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Salty Leviathan
June 2, 2007 at 7:39 pm by mahud
I came across an interesting tradition at Dance of the Mind earlier, regarding the Leviathan, found in the Talmudic tractate Baba Batra:
Rab Judah said in the name of Rab: All that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in his world he created male and female. Likewise, Leviathan the slant serpent and Leviathan the tortuous serpent he created male and female; and had they mated with one another they would have destroyed the whole world. What [then] did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He castrated the male and killed the female preserving it in salt for the righteous in the world to come; for it is written: And he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
excerpt from Baba Bathra 74b
The Behemoth also received similar treatment, except the creature’s flesh wasn’t preserved in salt, because “Salted fish is palatable, salted flesh is not”, and at the end of days, the righteous are said to feast upon the flesh of both (check out Leviathan II: Demon of the Sea, Messianic Meal).
It seems pretty natural to assume that this tradition is somehow related to the Babylonian Enuma Elish, that tells us, in the beginning, all that existed was the waters of Apsu, who was the male personification of the sweet primordial waters, and Tiamat, the female personification of the salt primordial waters, who dwelt together as one (with their son Mummu), symbolizing the primordial union of the oppocites.
Ea (Sumerian: Enki), killed Apsu, and Tiamat, in the form of a monsterous dragon, sought revenge upon the gods, to be finally slain by the Eternal Champion Marduk, who formed the universe from her corpse.
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