This article is from
Journal of Creation 19(2):14–16, August 2005

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A new candidate for Leviathan?

by Peter Booker

Chapter 41 of the book of Job in the Bible describes a creature called Leviathan. Leviathan was massive and terrifying, and apparently could breathe fire. God describes Leviathan to Job, as an example of something which He created which is beyond mankind’s ability to compete with.¹ A number of creatures have been proposed as candidates for Leviathan.

Leviathan—Tyrannosaurus rex?

The massive size and terrifying teeth described in Job could lead one to propose that Leviathan may have been a theropod (flesh-eating) dinosaur such as Tyrannosaurus rex. However, verses 31–32 say of Leviathan:

31 ‘He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 ‘Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair.’

This clearly describes an aquatic creature. Psalm 104:25–26 also confirms that Leviathan lived in the sea:

25 ‘There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number—living things both large and small.
26 ‘There the ships go to and fro, And the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.’

Clearly T. rex, which was land-dwelling, cannot have been Leviathan.

Leviathan—Kronosaurus?

The book The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved!² suggests that Leviathan may have been something like Kronosaurus queenslandicus. However, there are problems with Kronosaurus (or its larger pliosaur kin, such as Mosasaurus) being the Leviathan of Job.

These extinct creatures were all wholly marine reptiles. Due to their great size, they would have lived in the deep ocean. They would not have been opponents for land-dwelling humans armed with swords, spears, darts, arrows and slingstones, which Leviathan was.

Verse 30 says of Leviathan:

30 ‘His undersides are jagged potsherds [broken, generally sharp, pottery fragments], leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.’

Pliosaurs like Kronosaurus had flippers and not legs, so they could not stand or move along on the land, and could not leave trails in the mud at the water’s edge, as would, say, a crocodile.

Leviathan—the crocodile?

Long-agers are offended by the notion that the Bible might be describing creatures which, according to their belief system, died millions of years before people appeared on the scene. So the identification of Leviathan as a still-living creature suits modern long-age tastes. (This probably also helps drive the common [mis]identification of Behemoth as an elephant or hippopotamus, rather than a dinosaur. However, the tail of these extant creatures can scarcely be compared to a cedar tree, as is the tail of Behemoth.)

The NIV has a footnote to Job 41:1 suggesting Leviathan is ‘possibly the crocodile’. Crocodiles are normally associated with rivers and lakes, not the sea, as Leviathan is. However, some crocodiles (e.g. Australia’s estuarine or saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus) do spend time in the sea.

Like crocodiles, Leviathan had scales. Verses 15–17 in the KJV read:

15 ‘His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
16 ‘One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
17 ‘They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.’

However, a crocodile’s scales, while tough, can be sundered by a weapon. (The NIV refers to ‘shields’ rather than scales.)

Verse 25 could also very easily refer to a crocodile:

25 ‘When he raises himself up, the mighty are terrified … .’

A crocodile raises itself from a prone position on its stomach onto its legs to walk, run or attack. But although a rising crocodile would cause most people to be afraid, it can be killed by a warrior with weapons, so perhaps a ‘mighty’ warrior need not be terrified of one. An ordinary crocodile also seems to lack the size and invincibility clearly indicated in the Bible’s description of Leviathan. And certainly no existing crocodile breathes fire!

The real Leviathan?

A new candidate which meets the features described in Job much more precisely than the candidates described above is Sarcosuchus imperator (flesh crocodile emperor), commonly called ‘SuperCroc’. It was first discovered in 1966, and is said to have lived in the middle Cretaceous period. There is an article about Sarcosuchus in the December 2001 edition of National Geographic (pp. 86–89), which has some descriptions that remarkably parallel those of Leviathan in Job.

Job 41 is quite clear that Leviathan had exceptional scales, scales that could not be penetrated by spears, arrows or darts:

15 ‘His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
16 ‘One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
17 ‘They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered … .
26 ‘The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.
27 ‘He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.
28 ‘The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.
29 ‘Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.’

Sarcosuchus had remarkable scales. In fact, the wording in National Geographic has remarkable parallels to the KJV’s wording:

‘“Gorgeous armor” mused paleontologist Hans Larsson, examining a stack of foot-long bony scutes that looked like roofing tiles. These would have provided an impermeable shield over SuperCroc’s neck, back and tail.’³

Scales ‘… that cannot be sundered …’(KJV), and ‘… an impermeable shield’ (National Geographic).

Leviathan had huge jaws and terrible teeth:

14 ‘Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?’

The National Geographic article says of Sarcosuchus:

‘It’s SuperCroc’s skull that is unparalleled. More than a hundred teeth jut from narrow jaws that must have been adept at snagging fish. And unlike any other croc, living or extinct, SuperCroc’s skull gets wider toward the front end, which is armed with a deadly row of enlarged incisors. … Our most complete skull is just shy of six feet.’⁴

Then we come to a very interesting possibility. Comparing the skull of Sarcosuchus to that of an ordinary crocodile, we see that not only is it much bigger, but also that Sarcosuchus has a bulbous structure on the end of its snout. The author of the National Geographic article, Paul Sereno, speculates about the purpose of this structure:

‘The swollen end of the snout houses an enormous cavity under the nostrils, meaning this croc may have had an enhanced sense of smell and a most unusual call.’⁵

This may shed new light on some otherwise cryptic passages in Job 41.

18 ‘His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn.
19 ‘Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.
20 ‘Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.
21 ‘His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.’

This passage from Job has correlations with the enduring legends of fire-breathing dragons. Could Sarcosuchus have breathed fire? Here we have an organism with an unexplained bulbous snout, under which is an enormous cavity. Could its function have been to produce fire? We can see in the existing natural world an example of a highly exothermic metabolic process, in the bombardier beetle. If such a tiny organism can produce such heat from mixing chemicals in a tiny chamber, it is surely conceivable that a large structure such as the ‘enormous’ cavity under the bulbous snout of the Sarcosuchus could actually have been part of a biological mechanism to produce flames and smoke.

Job is quite clear that Leviathan was a large and terrifying enemy.

9 ‘Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering.
10 ‘None is fierce enough to rouse him.’

Sarcosuchus meets this description. National Geographic says:

‘… we estimate that a mature adult Sarcosuchus grew to about 40 feet long. Its weight? As much as ten tons.’⁵

A creature of this size would certainly make a human feel overpowered at the sight of him. When Sarcosuchus rose up from a prone position onto its legs, it would indeed make even the mightiest human afraid, and retreat before him. It would also make the depths churn like a boiling caldron and leave behind a glistening wake (verses 31–32) by creating a massive trail of turbulence and bubbles as it plunged into the water and swam.

As we noted earlier, verse 30, describing the jagged potsherds beneath Leviathan, and the trail in the mud, argues against Kronosaurus being Leviathan. However, it fits crocodilians such as Sarcosuchus.

Leviathan was described in verse 33 thus:

33 ‘Nothing on earth is his equal—a creature without fear.
34 ‘He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.’

In the National Geographic article, Sarcosuchus is depicted fighting a large dinosaur. It would indeed have been fearless, and a king among living things.

Conclusion

There are some remarkable parallels between Leviathan, as described in Job, and Sarcosuchus imperator. I believe that Sarcosuchus is the best candidate yet proposed for Leviathan. I would like to suggest that publishers of future creationist literature should also stress the remarkable parallels between Leviathan and Sarcosuchus. (I note with approval that in the just-printed new book Dragons of the Deep,⁶ CMI’s Dr Carl Wieland comes to the same identification of Leviathan as this article—each of us independently of the other.)

Indeed, Bible footnotes could credibly state, ‘Possibly the now-extinct giant crocodile Sarcosuchus imperator’.

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