Leviathan was held that God originally produced a male and a female leviathan, but lest in multiplying the species should destroy the world, he slew the female, reserving her flesh for the banquet that will be given to the righteous on the advent of the Messiah. Rashi's commentary on repeats the tradition: the...sea monsters: The great fish in the sea, and in the words of the Aggadah (B.B. 74b), this refers to the Leviathan and its mate, for He created them male and female, and He slew the female and salted her away for the righteous in the future, for if
Biblical criticism scholar James A. Herrick says even though most scholars agree that biblical criticism evolved out of the German Enlightenment, there are also histories of biblical scholarship that have found "strong direct links" with British deism. Herrick references the theologian Henning Graf Reventlow as saying deism included the humanist world view, which has also been significant in biblical criticism. Some scholars, such as Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001), Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), and Ernst Käsemann (1906–1998) trace biblical criticism's origins to the Reformation. Three early scholars of the Reformation era who helped lay the foundations of modern biblical criticism were Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574), Hugo