The history of Levi has been dealt with here in what seems the only true and natural way of treating it, as a histor}^ of an individual person. Of the theory that sees in the sons of Jacob the mythical Eponymi of the tribes that claimed descent from them — which finds in the crimes and chances of their lives the outlines of a national or tribal chronicle — which refuses to recognise tliat Jacob had twelve sons, and inaists.that the history of Dinah records an attempt on the part of the Canaan- ites to enslave and degrade a Hebrew tribe (Ewald, Ge- gchic]ite,\,A6G^'M) — of this one may be content to say, as the author says of other hypotheses hardly more ex- travagant, '• Die Wissenschaft verscheucht alle solche (lespenster" {ibid, i, 4G6). The book of Genesis tells us of the lives of men and women, not of ethnological phan- toms. A 3'et wilder conjecture has been hazarded by another (jerman critic. P. Redslob {Die alttesfamenil. j\amen, Ilamb. 1846, p. 24, 25), recognising the meaning of the name of Levi as given above, finds in it evidence of the existence of a confederacy or synod of the priests tliat had been connected with the several local worships of Canaan, and who, in the time of Samuel and David, were gathered together, ;oi«ef/, " round the Central Pan- theon in Jerusalem." Here, also, we maj^ borrow the terms of our judgment from the language of the writer himself. If there are " abgeschmackten ctymologischen INlahrchen" (Redslob, p. 82) connected with the name of Levi, they are hardly those we meet with in the narra- tive of Genesis. — Smith. See Jacob.
2. Tlie father of Jlatthat and son of Simeon (INIaase- iah), of the ancestors of Christ, in the private maternal line between David and Zerubbabel (Luke iii, 29). B.C. post 876. Lord Hervey thinks that the name of Levi reappears in his descendant Lebbieus (Geneal. of Cln-ist, p. 132). See Genealogy of Jesus Chijist.
3. Father of another Matthat and son of Melchi, third preceding IMarv, among Christ's ancestors (Luke iii, 24 ). B.C. considerably ante 22.
4. (Afi'iV.) Gne of the apostles, the son of Alphseus (Mark ii. 14; Ijuke v, 27, 29), elsewhere called Mat- thew (Matt, ix, 9).
Levi'athan (Ileb. livyathan', ''\^'^i^, usually de- rived from !T^15, a vreuth, with adject, ending "i ; but perhaps compounded of ^^7, in-cathcd, and "jri, a sea- viunxtcr ; occurs Job iii, 8; xli, 1 [ Hebrew xl, 25] ^ Psa. Ixxiv, 14; civ, 26; Is.i. xxvii, 1 ; Sej)!. ^ookiov, but to litya Kiirotj in Job iii, 8; Vulg. Lmatliaii, but draco in Psa. ; Auth. Vers. '• Leviathan," l)ut " their mourning" in Job iii, 8) probalily has different significations, e. g. ; (1.) A serpent, especially a large one (.fob iii, 8), hence as the symbol of the hostile kingdom of Babylon (Isa. xxvii, 1). (2.) Specially, the rro(v;r///r (.loli xli,.!). (3.) A sea-monster (Psa, civ. 26 ) ; troiiically. for a cruel ene- my (Psa. Ixxiv, 14 ; compare Isa. li, 9 ; K/i'k. xxix, 3). This Heb; word, which denotes any twisted animal, is especially applicable to every great tenant of the waters, such as the great marine serpents and crocodiles, and, it
may be added, the colossal serpents and great monitors of the desert. See Behemoth ; Dragon. In general it points to the crocodile, and Job xli is unequivocally descriptive of that saurian. But in Isaiah and the I'salms foreign kings are evidently apostrophized under the name of Leviathan, though other texts more natu- rally api)ly to the whale, notwithstanding the objections that have been made to that interpretation of the term. " It is (pute an error to assert, as Dr. Harris {Did. Xat, Hist. Bib.), Mason Good {Book of Job translated^. Mi- chaelis {Supp. 1297), and Kosenmiiller (quoting Micha- elis in not. ad Bochart Hieroz. iii, 738) have done, that the whale is not found in the Mediterranean. The Orca ejladiator (Gray) — the grampus mentioned by Lee — the Physalus antiquoruni (Gray), or the Rorqucd de hi Jlfedi- terranee (Cuvier), are not uncommon in the Mediter- ranean (Fischer, Synops. Mamm. p. 525, and Lacepede, //. A', des C'etaf. p. 115), and in ancient times the species may have been more numerous" (Smith). See Whale. The word crocodile docs not occur in the Auth. Vers., although its Greek form KpoKoCtiXoQ is found in the Sept. (Lev. xi, 29, where for the " tortoise," 3U, it has KQOKO^iiKoq \t()(jcnoc, Vulg. crocodilus) ; but there is no specific word in the Hebrew of which it is the acknowl- edged representative. " Bochart (iii, 769, edit. Rosen- mliller) says that the Talmudists use the word livyathan to denote the crocodile ; this, however, is denied by Lewysohn (Zool. des Talm. p. 155, 355), who says that in the Talmud it always denotes a ichale, and never a crocodile. For the Talmudical fables about the levia- than, see Lewysohn {Zool. des Talm.), in passages re- ferred to above, and Buxtorf, Lexicon Chald. Talm. s. v. "ITilP" (Smith). Some of these seem to be alluded to in 2 Esdr. vi, 49, 52. The Egyptians called it fsmok (see Bunsen's yEgyptens Stellung, i, 581), the Arabs name it tanise (compare x«/lh//7J, Herod, ii, 69); but Strabo says that the Egyptian crocodile was known by the name su- clms, (sovxo'^1 probably referring to the sacred species). It is not only denoted by the leriallian of Job xli, 1, but probably also by the tannin of Ezek. xxix, 3 ; xxxii, 2 (compare Isa. xxvii, 1 ; li, 9) ; and perhaps by the ?ec-c/- beast {Tiyp P^n, "spearmen") of Psa. Ixviii, 30. Others confound the leviathan with the orca of Pliny (ix, 5), i. e. probably the Physter macrocephalus of Linn, (see Th, Hase, De Lenathan Jobi, Brem. 1723) ; Schultens under- stands the fabulous dragon {Comment, in Job. p. 1174 sq. ; compare Oedmann, Samml. iii, 1 sq.) ; not to dwell upon the supposed identification with fossil species of lizards (Koch, in Llidde's Zeitsclirift f. veryhicli Erdl: jMagdeb. 1844 ). In the detailed description of Job (^ch, xli), probably " the Egyptian crocodile is depicted in all its magnitude, ferocity, and indolence, such as it was in early days, when as j-et unconscious of the power of man, and only individually tamed for the purposes of an imposture, wliich had sufficient authority to intimidate the public and protect the species, under the sanctified pretext that it was a type of pure water, and an emblem of the importance of irrigation; though the people in general seem ever to have been disposed to consider it a personification of the destructive jirinciple. At a later period the Egyptians, probably of such places as Ten- tyris, where crocodiles were not held in veneration, not only hunted and slew them, but it apjiears from a statue that a sort of Bestiarii could tame them sufticicntly to jierform certain exhibitions mounted on their backs. The intense musky odor of its fiesh must have rendered the crocodile at aU times very unjialatable food, but breast-armor was made of the horny and ridged parts of its back. Viewed as the crocodile of the Tliebaid, it is not clear that the leviathan symbolized the Pharaoh, or was a type of Egvpt, any more than of several Ro- man colonies (even where it was not indigenous, as at Nismes, in (iaul, on the ancient coins of which the fig- ure of one cliained occurs), and of cities in Phaniicia, Egypt, and other parts of the coast of Africa. During the Roman sway in Egypt, crocodiles had not disap-