Day 2461 – Theology Thursday – Slaying the Sea Monster – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible

Welcome to Day 2461 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom – Theology Thursday – Slaying the Sea Monster – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible. Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2461 Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2461 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.   Today is the twenty-second lesson in our segment, Theology Thursday. Utilizing excerpts from a book titled: I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible written by Hebrew Bible scholar and professor the late Dr. Michael S Heiser, we will invest a couple of years going through the entire Bible, exploring short Biblical lessons that you may not have received in Bible classes or Church. The Bible is a wonderful book. Its pages reveal the epic story of God’s redemption of humankind and the long, bitter conflict against evil. Yet it’s also a book that seems strange to us. While God’s Word was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. Today, our lesson is: Slaying the Sea Monster! Slaying the Sea Monster When we think of creation, we think of everything beginning with God’s spoken word—as Genesis 1 tells us. But some Old Testament writers concentrate on another aspect of creation—and a weird one at that. In Psalm 74, in the middle of God’s ordering of the sea and dry land, His establishing of the sun, moon, stars, and the seasons, we find another event: God destroying sea monsters. 12 You, O God, are my king from ages past, bringing salvation to the earth. 13 You split the sea by your strength and smashed the heads of the sea monsters. 14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan[a] and let the desert animals eat him. 15 You caused the springs and streams to gush forth, and you dried up rivers that never run dry. 16 Both day and night belong to you; you made the starlight[b] and the sun. 17 You set the boundaries of the earth, and you made both summer and winter. (Psa 74:12-17). Warring the Sea Monster The reference to God breaking “the heads of the sea monster” and crushing “the heads of Leviathan” has led many on a desperate study of Old Testament zoology. But this, along with many other confusing Old Testament images, has a cultural context. In the ancient world, the original (“primordial”) chaotic conditions of creation were often portrayed as a monstrous dragon. This is reflected in stories from ancient Babylon and Israel’s closest neighbor, Ugarit (ancient Syria, just north of Israel). In the literature of ancient Ugarit, the god Baal battles Yamm, who is portrayed as a chaotic, churning sea, and a terrifying sea dragon named Tannun or Litanu. These terms are equivalent to the Hebrew words in...