Accommodationist... ehhhhhh

[beaglelady]

It’s always helpful to go “behind the scenes” with a text and it does no harm to Scripture–just helps us understand it better.

[beaglelady]

@SkovandOfMitaze

The great sea monsters are not whales or simply large fish. It’s the sea dragons. Later on that idea is built on even more and fleshed out as a multi headed Levithan. The word is tannin. It comes from the Sumerian word which is similar and refers to their main antagonist at that time which is a sea dragon. Their languages are very distinct. That word was purposely chosen to convey the understanding that God is over creation and that creation itself is not a god.

I have the translation of the Psalms by the Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, and it includes some great commentary. He speaks of the influence of Canaanite mythology, adapted by the psalmists for their own theology. This is pretty funny:

"Another theme drawn from Canaanite mythology that recurs frequently in Psalms, the cosmogonic conquest of a monstrous sea god–intimating chaos–by a warrior god–associated with order–is more firmly assimilated into a monotheistic outlook. Although the various names of the primordial sea monster–Leviathan, Rahab, Yamm, Tanin–conquered by God do appear here, the originally mythological conflict is a characteristically figured in more naturalistic terms as God’s subduing the breakers of the sea. In Psalm 104, the fearsome Leviathan is actually reduced to an aquatic pet with whom YHWH can play."