Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello Rochelle,

We would probably not agree.  However, as I said in my private
response, the following are unsupported assumptions:

On 7/16/06, Rochelle Altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il> wrote:
> Hate to intrude with biological data, but if you read the
> description of the leviathan,

Where in the Bible does a description of a Leviathan mention:

> with its long snaky "arms," etc.,

?

> the creature is a giant squid, also referred to as a Kraken. It is
> indeed a creature of the deeps (tehom) and would have been
> extremely frightening to men in a small boat.

That the squid is frightening may be so, and that there are giant
squids even more so, but none of this relates to the question at
hand.  How do you know that the Biblical Leviathan is a squid?
What brings you to think (apparently) that a squid's arm would
be referred to as a "head" -- r)$ ?  Your statement that there
are no mythical creatures in the Tanakh is problematic because
of two reasons: 1) prove to me that a giant fire-breathing sea
dragon is mythical and doesn't really exist!  but, seriously,
2) that statement depends on showing that there are no mentions
of possible mythical creatures.  Thus, you can't use this
statement as an assumption for a conclusion on the Leviathan,
because that would lead to circularity.

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com