Dragon

S ymbol of Marduk in Babylonian mythology

S ymbol of The Main Adversary of YHWH, aka Satan in the Bible

T he dragon is often representative of a deity, but not always.

Cahn, Jonathan. The Dragon's Prophecy: Israel, the Dark Resurrection, and the End of Days (pp. 33-34). Charisma House. Kindle Edition.

A s the word tanim can mean both dragon and serpent, so in Revelation the Devil is called both the Dragon and the Serpent. When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, the Hebrew tanim became the Greek drakohn, or dragon. In the New Testament the word appears only in the Book of Revelation and mostly in one section—the vision of the Dragon and the woman of Revelation 12.

BP: Heaven and Earth Class

1. W ith Marduk, he's fighting the dragon. But remember the dragon is a symbol of— Tiamat is the waters, the waters. So, there's this motif of the divine mastery of the waters is what shows that your God is the most powerful God on the block kind of thing. And so if God's house is in or on the waters— if the waters are summoned to give their allegiance and praise to Yahweh, this is— God is the master of the waters. This is the language that we're in here.
2. Y ou can talk about the chaos waters as the waters themselves or about the most dangerous creature in those waters and you get the symbol of the dragon.
3. w e're also participating in a Canaanite, Babylonian thing here. There—it's a widespread motif of these dangerous creatures in the waters become symbolic of the forces of disorder or death or chaos. And so imagery and stories about my chief god slaying the sea dragon is a very widespread motif. So it makes perfect sense why the biblical authors in their context would draw on this. So these are just two images. They're both from even pre-Israelite times.
4. I n the Hebrew Bible there are multiple ways that dragon imagery can be brought up. Monster imagery. The main point is to say Yahweh is more powerful than any forces of disorder and death. So Genesis 1, the dragon taming strategy is to say, "It's not a god, it's not a deity." The dragon is a deity in all these stories.
5. S o, it's another one of these elbow jabs, just like we don't name the sun and the moon. The tannin, he's not a thing. He's just a creature.
6. W hen God is boasting about his creation to Job and about the marvels there's two creatures that God gives these long speeches about. Behemoth (laughs) and Leviathan. And in the chapter on Leviathan it begins in chapter Job 41; Leviathan is a synonym for tannin.
7. So the whole point, the strategy here is it's not a god, it's not a rival to Yahweh. It's a creature. Now, it's a dangerous creature. It'll kill you.
8. So we're in the realm of acknowledging that creation is still dangerous. It seems like it can thwart God's purposes 'cause sometimes it'll kill us. But despite the fact that our lives can be ended by it, it is not rival to Yahweh's mastery over the waters. So one strategy is to say, "It's not a thing, it's a creature in the waters that he blesses and they're happy out there, let him play." So that's one strategy. There are other strategies when you really wanna pump up Yahweh's mastery, where you depict him as destroying and hacking into pieces the chaos monster. There are two ways of making the same theological point that Yahweh is the master of the waters, and he has the ability to confront it. Which is why the poet of Psalm 74 is so anguished. Why won't you do it again? Please do it again.
9. In the Bible, water and sea beasts function as evocative symbols of overwhelming and powerful chaos-inducing forces.
10. Isaiah 27
11. Revelation 12 - Jesus is overcoming this enormous dragon with seven heads and ten horns and crowns. And it's trying to devour up a little child that's coming from the woman, but instead the child is whisked away so that it can grow and eventually overcome the dragon.
12. There's dangerous dragons that represent death and pain and evil, but they aren't God. God's the master of those forces. And he's working out a plan through Jesus to vanquish the dragon. And meanwhile, we join the poet of Psalm 74— Yeah? And we just beg Yahweh to do it again. (laughs) Overcome the dragon again in our communities, in my own life, in my body, in our hearts, and in our minds.