265 BEHEMOTH AND LEVIATHAN there was little cosmological distinction between a sea monster, a cetacean or a great fish” 19. In any case, the distinction between mythological and nat- ural beings is a modern one. The creatures mentioned in Isa 13,21 and 34,14, for example, include real animals and demons, all of them assumed to actu- ally reside in the desert. For that matter, medieval and early modern mariners who described sea serpents considered them natural creatures. (Most likely they were seeing giant squids or other sea creatures.) The inaccuracies in descriptions of monstrous but actual beasts do not prove that they are mytho- logical, only that they were not well known. Artists based their depictions based on stock legends and components of more familiar animals. Leviathan in the Theophany is not identical either to the crocodile or to the whale, but taken as a whole the picture is far closer to the latter. Leviathan, like the whale but not the crocodile, is a denizen of the sea and its depths (Job 41,23). The whale, not the crocodile, memorably “sneezes,” shooting a spout that can be said to glow when the sun shines through it (41,10a). The spout can be imagined as smoke or steam coming from his nostrils (41,12). Nothing of the crocodile even vaguely resembles a spout of smoke. Of course the picture of Leviathan is enhanced beyond the natural when the poet tells of flames shooting from his nose and mouth (41,11.13). But the whale alone can stir up the depths or whip up the abyss into a boiling froth (41,23) ― as cetaceans memorably do by leaping and crashing back into the water ― or leave a white wake (bytn) behind it (41,24). Crocodiles, in sharp contrast, glide smoothly and almost unde- tectably though the water and emerge in an instant. Nor is Leviathan in the Theophany the chaos monster known from Northwest Semitic mythology, though that is the idea of Leviathan that Job himself holds (3,9). Leviathan in the Theophany is incompatible with what we know of the mythical monster, which had multiple heads (Ps 74,14; KTU 1.5 I 3) and was serpentine (Isa 27,1). The Leviathan of Psalm 104,26 is clearly a cetacean: !wklhy twyna ~X wb-qxXl trcy-hz !tywl. By a complex pun on !tywl ― which can mean “Leviathan” or “their escort” 20 ― this sentence has a double meaning: “There [in the great sea] ships travel, (and) Leviathan, whom you created to play with”; and “There ships travel, (and) their escort, which you cre- ated to play therein”. Leviathan is shown both as a sea creature with which God “plays” ― perhaps in an aggressive fashion (see Job 40,29) ― and as one of the animals that accompany ships in apparent playfulness, as Ibid., 9. 19 hYwIl. means “escort” in Rabbinic Hebrew. Though the noun is not found " 20 in Biblical Hebrew, it is a standard nominal formation from hwl and would have been easily understandable in earlier times. The pun is consonantal and visual, not primarily aural, because “their escort” would be vocalized !t'Y"wIl.. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati