Mythical Creatures in the Bible (Old Testament Edition)

[Music] perhaps a staple of all world mythologies is the presence of extraordinary and strange beasts from the minotaur and cyclops of greek myth to the many bizarre yokai of japanese folklore but what about the bible in this video let's take a look at four unusual creatures found in the old testament and examine where academics believe these strange beasts may have come from unicorns okay this should be familiar territory horses with horns we all know what unicorns look like surprisingly they're actually mentioned quite a few times in the bible in the book of numbers it describes

god as being like a unicorn god brought them out of egypt he hath as it were the strength of a unicorn another example is in the book of job where god rhetorically asks will the unicorn be willing to serve thee or abide by thy crib now if you've watched some of my other videos you'll know that a great place to start is looking at the original language in hebrew they're not called unicorns instead they're simply called re-em remember this word m we'll come back to it in a second when the greeks began translating the bible

they translated this hebrew word rem to monokeros which simply means one horn similarly latin speakers translated the word as unicornis from which we get our word unicorn speaking of greeks and romans strangely unicorns do not feature in their mythologies instead they are featured in ancient greco-roman natural encyclopedias basically ancient textbooks on nature this is all to say that people did not think unicorns were mythical beasts but actually real-life creatures as real as a cow lion or horse why well it's a case of mistaken identity this one-horned creature is actually a rhino when early travelers went

to faraway lands they spoke of strange creatures they saw on their way one was called a unicorn for example roman naturalist pliny the elder offers his description of a unicorn as a very fierce animal called the unicorn which is the head of a stag the feet of an elephant and the tail of a ball while the rest of the body is like that of a horse scholars believe that pliny is offering an imperfect description of a rhino it is likely that he heard a second hand or even third-hand description of one and is recounting it

in this book the description of a rhino became distorted with each telling a bit like a game of telephone so returning back to the bible and unicorns we can see how the original description of a rhino may have been distorted when it first got translated remember the hebrew word for unicorn re-em well it doesn't mean rhino but a creature rather similar the rem has now been identified as an animal the nearby acadians called the rimu today we'd call it an aurochs an ancient ancestor of modern day cattle so when the bible talks about unicorns and

so on it's actually referring to an ancient type of bull so now it's a case of a triple mistaken identity originally the bible described a bull which was then misinterpreted as a unicorn which itself was a misinterpretation of a rhino a bit convoluted but hey okay next beast leviathan and behemoth these are perhaps the most famous mythical creatures in the whole bible ones you may be familiar with the behemoth and leviathan appear in the book of job as part of a wider speech god offers an extensive description of each creature let's start with the behemoth

it's a gigantic land creature of immense strength here's the full description behold bear moth which i made as i made you he eats grass like an ox behold his strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly he makes his tail stiff like a cedar his sinews of his thighs are knit together his bones are tubes of bronze his limbs like bars of iron he is the first of the works of god let him who made him bring near his sword for the mountains yield food for him where all the wild

beasts play under the lotus plants he lies in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh for his shade the lotus trees cover him the willows are the brooks around him behold if the river is turbulent he is not frightened he is confident though jordan rushes against his mouth can one take him by his eyes or pierce his nose with a snare now just after this description comes the leviathan this creature is a giant sea monster serpentine scaly and very ferocious the description is a bit longer than beer moths so i won't read out

in full only some select verses so you get the picture his back is made of rows of shields shut up closely as with a seal one is so near the other so that no air can come between them out of his mouth go flaming torches sparks of fire leap forth out of his nostrils comes forth smoke as from a boiling pot and burning rushes his breath kindles coals and a flame comes forth from his mouth can you fill his skin with harpoons or head with fishing spears lay your hands on him remember the battle you

will not do it again so some scholars have tried the same tactic applied with the unicorn finding a real-life counterpart to match these descriptions let's start with a beer moth a large land animal that eats grass like an ox and is known for its incredible strength but mostly just relaxes in shaded waters if you guessed a hippo you'd be right okay how about a leviathan an aquatic reptile that has tough scaly skin and rows of sharp teeth did you think of a crocodile so potentially god is not describing two mythical beasts but simply two real-life

animals just with a bit of pizzazz at one point in time this view was really popular amongst scholars but it's had its problems over the years mostly with the leviathan how do we account for the creature's fiery breath or its serpentine appearance plus the leviathan lives in the depths of the seas whereas crocodiles typically live in fresh water another popular theory hopes to offer a better explanation these are not descriptions of real animals but instead really are descriptions of mythical beasts with great power see the leviathan has a bit of a history with this one

in a bunch of myths across the world especially creation myths there's a trope of gods doing battles with sea monsters just like leviathan the germans called it the chaos camp or primordial battle for example in the babylonian creation myth the enumera elish the chief god marduk defeats the seabeast tiamat and creates the land sea and sky with her dismembered body a very similar story comes from an ancient canaanite myth in which the seabeast lotan is slayed by the chief god baal at the start of creation in fact the name lotan is generally believed to be

where we get the name leviathan in the first place the chaos camp appears more than just the middle east the north god thor battles with the world serpent jormungander the greek god zeus slays the serpentine tiffon the hindu deity indra defeats the aquatic snake demon vitra and even as far as japan we have the shinto storm god susanoo who slays the eight headed sea serpent yamato no orochi so out of this we get the idea of the leviathan this primordial sea snake of creation but note that in the book of job god's not doing battle

with the leviathan instead he's celebrating its majesty and it all seems to invert the trope on its head oh and the counterpart biamoth sadly it's not really well known where it comes from some say it's a giant mythical cow after all its name biermoth is related to the hebrew word for cattle behema with this they suspect that it could be related to a giant bull in the epic of gilgamesh that was sent down from heaven to do battle with the heroes gilgamesh and enkidu who knows the jury's out on this one perhaps the beer moth

is some sort of other creature that only ever appears here in this part of the bible and nowhere else the nephilim final creatures for now the nephilim literally translating to the fallen ones but often just called the giants i touched on them in a video by the origins of lucifer but to summarize the nephilim are said to be the offspring of a forbidden procreation between angels and humans this story is expounded on at length in the apocalypse book of enoch where they cause havoc and generally just cause a bit of a mess now that's an

apocryphal account and not in the mainstream bible canon so if we limit it just to the bible there isn't really much about them in genesis they are said to be warriors of renown and in the book of numbers the israelites described themselves as being the size of grasshoppers in comparison to them the real debate is whether we take it literally or if they're just being emphatic maybe these are just exaggerated descriptions of real life warriors well the book of enoch takes it literally and even goes a step further measuring the nephilim at a whopping 1.35

kilometers that's 4500 feet tall but who knows the book of enoch is just one of many interpretations a clue could be in the earliest translations of the bible which follow the same pattern and translate nephilim as gigantes which by the way is where we get our word for giants so there you have it i find that reading the text in their original language really reveals a lot about ancient texts like the bible the new testament especially the book of revelations has some really wacky creatures like dragons and creatures covered entirely with eyes perhaps a topic

for a future video either way i really hope you enjoyed this video and if you're new here subscribe a like and a comment also goes a long way it's great to see so much activity on this channel and so many positive responses to my content i might wish to produce more videos and mythology and biblical studies in the future but i'm open to any and all suggestions who knows next week's topic could be entirely different and by the way this channel has a discord check the link in the description head on there and join the

discussion anyway i look forward to seeing you next time goodbye