ADS
- What’s Leviathan?
- Meaning of Leviathan?
- What does Leviathan represent in the Bible?
Gustave Doré: Leviathan Destruction
Gustave Doré engraving, Leviathan’s Destruction, 1865.
Leviathan, Jewish mythology’s primal sea snake. It comes from prebiblical Mesopotamian folklore, particularly the Baal sea monster (Yamm). Psalms 74:14 describes Leviathan, a multiheaded sea serpent slaughtered by God and fed to the Hebrews in the desert. Leviathan, a snake, represents Israel’s adversaries and will be killed by God in Isaiah 27:1. Job 41’s sea monster symbolizes God’s creating power.
The Hebrew language
The Jewish people’s holy literature were the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament of the Christian Bible is mostly made up of it. These texts were composed in Hebrew between 1200 and 100 bce, save for a few Aramaic portions in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel. The Hebrew Bible likely evolved about the 2nd century ce.
The Hebrew Bible describes God’s relationship with his chosen people, Israel. After God created the world and human civilization, the first six books recount the history and genealogy of Israel up to the conquest and settlement of the Promised Land under God’s covenant with Abraham, whom God promised to make a great nation. Abraham’s son Isaac and grandson Jacob (whose byname Israel became the collective name of his descendants and whose sons, according to mythology, fathered the 13 Israelite tribes) and Moses centuries later repeated this covenant. The following seven books continue their story in the Promised Land, describing the people’s constant apostasy and covenant-breaking, the monarchy’s establishment and development to counter this, and the prophets’ warnings of divine punishment and exile and Israel’s need to repent. Poetry, religion, and history fill the remaining 11 volumes.
The Hebrew Bible is religious fiction, not history or science. Biblical authors are uninterested in God’s existence as a speculation. The human state and fate before God trouble them. God, his creation, supply, judgment, deliverance, covenant, and promises are major biblical themes. The Hebrew Bible views human events through God’s justice, faithfulness, kindness, and love. The fundamental themes of humans are rebellion, alienation, and perversion; God’s rescue, atonement, and reconciliation are seen as gracious acts.
The Hebrew Bible’s monotheistic view of human life and the universe as God’s creations laid the groundwork for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which views Abraham as a patriarch.
Torah scroll
The Hebrew canon has 24 books, one for each scroll on which these writings were written. The Hebrew Bible is divided into three sections: the Torah (Teaching), the Pentateuch (Five Books of Moses), the Prophets, and the Writings (Ketuvim). Often called the Tanakh, it combines the initial letter of the three major divisions’ names. Subgroups exist inside each of the three primary text groups. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy include stories and regulations. The Neviʾim books are divided into Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 Minor Prophets). The Former Prophets contain anecdotes about major Hebrew figures, while the Latter Prophets exhort Israel to return to God. Poetry (devotional and sexual), theology, and drama in Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs (attributed to King Solomon), Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles make up the Ketuvim, the final part.
Understanding Purim’s narrative
The Christian Hebrew Bible has more than 24 books for numerous reasons. First, Christians split Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Minor Prophets into two or more volumes. The Septuagint, a Greek-language translation of the Hebrew Bible from the 3rd and 2nd century bce, was the basis for the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and certain Protestant Bibles. Some texts considered noncanonical by Orthodox Judaism and most Protestant churches (see Apocrypha), lengthier Daniel and Esther, and one more psalm were inserted. The Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church, one of the Oriental Orthodox churches, also includes the apocalyptic First Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees in its Old Testament. Other Christian churches consider them pseudepigraphical.
The Jewish faith
Writings on their history and customs helped the Hebrew people survive defeat, captivity, and national independence when Israel and Judah fell in 722 and 587/586 bce, respectively. After exile, many never returned to Palestine. Returnees rebuilt a temple and a society that was more religious than autonomous. The Hebrew Bible’s Law (Torah), history, prophecy, and poetry expressed the faith. Without biblical literature, the Jewish religion’s existence and enormous effect on Western civilization are hard to explain.
Since the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, priestly sacrifice worship was never reinstated. But the Jewish faith had already spread to numerous countries, where it remained vibrant because it still took its inspiration from biblical texts. They studied, prayed, and taught the Hebrew Bible in synagogue. It formed their beliefs, supported them amid persecution, and affected their intellects. It impacted their worship, calendar, and family life. What Jewish skill and genius have brought to Western culture is partly attributable to the Hebrew Bible.
In Christianity
Many Christians call the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament, which prophesied Jesus’s coming as God’s Messiah. Christian tradition uses Hebrew Scriptures to validate the New Testament message of Jesus as the inevitable continuation of the Abrahamic covenant. The Hebrew Bible underpins Christianity and Judaism. Without the Old Testament, the New Testament, Jesus, and Christianity would not have existed. Culture, human values, and religion are involved. Melito of Sardis, a Christian, used the term Old Testament around 170 ce to differentiate it from the New Testament, which recounts Jesus’ mission and the early Christian church’s history.
