In the ancient Babylonia creation myth, Marduk defeats Tiamat, a sea monster. For many years in the church, the fascination with sea monsters and the spiritual symbols they represent have captivated the imagination of people who read about Leviathan in the Bible. But not everyone sees things that way.
In this past week’s Symposium meeting, we received this one comment from a participant:
I suppose that the Leviathan creature described in Job might be difficult to explain with the Old Earth theory.
This raises a really good question, but probably more than what the comment necessarily indicates. So, yes, who is this mysterious Leviathan creature as mentioned in Job 41? This comment surely has this question in mind, but consider this from a wider perspective: What are the concerns that Christians have when they read the Bible that inform how they interpret the Bible?
My Veracity blogging cohort in mischief and mutual lover of pepperoni pizza, John Paine, has an excellent response from an Old-Earth perspective that deserves bringing forward:
This is a pretty well-worn argument between Old-Earth and Young-Earth creationists. The idea is that if Leviathan and Behemoth refer to dinosaurs, then down goes the argument that there are no dinosaurs in the Bible, and then we can conclude that dinosaurs overlapped mankind’s existence on earth (which would support a Young-Earth view).
There are five verses in the Bible that refer to the Leviathan (according to the English Standard Version):
Job 3:8
Job 41:1
Psalm 74:14
Psalm 104:26
Isaiah 27:1
All of these texts could be consistently interpreted as Leviathan referring to a crocodile (and Behemoth referring to a hippopotamus).
Here’s the Old-Earth interpretation.
Thanks for the comment, and I hope this helps.
John sums it up well. But what do the other Creationist perspectives that we have briefly discussed at the Symposium have to say about Leviathan?
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