Leviathan Leviathan Leviathan (; ) is a creature with the form of a sea monster from Jewish belief, referenced in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Job, Psalms, the Book of Isaiah, and the Book of Amos. The Leviathan of the Book of Job is a reflection of the older Canaanite "Lotan", a primeval monster defeated by the god Hadad. Parallels to the role of Mesopotamian Tiamat defeated by Marduk have long been drawn in comparative mythology, as have been wider comparisons to dragon and world serpent narratives such as Indra slaying Vrtra or Thor slaying Jörmungandr, but Leviathan already
Biblical criticism with the understanding that historical biblical criticism's focus on historicity produced a distinction between the meaning of what the text says and what it is about (what it references). This produced doubts about the text's veracity. The theologian Hans Frei writes that what he refers to as the "realistic narratives" of literature, including the Bible, don't allow for such separation. Subject matter is identical to verbal meaning and is found in plot and nowhere else. "As Frei puts it, scripture 'simultaneously depicts and renders the reality (if any) of what it talks about'; its subject matter is 'constituted by, or