Leviathan Frontispiece Cropped British Library

Leviathan ( ; ; ) is a sea serpent demon noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, and the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. Leviathan is often an embodiment of chaos, threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over. In the end, it is annihilated. Christian theologians identified Leviathan with the demon of the deadly sin ''envy''. According to Ophite diagrams, Leviathan encapsulates the space of the material world.

In Gnosis, it encompasses the world like a sphere and incorporates the souls of those who are too attached to material things, so they cannot reach the realm of God's fullness beyond, from which all good emanates. In Hobbes, who draws on Job 41:24, Leviathan becomes a metaphor for the omnipotence of the state, which maintains itself by educating all children in its favour, generation after generation. This idea of an eternal power that 'feeds' on its constantly growing citizens is based on a concept of education that mechanically shapes memory. It too is based on a good–evil dualism: a hypothetical natural law according to which man is a wolf to man, and the pedagogically mediated laws of the state as Leviathan for the purpose of containing such frightening conditions.

Leviathan in the Book of Job is a reflection of the older Canaanite ''Lotan'', a primeval monster defeated by the god Baal Hadad. Parallels to the role the primeval Sumerian sea goddess Tiamat, who after the Flood was defeated by Marduk, have long been drawn in comparative mythology, as have been wider comparisons to dragon and world serpent narratives, such as Indra slaying Vrtra or Thor slaying Jörmungandr. Leviathan also figures in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor for a powerful enemy, notably Babylon (Isaiah 27:1). Some 19th-century scholars pragmatically interpreted it as referring to large aquatic creatures, such as the crocodile. The word later came to be used as a term for ''great whale'' and for sea monsters in general.

Etymology and origins

Gesenius (among others) argued the name was derived from the root ''lwh'' "to twine; to join", with an adjectival suffix , for a literal meaning of "wreathed, twisted in folds". If it exists, the adjectival suffix (as opposed to -ון) is otherwise unattested except perhaps in Nehushtan, whose etymology is unknown; the ת would also require explanation, as Nechushtan is formed from ''neḥošeṯ'' and Leviathan from ''liveyah''; the normal-pattern f.s. adjective would be לויון, ''liveyon''. Other philologists, including Leskien, thought it a foreign loanword. A third school considers it a proper noun. Bauer proposed לוית+תן, for "wreath of serpent."

Both the name and the mythological figure are a direct continuation of the Ugaritic sea monster '' Lôtān'', one of the servants of the sea god Yammu defeated by Hadad in the '' Baal Cycle''.
The Ugaritic account has gaps, making it unclear whether some phrases describe him or other monsters at Yammu's disposal such as Tunannu (the biblical Tannin). Most scholars agree on describing Lôtān as "the fugitive serpent" (''bṯn brḥ'') but he may or may not be "the wriggling serpent" (''bṯn ʿqltn'') or "the mighty one with seven heads" (''šlyṭ d.šbʿt rašm''). His role seems to have been prefigured by the earlier serpent Têmtum whose death at the hands of Hadad is depicted in Syrian seals of the 18th–16th century BC.

Sea serpents feature prominently in the mythology of the ancient Near East. They are attested by the 3rd millennium BC in Sumerian iconography depicting the god Ninurta overcoming a seven-headed serpent. It was common for Near Eastern religions to include a ''Chaoskampf'': a cosmic battle between a sea monster representing the forces of chaos and a creator god or culture hero who imposes order by force.Hermann Gunkel, Heinrich Zimmern; K. William Whitney Jr., trans., ''Creation And Chaos in the Primeval Era And the Eschaton: A Religio-historical Study of Genesis 1 and Revelation 12''. (Grand Rapids: MI: Eerdmans, 1895, 1921, 2006). The Babylonian creation myth describes Marduk's defeat of the serpent goddess Tiamat, whose body was used to create the heavens and the earth.

Tanakh

Leviathan specifically is mentioned six times in the Tanakh