(West Asian mythology)
Literally, ‘coiled’. The sea serpent of Hebrew myth, a restatement of the chaos-dragon Tiamat, is the same as the Ras Shamra Lotan, the seven-headed monster slain by Anat. The apocryphal Book of Enoch speaks of a companion beast. ‘And in that day will two monsters be separated a female named Leviathan to dwell in the abyss over the fountains of waters. But the male is called Behemoth which occupies with his breasts an immeasurable desert named Dendain.’ The Talmud, a compendium of the teachings of later Rabbis, states that the fins of Leviathan radiate such brilliant light as to obscure the rays of the sun. Though the plaything of Yahweh, in the last days of the world the sea serpent will repulse attacks from angels, till Behemoth kills it. According to Islamic tradition, Allah used Behemoth not as a destroyer of dragons but a firm foundation for the world, a mighty back overarching the water and the darkness below the earth.
A vivid description of Leviathan occurs in the Book of Job. To underscore man's weakness and ignorance compared with divine greatness, Yahweh asked:‘Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook? … None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me? … He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood…. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot.’ It is not surprising that in medieval Christianity Leviathan, ‘king over all the children of pride’, was identified with hell, whose entrance iconography depicted as a gigantic maw.

[Middle English, huge biblical sea creature, from Late Latin, from Hebrew liwyātān.]
A dragon-like creature mentioned in the Bible five times (Job 3:8; 41:1; Ps 74:13-14; 104:26; Is 27:1), always connected in one way or another to the demythologized battle between God and his rebellious helpers in primordial times. As part of the demythologization process, and with the aim of eradicating any possible hint that they might be independent deities fighting against God in order to achieve pantheon supremacy, as was the case in parallel ancient Near Eastern mythology, these rebellious creatures are specifically referred to as having been created by God himself (Gen 1:21). In Psalms 104:25-26, the psalmist speaks of God's creation of all creatures of the sea, "small and great" (v. 25), singling out the largest of them all, the sea-serpent "Leviathan, whom you (God) have made to play there" (v. 26). The term used in Genesis 1:21 (translated "serpent; sea creature"), occurs in parallelism or in association with the Leviathan of two of the above passages: Psalm 74:13-14 "You [God] divided the sea by your strength, you broke the heads of the sea-serpents in the waters; you broke the heads of Leviathan"; Isaiah 27:1 "In that day, the Lord with his severe sword, great and strong, will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan that twisted serpent; and he will slay the reptile that is in the sea". Thus Leviathan, the many headed sea-serpent, represented the forces of evil in the First Temple period (cf also Is 51:9, from a later period). The origin of this symbol, however, goes back much earlier (2nd millennium B.C.) and is found in ancient Near Eastern mythology as the following Canaanite parallel from Ugaritic literature clearly demonstrates: "If thou smite Lotan ("Leviathan"), the Elusive Serpent, destroy the Twisting Serpent� of the seven heads". The remaining two biblical references to Leviathan are from the Book of Job, where scholarly attempts have been made to connect the two creatures, Leviathan (Job 41:1-34) and Behemoth (Job 40:15-24) with the crocodile and the hippopotamus respectively. The Book of Job, however, contains many references to the aforementioned demythologized battle (Job 3:8; 7:12; 9:13; 26:12-13), where not only Leviathan, but also such familiar figures as the Dragon Yam and the Elusive Serpent are all mentioned. Furthermore, Job 40:19 indicates that the Lord created Behemoth as the foremost of his creations in order to serve him as a sword bearer (Job 40:19); while Leviathan is described as a scaly monster of supernatural strength, breathing smoke from his nostrils and with flames blazing from his mouth (Job 41:11ff). Neither of these descriptions fit any natural creatures, but they are appropriate demythologized depictions of the dragon-like creatures who God created in primordial times to serve him, but who later rebelled and were destroyed by their creator. Another name for this mythological dragon is Rahab (Is 30:7; 51:9-10; Job 9:13; 26:12; Ps 89:10). In Psalms 87:4 and Isaiah 30:9, the name is used symbolically for Egypt.
Concordance
Job 3:8; 41:1. Ps 74:14; 104:26. Is 27:1
A sea monster mentioned in the Book of Job, where it is associated with the forces of chaos and evil.
n.
An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (Thaddeus Polandensis) or Polliwig -- Maria pseudo-hirsuta. For an exhaustive description and history of the Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Potter, Thaddeus of Warsaw.
The blue whale is often called the leviathan of the deep.
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Leviathan (English pronunciation: /lɨˈvaɪ.əθən/; Hebrew: לִוְיָתָן, Modern Livyatan Tiberian Liwyāṯān ; "twisted, coiled"), is a sea monster referred to in the Bible. In Demonology, the Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper (see Hellmouth). The word has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature. In literature (e.g., Herman Melville's Moby-Dick) it refers to great whales, and in Modern Hebrew, it means simply "whale." It is described extensively in Job 41.
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The Leviathan is mentioned six times in the Hebrew Bible, with Job 41:1-41:34 being dedicated to describing him in detail:[1]
In Psalm 74 Yahweh is said to "break the heads of Leviathan in pieces" before giving his flesh to the people of the wilderness; in Psalm 104 Yahweh is praised for having made all things, including Leviathan; and in Isaiah 27:1 he is called the "wriggling serpent" who will be killed at the end of time.[2]
Sea serpents feature prominently in the mythology of the Ancient Near East, attested as early as the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumerian iconography depicting the myth of the god Ninurta overcoming the seven-headed serpent. Examples of the storm god vs. sea serpent trope in the Ancient Near East can be seen with Baʿal vs. Yam (Canaanite), Marduk vs. Tiamat (Babylonian), and Atum vs. Nehebkau (Egyptian) among others, with attestations as early as the 2nd millennium as seen on Syrian seals.
In the Ugaritic texts Lotan, or possibly another of Yam's helpers, is given the epithets "wriggling serpent" and "mighty one with the seven heads." Isaiah 27:1 uses the first of these phrases to describe Leviathan (although in this case the name "Leviathan" apparently refers to an unnamed historical/political enemy of Israel rather than the original serpent-monster).[citation needed] In Psalm 104, Leviathan is not described as harmful in any way, but simply as a creature of the ocean, part of God's creation. It is possible that the authors of the Job 41:2-26, on the other hand, based the Leviathan on descriptions of Egyptian animal mythology where the crocodile is the enemy of the sun-god and a crocodile monster to be feared. This is in contrast to typical descriptions of the sea monster trope in terms of mythological combat.[3]
Later Jewish sources describe Leviathan as a dragon who lives over the Sources of the Deep and who, along with the male land-monster Behemoth, will be served up to the righteous at the end of time.
When the Jewish midrash (explanations of the bible) were being composed, it was held that God originally produced a male and a female leviathan, but lest in multiplying the species should destroy the world, he slew the female, reserving her flesh for the banquet that will be given to the righteous on the advent of the Messiah (B. B. 74b).
Rashi's commentary on Genesis 1:21 repeats the tradition: "God created the great sea monsters - taninim[4]. According to legend this refers to the Leviathan and its mate. God created a male and female Leviathan, then killed the female and salted it for the righteous, for if the Leviathans were to procreate the world could not stand before them."[citation needed]
In the Talmud Baba Bathra 74b it is told that the Leviathan will be slain and its flesh served as a feast to the righteous in [the] Time to Come, and its skin used to cover the tent where the banquet will take place. The festival of Sukkot (Festival of Booths) therefore concludes with a prayer recited upon leaving the sukkah (booth): "May it be your will, Lord our God and God of our forefathers, that just as I have fulfilled and dwelt in this sukkah, so may I merit in the coming year to dwell in the sukkah of the skin of Leviathan. Next year in Jerusalem." [5]
The enormous size of the Leviathan is described by R. Johanan, from whom proceeded nearly all the aggadot concerning this monster: "Once we went in a ship and saw a fish which put his head out of the water. He had horns upon which was written: 'I am one of the meanest creatures that inhabit the sea. I am three hundred miles in length, and enter this day into the jaws of the Leviathan'" (B. B. l.c.).
When the Leviathan is hungry, reports R. Dimi in the name of R. Johanan, he sends forth from his mouth a heat so great as to make all the waters of the deep boil, and if he would put his head into Paradise no living creature could endure the odor of him (ib.). His abode is the Mediterranean Sea; and the waters of the Jordan fall into his mouth (Bek. 55b; B. B. l.c.).
In a legend recorded in the Midrash called Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer it is stated that the fish which swallowed Jonah narrowly avoided being eaten by the Leviathan, which eats one whale each day.
The body of the Leviathan, especially his eyes, possesses great illuminating power. This was the opinion of R. Eliezer, who, in the course of a voyage in company with R. Joshua, explained to the latter, when frightened by the sudden appearance of a brilliant light, that it probably proceeded from the eyes of the Leviathan. He referred his companion to the words of Job xli. 18: "By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning" (B. B. l.c.). However, in spite of his supernatural strength, the leviathan is afraid of a small worm called "kilbit", which clings to the gills of large fish and kills them (Shab. 77b).[6]
In the eleventh century piyyut (religious poem), Akdamut, recited on Shavuot (Pentecost), it is envisioned that, ultimately, God will slaughter the Leviathan, which is described as having "mighty fins" (and, therefore, a kosher fish, not an inedible snake or crocodile), and it will be served as a sumptuous banquet for all the righteous in Heaven.
The Leviathan of the Middle Ages was used as an image of Satan, endangering both God's creatures—by attempting to eat them—and God's creation—by threatening it with upheaval in the waters of Chaos.[7] St. Thomas Aquinas described Leviathan as the demon of envy, first in punishing the corresponding sinners. (Secunda Secundae Question 36) Leviathan became associated with, and may originally have referred to, the visual motif of the Hellmouth, a monstrous animal into whose mouth the damned disappear at the Last Judgement, found in Anglo-Saxon art from about 800, and later all over Europe.[8][9]
The Young Earth Creationist opinion is that Leviathan and Behemoth are names given to dinosaurs which existed in Biblical times. [10][11]
In Satanism, according to the author of The Satanic Bible, Anton Szandor LaVey, Leviathan represents the element of Water and the direction of West. The element of Water in Satanism is associated with life and creation, and may be represented by a Chalice during ritual. In The Satanic Bible, Leviathan is listed as one of the Four Crown Princes of Hell. This association was inspired by the demonic hierarchy from The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage. The Church of Satan uses the Hebrew letters at each of the points of the Sigil of Baphomet to represent Leviathan. Starting from the lowest point of the pentagram, and reading counter-clockwise, the word reads "לִוְיָתָן". Translated, this is (LVIThN) Leviathan.[12]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906.
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - Leviathan (drageskikkelse), kæmpeskib, mægtig mand
Nederlands (Dutch)
leviathan, zeemonster, gevaarte, hoogst belangrijk persoon
Français (French)
n. - baleine, (lit, fig) monstre, léviathan (Bible)
Deutsch (German)
n. - Seeungeheuer, Gigant
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (θρησκ.) Λεβιάθαν, μεγαθήριο, κρατική μηχανή, υπερτροφικό κράτος
Português (Portuguese)
n. - leviatã (m), algo (m) monstruosamente grande, estado (m) ou monarca (m) autocrático
Русский (Russian)
левиафан, гигант
Español (Spanish)
n. - Leviatán, transatlántico grande, gigante, monstruo
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - (bibl.) Leviatan (havsvidunder), jättefartyg, koloss, mäktig man
中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
海中怪兽, 巨物
中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 海中怪獸, 巨物
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 물속에 사는 거대한 짐승, 거대한 해수, 거대한 것, 국가
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - レビヤタン, 巨大で強いもの
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) لوياثان, وحش بحري ضخم يرمز إلى الشرقي الكتاب المقدس, , الدوله مجازا وخاصه الديكتاتوريه, شئ ضخم ورهيب, ضخم أو هائل
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - לווייתן, ענק, מדינה/ממלכה אוטוקרטית
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