Leviathan
Leviathan (from Hebrew לִוְיָתָן, liwyatan, coiled up) is a giant sea beast narrated in the Bible. His creation by God is found in Genesis and Job describes his physical appearance as resembling a dragon.
Out of his mouth come hatchets of fire; sparkles of fire come. Out of its noses comes smoke, like a pot or boiler. His breath lighteth the coals, and out of his mouth is a flame.Job 41:19-22
In satanic cults, he is considered one of the main demons that make up the false demonic trinity along with Lucifer and Belial.
Judaism
Called Lotan in Ugaritic mythology, it would be the multi-headed and serpentine monster, the incarnation of chaos that came to initiate Creation (cf. Salt i> LXXIV, 13 et seq.). According to Job, III, 8, the magicians could resurrect him, but God will definitely annihilate him at the end of time. His most detailed description appears in Job, XLI. In Genesis, Leviathan is implicitly mentioned as a serpent: "And God created great sea monsters, and every living thing that it moves".
In this verse Rashi states: "According to the legend this refers to Leviathan and his mate, as this is the reincarnation of the serpent of Adam and Eve. God created a male and a female Leviathan, then killed the female and fed her to the honest, for if leviathans were to procreate, then the world could not stand between them". Jastrow translates the word "Taninim" as "sea monster, crocodile or great snake".
The word "Leviathan" It appears in the following biblical quotes:
In that day Yahweh will chastise with his hard, great and strong sword the Leviathan a swift serpent, and the Leviathan a crooked serpent; and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea(Isa 27:1)
You broke the heads of the Leviathan, and gave it to sea turtles for food.(Psalm 74:14)
That way the ships and Leviathan that you did to entertain you.(Psalm 104:26)
Will you take the Leviathan out with the hook, or with the rope that you throw in his tongue?(Job 41:01)
Curse those who curse the day, those who prepare to awaken Leviathan.(job 3:8)
In the Talmud, Leviathan is mentioned in Avodah Zara 3b: "Rav Yehuda says, there are twelve hours in a day. In the first three hours God sits and learns the Torah, the second three hours he sits and judges the world. The third three hours God feeds the whole world... the fourth three hour period God plays with the Leviathan".
Also mentioned in Moed Katan 25b: "Rav Ashi said to Bar Kipok: what will be said at my burial? He replied: If a flame can bring down a cedar, what hope has a small tree? If a Leviathan can be harnessed and hauled to land, what hope has a fish in a puddle?".
The Jewish festival of Sukkot (festival of tabernacles) concludes with a prayer recited before leaving the sukkah (temporary hut): "Greater be your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, that as soon as I have satisfied and I have dwelled in this sukkah, so that I may have merit in the coming year to dwell in the sukkah of Leviathan's skin. Next year in Jerusalem".
A commentary on this prayer in the Artscroll Prayer Book (p. 725) adds: "Leviathan was a monstrous fish created on the fifth day of creation". His story is related at length in the Baba Bathra 74b of the Talmud, where it is said that "Leviathan will be destroyed and his flesh will be served as a banquet for the righteous in [the] time to come, and its skin will be used to cover the tent where the banquet will take place".
Legend has it that at the banquet after Armageddon, the shell of Leviathan will be served as food, along with the Behemoth and Ziz.
There is another religious hymn recited on the festival of Shavuot (celebrating the Torah), known as Akdamot, where it says: "... the sport with the Leviathan and the ox Behemoth... when they will engage each other and start combat, with its horns, the Behemoth will gore with force, the fish [Leviathan] will leap to confront it with its fins, with power. His creator will approach them with his mighty sword [and kill them both] & # 34;. Thus, "from the beautiful skin of Leviathan, God will build canopies to shelter the righteous, who will eat the meat of the Behemoth [ox] and Leviathan amidst great joy and gladness, in a huge banquet that will be given for them". Some rabbinical commentators say that these passages are allegorical. (Artscroll siddur, p. 719).
Similarly, in the apocryphal Book of Enoch Leviathan is described together with Behemoth: «And on that day two monsters will be separated, a female named Leviathan, who will dwell in the abyss where the waters flow, and a male called Behemoth, and with her breasts she will occupy an immense desert called Dandain».
The Leviathan can also be interpreted as the sea itself, with its counterparts, the Behemoth which is earth and the Ziz which is air and space. Some scholars have interpreted Leviathan, and other references to the sea in the Old Testament, as highly metaphorical references to the marauders of the sea that once terrorized the Kingdom of Israel.
Some Jewish legends regard Leviathan as an androgynous dragon that seduced Eve in its male form, and Adam in its female form.
Christianity
The Christian interpretation of Leviathan often sees it as a demon associated with Satan or the Devil, and some speculate that this is the same monster as Rahab (Isa 51:9).
&# 34;Enuma Elish", of Sumerian origin, in which the storm god Marduk murders his mother, the sea monster and goddess of Chaos and Creation, Tiamat, and creates the earth and the heavens from the two halves from her body.Some biblical scholars believe that Leviathan does indeed represent the forces of chaos:
13You with your power divided the sea and crushed the heads of sea monsters
14You broke Leviathan's heads and gave it to sea turtles for food.(Psalm 74:13-14)
The earth was disorderly and empty, the darkness was upon the face of the abyss and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.(Genesis 1:2)
Christianity's Leviathan is described at the end of the Bible's New Testament, the Apocalypse.
Then another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon that had seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven crowns.Revelation 12:3
I saw an angel coming down from heaven, with the key of the abyss, and a great chain in my hand. And he set the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand yearsRevelation 20
Some interpreters suggest that Leviathan is a symbol of humanity in opposition to God, and is no more literal than the beasts mentioned in Daniel and Revelation.
In medieval demonology, a Leviathan was an aquatic demon that tried to possess people, making them difficult to exorcise.
Leviathan, generic name for sea monsters
During the golden age of sea voyages, European sailors viewed the Leviathan as a gigantic whale-sea monster, or more generally a sea serpent, devouring entire ships by swimming around the hulls rapidly creating a whirlwind.
Leviathan is also the title of Thomas Hobbes's seminal work on the social contract and the creation of an ideal state. Much work was devoted to deciding why he named his book "Leviathan"; and one of the first causes of this would be the influence and fear in England of the powerful Spanish Armada before the disastrous expedition under the command of Alonso Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno y Zúñiga in 1588.
Due in large part to the influence of Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick, the Leviathan has come to be associated by many with the sperm whale, a product of the behavior that these animals can exhibit. An example of this is in Disney's portrayal of Pinocchio in which he is swallowed (like Jonah in the Bible) by a sperm whale, despite the fact that in the original story, Pinocchio was swallowed by a "Pesce -cane", translated as "fish-dog" or "shark"; and Jonah for a "fish".
Similarly, there are those who posit a parallel between Leviathan and other mythological sea creatures, such as the seven-headed Naga of Hindu and Middle Eastern mythology.
In Peru, the remains of a large carnivorous cetacean that could have measured from 12 to 17 meters in length that had teeth up to 36 cm were found; was named Livyatan melvillei.
Leviathan and cryptozoology
The use of the word to describe any large marine creature has even led cryptozoology to believe in its actual existence as an unknown creature. In his book, "In Search of Prehistoric Survivors ", cryptozoologist Dr. Karl Shuker regards Leviathan as a myth inspired, at least in part, by sightings of a hypothetical sea monster type Mosasaur. Bernard Heuvelmans, in his book " Dans le sillage des monstres marins " considered this entity to be a type of "Marine Centipede".
In popular culture
- Leviathan, work of Thomas Hobbes.
- Leviathan, novel by Julien Green.
- Leviathan, Paul Auster's novel.
- In Kazuki Takahashi’s Yu-Gi-Oh! anime there is a creature called “Great Leviathan”.
- In the Disney Atlantis Film: The Lost Empire of 2001.
- In the saga of Ice and Fire Song the cachalotes are known as Leviathan.
- In the video game Devil May Cry 3, Dante is swallowed by the Leviathan.
- In the video game Skullgirls of the company Lab Zero Games there is a character named Leviathan (Leviatan), who accompanies Squigly, one of the protagonists of the game.
- Swedish band of symphonic metal Therion titled Leviathan his tenth seventh studio album, released on January 22, 2021.
- In the saga The Evillious Chronicles is represented by Levia, the main character of the saga.
- In the video game The Binding of Isaac, the player can become Leviathan (Levian) if he collects at least three from a certain list of collectors (all available through pacts with Satan).
- In the Subnautical video game and in its respective sequel, Subnautica: Below Zero, the player will be able to meet several species of leviatans throughout his adventure by going through the map, from friendly leviatans to predators, which could be a great danger to the player.
- In the Mega Man Zero game saga, Leviathan is an ice-type reploid (robot) and is one of the 4 guardians of Neo Arcadia.
- In the God Of War Leviathan game saga is represented as an axe belonging to Kratos, god of war in the game.
- In Kiddo Toto's song "Leviatan"
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