On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (12 page)

Satan’s relative power has always been a topic of interest for theologians. Most of his appearances, like the episode with Job, show Satan as a servant (albeit an unpleasant one) to God. But there are incidents, as in Chronicles 21, where Satan appears to act according to his own free will against God: “And Satan rose up against Israel: and moved David to number Israel.”
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This autonomous Satan is sometimes thought to be the result of influences from Iranian Zoroastrianism, a dualistic religion of two equally powerful good and bad Gods, influences that seeped into some monotheistic scriptural narratives. This more sovereign Satan, however, is distinctly heterodox to mainstream Abrahamic monotheism, and, theological flirtations aside, it never became dominant. Even the satanic possession of Judas (Luke 22:3) can be brought in line with orthodoxy if we understand the episode as a step in God’s overall sequence of Christian redemption.
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In this sense, the Satan of the New Testament is entirely consistent with the trouble-making accuser we meet in the Book of Job. As the art historian Luther Link puts it in his survey of devil imagery, “The Evil One is on God’s side. He carries out the garbage.”
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Some of the most well-known monsters of the Bible, Behemoth and Leviathan, also appear in the Book of Job and echo this henchmen theme of God’s monster accomplices. They don’t actually plot against anyone, but these giant beasts of earth and water, respectively, serve as evidence of God’s power and strength; they act as living billboards for God’s sublime creativity and awe-inspiring authority. The giant creatures are not opposed to God but represent the more chaotic and frightening visage of God. Behemoth and Leviathan are introduced after Job has finally broken down and complained about his suffering. God, in the form of a whirlwind, tells Job, “Gird up thy loins like a man” (
accinge sicut vir lumbos tuos
). The harsh lesson that follows is obviously drawn from the Jewish Septuagint, but it augurs a very common theme later developed in Christian ethics: that
humans should be humble, not proud. (I will examine this point more carefully in my discussion of
Beowulf?
) Humility, meekness, gratitude: these are the proper sentiments for a puny species like man, and to better understand this frailness Job need only witness the gigantic land monster. “Behold Behemoth whom I made with thee, he eats grass like an ox. His strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He sets up his tail like a cedar, the sinews of his testicles are wrapped together. His bones are like pipes of brass, his gristle like plates of iron.”
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Symbolic of God’s power, the biblical Behemoth appears in the Book of Psalms and Job. Pencil drawing by Stephen T. Asma © 2008.

The use of Behemoth and Leviathan in the scriptures is highly ambivalent. In some places, such as Psalm 74 and Job 3, Leviathan is described as a frightening monster that threatens order and stability, a giant sea monster that rises from the depths to cause mayhem but who is easily checked by the power and righteousness of Yahweh.
⁷
In some cases, God is described
as smashing Leviathan’s head, but in other places, such as Psalm 104 and Job 40, Leviathan is identified as a part of God’s wonderful creation, a sublime force that reflects God’s overwhelming aspect. In these passages, the giant sea monster is an ally and even a manifestation of God.

It may be impossible to reconcile the various characterizations of Leviathan, especially if they are meant to reflect different and even conflicted human religious sentiments within us. Beal suggests that Leviathan functions as a threat because “the challenge of taking on Leviathan merges with the challenge of taking on God,”
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and such a challenge would be a foolhardy expression of pride. The idea that God is beyond our weak human faculties and that our minds would be overwhelmed if we tried to grasp him is a common theme in religion, though much of this tendency was toned down by rationalist theologians from Maimonides to Aquinas and beyond.
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Still, long before the lucid God of the rationalists, there was the incoherent sublime God so prevalent in mythical and mystical traditions in the East and West. That God, symbolized by the frightening monsters of Behemoth and Leviathan, conveys a parallel religious emotion found in many Hindu scriptures. For example, in the
Bhagavad Gita
(ca. fourth to second century
BCE
) the god Krishna famously reveals himself to the warrior Arjuna in a sublime vision that overwhelms and subjugates him:

Seeing your infinite form with many mouths, eyes, arms, thighs, feet, stomachs, and many fearful teeth; the worlds are trembling with fear and so do I, O mighty Lord.
Seeing Your great effulgent and various-colored form touching the sky; Your mouth wide open and large shining eyes; I am frightened and find neither peace nor courage, O Krishna.
Seeing Your mouths, with fearful teeth, glowing like fires of cosmic dissolution, I lose my sense of direction and find no comfort. Have mercy on me! O Lord of gods, refuge of the universe. (11:23–25)
¹⁰

The notion of God as frightening, a disturbing reality that destroys human perceptual and conceptual equipment, is not entertained to the same degree in Western monotheism as in Hinduism.
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But in the creatures of Behemoth and Leviathan one finds a glimmer of the Abraha-mic God’s more horrifying dimension. This dimension is reiterated in the Christian New Testament, when the Book of Revelation unrolls its unique prophecy of monstrous doom. But in Revelation and its prophetic precursor, the Book of Daniel, monsters function more traditionally as enemies to be crushed and overcome. In the prophetic scriptures it’s clear that God
may have allowed some monsters to exist, and even to have their fun for a while, but the time has come to crush them under righteous foot.

These monsters of the prophetic tradition appear to have no zoological significance whatsoever. The four beasts of Daniel and the dragon and hydra of Revelation are incarnations of the
fallen
state of being: fallen angels in the case of Satan, and fallen men in the case of oppressive Roman imperial power.

The Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse of John, was written in the early 90s of the Common Era, during the reign of Emperor Domitian. It is a beautiful, frightening jumble of end time forecast, conspiracy history, and veiled sociopolitical manifesto. The description of monsters involves, among other things, a giant red dragon (
ecce draco magnus rufus
, 12:3), a hybrid leopard-bear-lion beast (
et bestiam quam vidi similes erat pardo et pedes eius sicut ursi et os eius sicut os leonis
, 13:2), and a two-horned beast that emerges from underground (
et vidi aliam bestiam ascendentem de terra et habebat cornua duo similia agni
, 13:11). The dragon plays a crucial role throughout the Apocalypse and also down through the ages as a symbolic counterpart to Christian virtue, but it is unclear whether John’s influences were Greek or Near Eastern.
¹²

The author of Revelation, John of Patmos, spins an elaborate mystical vision of the end of the world and explicitly draws on the earlier prophetic traditions to reinforce and validate the urgency of his call to repentance. His confusing visions entail a trinity of terror that focuses on the central demonic character of the giant seven-headed dragon (
draco
), “who is called the devil and Satan” (12:9). This satanic dragon first appears in a vision, beside a woman who is about to give birth to a child (the messiah). The dragon menaces the woman, waiting to devour the child. But the creature’s evil plan is thwarted because when the son is born he is immediately whisked up to God and his throne, and the woman escapes to the wilderness. A gigantic battle ensues in which the dragon and his minions fight unsuccessfully against Michael and his angels, who overcome the dragon with the blood of the lamb. The dragon and his army are hurled down from Heaven and must continue their nefarious ways on the earth, where they persecute “the woman who brought forth the man-child” (
mulierem quae peperit masculum
, 12:13).

Most scholars agree that John of Patmos is providing a coded narrative about the religious persecution of Christians, a persecution that received imperial sanction under Nero’s rule (54–68) and may have become acute
under Domitian (81–96).
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The symbolism is further nuanced by the introduction of the two monstrous henchmen, the beast from the sea with seven cat-like heads and the horned beast from the earth, subsequently referred to as the
pseudoprophetes
, “false prophet.” In some readings the Roman emperor himself is identified with the satanic dragon; others read the beast of the sea as the emperor, the seven heads symbolizing the succession of emperors (Revelation 17). In the early modern period, Protestants read the beast as the Roman Catholic pope, while the Catholics returned the favor by reading the beast as Luther himself. In any case, the chain of monster command is clear in the scripture: the satanic hydra is the central authority of evil, giving power and strength to the beast from the sea, who in turn is served by the beast from the earth (pseudoprophetes). It is this subservient beast of the earth that famously encourages humans to get “the mark” of the sea beast, the number 666 (
sescenti sexaginta sex).
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The pseudoprophetes acts as a kind of public relations manager for the sea beast. The mark of the beast, worn on the right hand or forehead, is an indicator of allegiance to the evil power, a sign of collusion with the wicked temporal world because only by this mark can man have economic commerce. One suspects that this is a coded way for John to express his call to Christians to reject the temptations of acquiescent pagan life under Roman rule. Martyrdom is preferable to submission.

All of this monster activity precipitates the great battle between good and evil at Armageddon, located between Tel Aviv and Nazareth. During this battle the legions of the beast will fight against the righteous and the beasts will be vanquished to the lake of fire. The satanic dragon will be trapped for a thousand years, after which there will be yet another era in which the evil one seduces humankind, the “children of disobedience.” The beasts of Revelation, finally vanquished by God, explicitly echo the monsters from the Book of Daniel (ca. second century
BCE
),
¹⁵
and together they show us another important function of monsters in biblical culture. The prophet Daniel dreams of four great beasts that rise out of the sea (
et quattuor bestiae grandes ascendebant de mari diversae inter se
, 7:3); each of them foreshadows the versions in the Apocalypse. The description is truly frightening, in particular that of the fourth beast, and it deserves to be quoted in full.

The first was like a lioness, and had the wings of an eagle: I beheld till her wings were plucked off, and she was lifted up from the earth, and stood upon her feet as a man, and the heart of a man was given to her. And behold another beast, like a bear, stood up on one side: and there were three rows in the mouth thereof, and in the teeth thereof, and thus they said to it:
Arise, devour much flesh. After this I beheld, and lo, another like a leopard, and it had upon it four wings, as of a fowl, and the beast had four heads, and power was given to it. After this I beheld in the vision of the night, and lo, a fourth beast, terrible and wonderful, and exceedingly strong, it had great iron teeth, eating and breaking in pieces, and treading down the rest with his feet: and it was unlike to the other beasts which I had seen before it, and had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold another little horn sprung out of the midst of them: and three of the first horns were plucked up at the presence thereof: and behold eyes like the eyes of a man were in this horn, and a mouth speaking great things. (Daniel 7:4–8)

This nightmarish cadre of monsters wages war against the “saints of the most high God,” and the “talking horn” on the head of the fourth beast leads the charge. There is considerable disagreement about how to interpret the beasts, but most scholars see them as corresponding to the four empires that threatened and even occupied Palestine between the sixth and second centuries
BCE
; the lion-eagle hybrid represents Babylon, the toothy bear represents the Median Empire, the four-headed leopard is the Persian Empire, and the egregious fourth beast is the Greek and Macedonian Empire (Alexander the Great conquered Judea in 332
BCE
).
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The monsters win their temporary successes against the righteous, but God is always ultimately victorious and the eventual victory is characterized as
eternal
because God’s power is “an everlasting power that shall not be taken away” (
potestas eius potestas aeterna quae non auferetur
, Daniel 7:14).