The cycle
of legends about leviathan, behemot and the other marvelous creatures created
on the fifth and sixth days of creation and the fantastic details they unfold,
unblushingly echo the Old Babylonian epic of creation, going back to the early
second millennium BCE.
The
aggadah relates, for example, that after Leviathan, king of the
sea, and Behemot, king of the animals, meet in battle and both drop
dead, from the skin of Leviathan the Lord will spread a radiant canopy
over Jerusalem, and the light streaming from it will illumine the whole
world.
In
the Babylonian creation myth, the gods all shrank in dread before Tiamat,
the monster of the sea and her fierce crew, until Marduk, the chief
god of Babylon, defeated her, and split her like a shellfish into two
parts. Half of her he set up as a canopy of heaven, assigning stations
in the sky to the great gods and their constellations to cheer with
light the twelve months of the year.
Such
palpable reminiscences or relics of pagan mythology in the legends of
the Bible will seem surprising. Reported in the name of renowned scholars
flourishing in the third century, they clash patently not only with
the whole legacy of the biblical faith, but with the austere monotheism
which these founders of rabbinic Judaism consistently maintained and
invariably sought to implant and enforce in their people. It is altogether
out of the question to consider such cosmogonic fancies as the invention
of the period or personalities to which they are ascribed in our sources.
Obviously the stories precede their storytellers by long centuries,
often by more than a millennium, harking back to the earliest tales
of their remote ancestors or heathen neighbors.
The
imaginative accounts of strife with monsters of the deep, or the Princes
of Darkness or of the Sea, with rebellious waters and insurgent stars,
would appear most reasonably to be but splinters of ancient myths from
pre-biblical or early biblical days. These remnants of dim sagas and
residues of faded traditions, frowned upon by the makers of the Bible
and discarded by them, survived, as it were, subterraneously for countless
generations down to the last centuries of antiquity, or even the early
centuries of the Middle Ages — an amazing
testimony to the tenacity of folk memories.
Why
were these myths not hushed up altogether? Banished from the Bible (save
for a few snatches of poetic imagery), how were they readmitted to the
legends of the Bible?
These
ancient myths had charm and appealed to the imagination. The people,
an eternal child, loved them. The stories were replete with stirring
action and adventure, fight and suspense. They recalled the distant
days, believed to be lost forever, when the world was gay and bold,
innocent and savage at once. Moreover, they dealt with matters of immediate
concern, the combat of seasons, spring and winter, rain and drought,
increase or failure of crops and cattle, blessing or blight of the fruit
of the body and the fruit of the ground.
With
the directness of primitive poetry they spoke to all the senses, and
yet seemed to make sense as well, confirming everyday experience of
the world in which the word of God goes not unopposed. They appeared
to reckon with and account for the stubborn reality of evil which the
theologians chose to ignore.
Fantastic
creatures on the fifth and sixth days of creations:
Leviathan,
king of the fish
Ziz, king of the birds
Behemot, king of the
mammals
Phoenix, most wonderful
birds
Shamir and ziz, most
marvelous of reptiles
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[1]
from the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, to compendia of legends
compiled from the third century late into the Middle Ages, to
the new harvest of folk tales and legends of the Bible which grew
up in the eighteenth century during the period of religious revival
in Eastern Europe. [back]
[*]
When Louis Ginzberg died in 1953, he was recognized as the world's
upstanding scholar in the field of Talmudic learning. His studies
were carried on at the universities of Berlin, Strassburg and
Heidelberg, and from 1902 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in
New York, where he served with distinction as Professor of Talmud
for more than half a century. The Legend of the Jews, a
massive seven-volume work with notes, written in German, and translated
into some forty languages, was originally published for scholars
(the first volume was published in 1909).
|
|
 From
a shorter and simpler edition, published by Jewish Publication Society
in 1975. [back] |
FANTASTIC
CREATURES Table of Contents
