of Australia have a creation myth featuring a snake, and an odd respect for reptiles seems prevalent in that part of the world. I, for one, think that the person who wrote the story/poem about Leviathan in Job just wanted to make Loten out to be as big and scary as possible.

excreationist

Nataraja:
I think it is almost identical to a crocodile except for smoke and fire-breathing though... so maybe they were getting most of their inspiration from crocodiles.

Nataraja

*shrugs* Probably. "The mere site of him is overpowering," however, brings Bahamut to mind, and Bahamut is a very large fish.