Metamorphosis of a Ferocious Pharaoh 233 Egyptian crocodile god Sobek” (7). Because Ezek 29,3-5 link the fate of the Nile’s fish with Pharaoh’s, Block insists that the tannim “refers concretely to a marine creature, in this instance a crocodile” (8). In this case, one should note that Crocodilus nilotus is not known to share with Crocodilus porosus the habit of swimming out to sea (9). In the same demythologising vein, Moshe Greenberg appeals to Exodus 7 to support the view that although the Ugaritic and Hebrew tannim is a mythical primeval sea monster (Isa 51:9; Job 7,12) (10), Ezekiel’s tannim also denotes a mundane creature found in Egypt. Greenberg thus accuses John Day of ignoring ‘the mundane tnyn of priestly literature’, although a few lines below Greenberg admits “to be sure, in ch. 32 Ezekiel does draw on a richer mythical vocabulary, including terms associated with the mythical tnyn” (11). So why insist that the great tannim (lwdgh µynth) of Ezek 29 is also a mere crocodile (12)? In fact, there is no need to wait until chapter 32 to find mythological imagery. In Ezek 29, the tannim is fished out of his Nile with all the fishes of the river stuck to his scales, a miraculous catch indeed. Instead of eating the daring fisherman and walking back to the Nile, Ezekiel’s tannim rots away in the desert. And Greenberg, who has just insisted that Ezekiel’s tannim is a mundane crocodile, now accuses Ezekiel of inconsistency: ‘Ezekiel may not have been familiar with the amphibious nature of the crocodile’ (13)! No, Ezekiel’s understanding of the tannim is thoroughly mythological (14) and his tannim cannot be reduced to a mere crocodile, however fierce crocodiles may be. Now the second question is whether the tannin of Exodus 7 is a mere snake. 2. Exodus 7: Dragons and Snakes, but Mythical Ones References to tannin in Exod 7,1-13 are attributed to Pg (15); while the next section (Exod 7,14-18) belongs to another literary stratum. There is no need here to decide to whom belongs the non-P material (16). What matters is to note that verse 15 refers to Aaron’s rod as “the rod that was turned into a snake” (çjn) while in verses 8-12 P consistently mentions tannin. Does this avoidance of the term tannin reflect a tame-the-dragon process, an attempt at demythologizing P’s text? Rather than turning P’s dragon into a mundane adder, verses 14-18 take P’s mythological imagery to surprising lengths: (7) D.I. BLOCK, The Book of Ezekiel (Grand Rapids – Cambridge 1998) 137 and n. 44; quoting E. BROVARSKI, “Sobek”, LÄ V, 999-1000. (8) BLOCK, Ezekiel, 137. (9) Encyclopaedia Britannica. Macropaedia (Chicago 1992) XXVI, 721. (10) L.I.J. STADELMANN, The Hebrew Conception of the World (AnBib 39; Rome 1970) 20-27; quoted by J.I. DURHAM, Exodus (WBC, 3; Waco 1987) 91; and PROPP, Exodus, 322. (11) M. GREENBERG, Ezekiel 21–37 (AB 22A; New York 1997) 601-602. (12) BLOCK, Ezekiel, 137. (13) GREENBERG, Ezekiel, 603. (14) Pace GREENBERG, Ezekiel, 601. (15) According to N. LOHFINK, Theology of the Pentateuch (Edinburgh 1994) 145 n. 29, and PROPP, Exodus, 262, 286, only Exod 7,1-13.19.20*.21b.22 belong to Pg. (16) See discussion by PROPP, Exodus, 310-317.