LEVIATHAN

There are amongst the constellations four great draconic or serpent-like forms. Chief of these is the great dragon coiled round the pole of the ecliptic and the pole of the equator as the latter was observed some 4600 years ago. This is the dragon with which the Kneeler, Hercules, is fighting, and whose head he presses down with his foot. The second is the great watersnake, Hydra, which 4600 years ago stretched for 105 deg. along the celestial equator of that day. Its head was directed towards the ascending node, that is to say the point where the ecliptic, the sun’s apparent path, crosses the equator at the spring equinox; and its tail stretched nearly to the descending node, the point where the ecliptic again meets the equator at the autumn equinox. The third was the Serpent, the one held in the grip of the Serpent-holder. Its head erected itself just above the autumn equinox, and reached up as far as the zenith; its tail lay along the equator. The fourth of these draconic forms was the great Sea-monster, stretched out along the horizon, with a double river Eridanus proceeding from it, just below the spring equinox.

None of these four figures was suggested by the natural grouping of the stars. Very few of the constellation-figures were so suggested, and these four in particular, as so high an authority as Prof. Schiaparelli expressly points out, were not amongst that few. Their positions show that they were designed some 4600 years ago, and that they have not been materially altered down to the present time. Though no forms or semblances of forms are there in the heavens, yet we still seem to see, as we look upwards, not merely the stars themselves, but the same snakes and dragons, first imagined so many ages ago as coiling amongst them.

The tradition of these serpentine forms and of their peculiar placing in the heavens was current among the Babylonians quite 1500 years after the constellations were devised. For the little “boundary stones” often display, amongst many other astronomical symbols, the coiled dragon round the top of the stone, the extended snake at its base, and at one or other corner the serpent bent into a right angle like that borne by the Serpent-holder that is to say, the three out of the four serpentine forms that hold astronomically important positions in the sky.

The positions held by these three serpents or dragons have given rise to a significant set of astronomical terms. The Dragon marked the poles of both ecliptic and equator; the Watersnake marked the equator almost from node to node; the Serpent marked the equator at one of the nodes. The “Dragon’s Head” and the “Dragon’s Tail” therefore have been taken as astronomical symbols of the ascending and descending nodes of the sun’s apparent path the points where he seems to ascend above the equator in the spring, and to descend below it again in the autumn.

The moon’s orbit likewise intersects the apparent path of the sun in two points, its two nodes; and the interval of time between its passage through one of these nodes and its return to that same node again is called a Draconic month, a month of the Dragon. The same symbols are applied by analogy to the moon’s nodes.

Indeed the “Dragon’s Head,” [symbol], is the general sign for the ascending node of any orbit, whether of moon, planet or comet, and the “Dragon’s Tail,” [symbol], for the descending node. We not only use these signs in astronomical works to-day, but the latter sign frequently occurs, figured exactly as we figure it now, on Babylonian boundary stones 3000 years old.

But an eclipse either of the sun or of the moon can only take place when the latter is near one of its two nodes is in the “Dragon’s Head” or in the “Dragon’s Tail.” This relation might be briefly expressed by saying that the Dragon that is of the nodes causes the eclipse. Hence the numerous myths, found in so many nations, which relate how “a dragon devours the sun (or moon)” at the time of an eclipse.

The dragon of eclipse finds its way into Hindoo mythology in a form which shows clearly that the myth arose from a misunderstanding of the constellations. The equatorial Water-snake, stretching from one node nearly to the other, has resting upon it, Crater, the Cup. Combining this with the expression for the two nodes, the Hindu myth has taken the following form. The gods churned the surface of the sea to make the Amrita Cup, the cup of the water of life. “And while the gods were drinking that nectar after which they had so much hankered, a Danava, named Rahu, was drinking it in the guise of a god. And when the nectar had only reached Rahu’s throat, the sun and the moon discovered him, and communicated the fact to the gods.” Rahu’s head was at once cut off, but, as the nectar had reached thus far, it was immortal, and rose to the sky. “From that time hath arisen a long-standing quarrel between Rahu’s head and the sun and moon,” and the head swallows them from time to time, causing eclipses. Rahu’s head marks the ascending, Ketu, the tail, the descending node.

This myth is very instructive. Before it could have arisen, not only must the constellations have been mapped out, and the equator and ecliptic both recognized, but the inclination of the moon’s orbit to that of the sun must also have been recognized, together with the fact that it was only when the moon was near its node that the eclipses, either of the sun or moon, could take place. In other words, the cause of eclipses must have been at one time understood, but that knowledge must have been afterwards lost. We have seen already, in the chapter on “The Deep,” that the Hebrew idea of tehom could not possibly have been derived from the Babylonian myth of Tiamat, since the knowledge of the natural object must precede the myth founded upon it. If, therefore, Gen. i. and the Babylonian story of Creation be connected, the one as original, the other as derived from that original, it is the Babylonian story that has been borrowed from the Hebrew, and it has been degraded in the borrowing.

So in this case, the myth of the Dragon, whose head and tail cause eclipses, must have been derived from a corruption and misunderstanding of a very early astronomical achievement. The myth is evidence of knowledge lost, of science on the down-grade.

Some may object that the myth may have brought about the conception of the draconic constellations. A very little reflection will show that such a thing was impossible. If the superstition that an eclipse is caused by an invisible dragon swallowing the sun or moon had really been the origin of the constellational dragons, they would certainly have all been put in the zodiac, the only region of the sky where sun or moon can be found; not outside it, where neither can ever come, and in consequence where no eclipse can take place. Nor could such a superstition have led on to the discoveries above-mentioned: that the moon caused eclipses of the sun, the earth those of the moon; that the moon’s orbit was inclined to the ecliptic, and that eclipses took place only near the nodes. The idea of an unseen spiritual agent being at work would prevent any search for a physical explanation, since polytheism is necessarily opposed to science.

There is a word used in Scripture to denote a reptilian monster, which appears in one instance at least to refer to this dragon of eclipse, and so to be used in an astronomical sense. Job, in his first outburst of grief cursed the day in which he was born, and cried

“Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are ready (margin, skilful) to rouse up Leviathan.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark
Let it look for light, but have none;
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning.”

“Leviathan” denotes an animal wreathed, gathering itself in coils: hence a serpent, or some great reptile. The description in Job xli. is evidently that of a mighty crocodile, though in Psalm civ. leviathan is said to play in “the great and wide sea,” which has raised a difficulty as to its identification in the minds of some commentators. In the present passage it is supposed to mean one of the stellar dragons, and hence the mythical dragon of eclipse. Job desired that the day of his birth should have been cursed by the magicians, so that it had been a day of complete and entire eclipse, not even the stars that preceded its dawn being allowed to shine.

The astronomical use of the word leviathan here renders it possible that there may be in Isa. xxvii. an allusion quite secondary and indirect however to the chief stellar dragons.

“In that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”

The marginal reading gives us instead of “piercing,” “crossing like a bar”; a most descriptive epithet for the long-drawn-out constellation of Hydra, the Water-snake, which stretched itself for one hundred and five degrees along the primitive equator, and “crossed” the meridian “like a bar” for seven hours out of every twenty-four. “The crooked serpent” would denote the dragon coiled around the poles, whilst “the dragon which is in the sea” would naturally refer to Cetus, the Sea-monster. The prophecy would mean then, that “in that day” the Lord will destroy all the powers of evil which have, as it were, laid hold of the chief places, even in the heavens.

In one passage “the crooked serpent,” here used as a synonym of leviathan, distinctly points to the dragon of the constellations. In Job’s last answer to Bildad the Shuhite, he says

“He divideth the sea with His power,
And by His understanding He smiteth through the proud. (R.V. Rahab.)
By His spirit He hath garnished the heavens;
His hand hath formed the crooked serpent.”

The passage gives a good example of the parallelism of Hebrew poetry; the repetition of the several terms of a statement, term by term, in a slightly modified sense; a rhyme, if the expression may be used, not of sound, but of signification.

Thus in the four verses just quoted, we have three terms in each agent, action, object; each appears in the first statement, each appears likewise in the second. The third statement, in like manner, has its three terms repeated in a varied form in the fourth.

Thus

His power  = His understanding.
Divideth   = Smiteth through.
The sea    = Rahab (the proud).

And

His spirit      = His hand.
Hath garnished  = Hath formed.
The heavens     = The crooked serpent.

There can be no doubt as to the significance of the two parallels. In the first, dividing the sea, i. e. the Red Sea, is the correlative of smiting through Rahab, “the proud one,” the name often applied to Egypt, as in Isa. xxx 7: “For Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I called her Rahab that sitteth still.” In the second, “adorning the heavens” is the correlative of “forming the crooked serpent.” The great constellation of the writhing dragon, emphatically a “crooked serpent,” placed at the very crown of the heavens, is set for all the constellations of the sky.

There are several references to Rahab, as “the dragon which is in the sea,” all clearly referring to the kingdom of Egypt, personified as one of her own crocodiles lying-in-wait in her own river, the Nile, or transferred, by a figure of speech, to the Red Sea, which formed her eastern border. Thus in chapter li. Isaiah apostrophizes “the arm of the Lord.”

“Art Thou not It that cut Rahab in pieces,
That pierced the dragon?
Art Thou not It that dried up the sea,
The waters of the great deep;
That made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?”

And in Psalm lxxxix. we have

“Thou rulest the raging of the sea;
When the waves thereof arise Thou stillest them.
Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain,
Thou hast scattered Thine enemies with Thy strong arm.”

So the prophet Ezekiel is directed

“Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say unto him, thou wast likened unto a young lion of the nations: yet art thou as a dragon in the seas.”

In all these passages it is only in an indirect and secondary sense that we can see any constellational references in the various descriptions of “the dragon that is in the sea.” It is the crocodile of Egypt that is intended; Egypt the great oppressor of Israel, and one of the great powers of evil, standing as a representative of them all. The serpent or dragon forms in the constellations also represented the powers of evil; especially the great enemy of God and man, “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan.” So there is some amount of appropriateness to the watery dragons of the sky Hydra and Cetus in these descriptions of Rahab, the dragon of Egypt, without there being any direct reference. Thus it is said of the Egyptian “dragon in the seas,” “I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the earth, and to the fowls of the heaven;” and again, “I will cause all the fowls of the heaven to settle upon thee,” just as Corvus, the Raven, is shown as having settled upon Hydra, the Water-snake, and is devouring its flesh. Again, Pharaoh, the Egyptian dragon, says, “My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself;” just as Cetus, the Sea-monster, is represented as pouring forth Eridanus, the river, from its mouth.

But a clear and direct allusion to this last grouping of the constellations occurs in the Apocalypse. In the twelfth chapter, the proud oppressor dragon from the sea is shown us again with much fulness of detail. There the Apostle describes his vision of a woman, who evidently represents the people of God, being persecuted by a dragon. There is still a reminiscence of the deliverance of Israel in the Exodus from Egypt, for “the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand two hundred and threescore days.” And the vision goes on:

“And the serpent cast out of his mouth, after the woman water as a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the stream. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the river which the dragon cast out of his mouth.”

This appears to be precisely the action which is presented to us in the three constellations of Andromeda, Cetus, and Eridanus. Andromeda is always shown as a woman in distress, and the Sea-monster, though placed far from her in the sky, has always been understood to be her persecutor. Thus Aratus writes

“Andromeda, though far away she flies,
Dreads the Sea-monster, low in southern skies.”

The latter, baffled in his pursuit of his victim, has cast the river, Eridanus, out of his mouth, which, flowing down below the southern horizon, is apparently swallowed up by the earth.

It need occasion no surprise that we should find imagery used by St. John in his prophecy already set forth in the constellations nearly 3,000 years before he wrote. Just as, in this same book, St. John repeated Daniel’s vision of the fourth beast, and Ezekiel’s vision of the living creatures, as he used the well-known details of the Jewish Temple, the candlesticks, the laver, the altar of incense, so he used a group of stellar figures perfectly well known at the time when he wrote. In so doing the beloved disciple only followed the example which his Master had already set him. For the imagery in the parables of our Lord is always drawn from scenes and objects known and familiar to all men.

In two instances in which leviathan is mentioned, a further expression is used which has a distinct astronomical bearing. In the passage already quoted, where Job curses the day of his birth, he desires that it may not “behold the eyelids of the morning.” And in the grand description of leviathan, the crocodile, in chapter xli., we have

“His neesings flash forth light,
And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.”

Canon Driver considers this as an “allusion, probably to the reddish eyes of the crocodile, which are said to appear gleaming through the water before the head comes to the surface.” This is because of the position of the eyes on the animal’s head, not because they have any peculiar brilliancy.

“It is an idea exclusively Egyptian, and is another link in the chain of evidence which connects the author of the poem with Egypt. The crocodile’s head is so formed that its highest points are the eyes; and when it rises obliquely to the surface the eyes are the first part of the whole animal to emerge. The Egyptians observing this, compared it to the sun rising out of the sea, and made it the hieroglyphic representative of the idea of sunrise. Thus Horus Apollo says: When the Egyptians represent the sunrise, they paint the eye of the crocodile, because it is first seen as that animal emerges from the water."[209:1]

In this likening of the eyes of the crocodile to the eyelids of the morning, we have the comparison of one natural object with another. Such comparison, when used in one way and for one purpose, is the essence of poetry; when used in another way and for another purpose, is the essence of science. Both poetry and science are opposed to myth, which is the confusion of natural with imaginary objects, the mistaking the one for the other.

Thus it is poetry when the Psalmist speaks of the sun “as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber”; for there is no confusion in his thought between the two natural objects. The sun is like the bridegroom in the glory of his appearance. The Psalmist does not ascribe to him a bride and children.

It is science when the astronomer compares the spectrum of the sun with the spectra of various metals in the laboratory. He is comparing natural object with natural object, and is enabled to draw conclusions as to the elements composing the sun, and the condition in which they there exist.

But it is myth when the Babylonian represents Bel or Merodach as the solar deity, destroying Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, for there is confusion in the thought. The imaginary god is sometimes given solar, sometimes human, sometimes superhuman characteristics. There is no actuality in much of what is asserted as to the sun or as to the wholly imaginary being associated with it. The mocking words of Elijah to the priests of Baal were justified by the intellectual confusion of their ideas, as well as by the spiritual degradation of their idolatry.

“Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened.”

Such nature-myths are not indications of the healthy mental development of a primitive people; they are the clear signs of a pathological condition, the symptoms of intellectual disease.

It is well to bear in mind this distinction, this opposition between poetry and myth, for ignoring it has led to not a little misconception as to the occurrence of myth in Scripture, especially in connection with the names associated with the crocodile. Thus it has been broadly asserted that “the original mythical signification of the monsters tehom, livyathan, tannim, rahab, is unmistakably evident.”

Of these names the first signifies the world of waters; the second and third real aquatic animals; and the last, “the proud one,” is simply an epithet of Egypt, applied to the crocodile as the representation of the kingdom. There is no more myth in setting forth Egypt by the crocodile or leviathan than in setting forth Great Britain by the lion, or Russia by the bear.

The Hebrews in setting forth their enemies by crocodile and other ferocious reptiles were not describing any imaginary monsters of the primaeval chaos, but real oppressors. The Egyptian, with his “house of bondage,” the Assyrian, “which smote with a rod,” the Chaldean who made havoc of Israel altogether, were not dreams. And in beseeching God to deliver them from their latest oppressor the Hebrews naturally recalled, not some idle tale of the fabulous achievements of Babylonian deities, but the actual deliverance God had wrought for them at the Red Sea. There the Egyptian crocodile had been made “meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness” when the corpses of Pharaoh’s bodyguard, cast up on the shore, supplied the children of Israel with the weapons and armour of which they stood in need. So in the day of their utter distress they could still cry in faith and hope

“Yet God is my King of old,
Working salvation in the midst of the earth.
Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength:
Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces,
And gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood:
Thou driedst up mighty rivers.
The day is Thine, the night also is Thine:
Thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
Thou hast set all the borders of the earth:
Thou hast made summer and winter.”