The Leviathan is a sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, and the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. The Leviathan is often an embodiment of chaos, threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over. In the end, it is annihilated. Christian theologians identified Leviathan with the demon of the deadly sin envy. According to Ophite diagrams, the Leviathan encapsulates the space of the material world.
Antichrist on Leviathan, Liber floridus, 1120
Leviathan the sea-monster, with Behemoth the land-monster and Ziz the air-monster. "And on that day were two monsters parted, a female monster named Leviathan, to dwell in the abysses of the ocean over the fountains of the waters. But the male is named Behemoth, who occupied with his breast a waste wilderness named Duidain." (1 Enoch 60:7–8)
Leviathan (1983), a painting by Michael Sgan-Cohen, the Israel Museum Collection, Jerusalem
Hellmouth The life of St John and Apocalypse, c. 1400
A sea serpent is a type of sea monster described in various mythologies, most notably Mesopotamian (Tiamat), Judaeo-Christian (Leviathan), Greek, and Norse (Jörmungandr).
A sea serpent.―From Magnus, Olaus (1555). History of the Northern Peoples.
"The Great Sea Serpent (according to Hans Egede)".―Engraving c. 1843, signed by artist James Hope Stewart.
"Supposed Appearance of the Great Sea-Serpent, From H.M.S. Plumper, Sketched by an Officer on Board", Illustrated London News, 14 April 1849
Sea serpents, Ama Temple, Macao
