young, w.a.- leviathan in the book of job and moby-dick (article-1982)

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LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB AND "MOBY-DICK" Author(s): WILLIAM A. YOUNG Source: Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Winter 1982), pp. 388-401 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41178228 Accessed: 23/01/2015 14:28

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LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB AND MOBY-DICK

WILLIAM A. YOUNG

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE as a source for Herman Melville's novels has long been recognized, 1 and the crucial impact of the Book of Job on Melville's masterpiece, Mo/Jy-Dick, has been widely observed and discussed.2 Although some interpreters dismiss Melville's use of the Book of Job as casual and occasional, others have concluded that "the influence of Job [is] pervasive and controlling, basic and thematic, the most informing single principle of the book's composition."3 The present study focuses on Melville's use of the mysterious

Leviathan of Job inMo/Jy-Dick. However, unlike other studies of Melville's use of the Book of Job in Mo/Jy-Dick, the primary purpose is not to further the interpretation of the novel. The chief aim of this work is to add some insights to the question of Melville's Biblical hermeneutic. What does Melville's use of the Book of Job, especially the Leviathan symbol in Mo/Jy-Dick, suggest about his fundamental approach to interpretation of the Bible? With this ultimate objective in mind, we turn first to a brief assessment of the general influences which shaped Melville's interpretation of Scripture before addressing the question of the role of Leviathan in the Book of Job and Mo/Jy-Dick.

I. MELVILLE'S INTERPRETATION OF ScRIPTURE Melville had absorbed the content of Scripture as a child

raised in the Biblically oriented Dutch Reformed Church. As a result of his extensive childhood exposure, many of his direct

William A. Young is Associate Professor of Religion and Chaplain at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. The focus of his current research is the Biblical understanding of nineteenth-century American writers, most recently Thoreau. In 1980 he spent some time in Israel participating in the archeologi cal excavation of Tel Lachish.

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LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB ANDMOBY-DICK 389 allusions to Scripture "came from him spontaneously, as idioms in his vocabulary, as patterns of his thought."4 However, his use of the orthodox, Calvinist interpretation of Scripture, characteristic of the Dutch Reformed Church, was sometimes intentional. For example, although the traditional orthodox assumption that Leviathan in the Book of Job was a whale had been challenged frequently by Melville's time, he utilized it nevertheless to connect his novel on whaling with the Biblical Job.5 Secondly, he draws on the distinctly Calvinist allegorical interpretation of Leviathan in the Book of Job as "the wrath of God."6 As we shall see, in Moby-Dick Melville exploits the contradiction of the orthodox, Calvinist approach to Scripture which, under the guise of being literal and factual (Leviathan is the whale) is, in fact, Calvinist dogma in disguise (the real meaning of Leviathan is that the beast symbolizes the wrath of God against reprobate sinners).7 By the time he wroteMoby-Dick, Melville was also familiar with

the burgeoning rational approach to Scripture, especially the efforts to see Scripture in the context of other oriental literature. As he began work on Moby-Dick he purchased a set of Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary, which placed Biblical legends in the context of similar mythic material. This rational approach to Scripture undercut the orthodox assumption of Biblical authority and uniqueness by offering psychological (rather than supernatural) explanations of the myths.8 Melville utilized this approach to discovering the meaning of Scripture in Moby-Dick. For example, he draws on the interpretation of the Biblical story of Jonah as a variant of the initiation ceremony.9 And, we shall see that the psychological theory of mythmaking informs his portrayal of Captain Ahab's attitude toward Leviathan in Moby-Dick. However, Melville was hardly an enthusiastic advocate of early

nineteenth-century higher criticism. At times he seems to have had outright scorn for the strictly rational efforts to discover the meaning of Scripture .10 Ironically, his disdain for Biblical scholarship was similar to his rejection of orthodox Biblicism. Just as orthodox interpretation wore a mask of commitment to Scriptural fact to advance speculative, dogmatic theories, higher criticism feigned a concern for historical truth, but actually sought to demonstrate a priori psychological, scientific theories. Although Melville utilized the methods of both orthodox and liberal Bibli-



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390 SOUNDINGS

cal interpretation, he found both inadequate, for neither penetrated to the level which Melville considered most important in Scripture, its "deep wisdom" about life, its "timeless truth."11 In the last analysis Melville's interpretation of Scripture defies

classification. It was eclectic, based on his own encounter with the text.12 Conversant with, but not bound by orthodox and critical approaches, Melville made his own unique attempt to discover the underlying truth of the Bible. The degree to which he succeeded is nowhere more evident than in his interpretation of Job's Leviathan. Not so much at the level of "fact," for Melville's identification of Job's Leviathan with the whale _was purposefully anachronistic, but at a deeper level. Moby-Dick captures the original force of Leviathan as a symbol in the Book of Job, and unleashes its impact on his own cultural situation. Before examining Melville's interpretation of Job's Leviathan, we need to recall the role of Leviathan in the Book of Job.

II. LEVIATHAN IN THE BooK OF JoB13

There are two contradictory references to Leviathan in the Book of Job. In Job's initial curse (3:8), Leviathan is a monster of chaos, opposed to the divine order. In cursing the day of his birth, the sufferer invokes a pair of mythic beasts, Leviathan and his cohort, Yamm (Sea).

Let the spell-binders of Yamm14 curse him;15 Let the skilled ones arouse Leviathan.

This curse formula implies a mythic dimension to Job's appeal to God. By seeking to arouse Leviathan, the cosmic monster of chaos who threatens the divine sovereign's rule, Job is in effect calling for a cosmic confrontation.16 Instead of using his power to harass innocent and helpless Job, God should be using his might to control chaos and evil in the universe. In the rest of the Johan dialogue as it is preserved in the MT,

job alone invokes the mythic colleagues of Leviathan-Tannin, Yamm, and Rahab. For example, Job laments that God is treating him as one of his cosmic foes:

Am I Tannin or Yamm that you should set a guard over me? (7: 12) As the dialogue progresses, Job becomes increasingly aware of

the futility of his original taunt. He admits that God has already



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LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB AND MOBY-DICK 391

quelled the monsters of chaos (9:8,13; 26: 12-14). His power is unquestionable. Even though the forces of cosmic evil have been vanquished, evil prevails. From this perspective, the next step, which Job does not fully take, would be to conclude that the cosmic sovereign himself is the source of evil and chaos. There is a second reference to Leviathan in Job. In his second

utterance from the storm, Yahweh responds to Job's taunt. Job called for Leviathan to be aroused. What would happen if Leviathan were to engage in combat? Job would find that man, not God, is Leviathan's adversary.

Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook, Press down his tongue with a cord? ...

Lay hands on him; Think of the battle; You will not do it again. (41:1,8 or 40:25,32 in Hebrew)

The description of Leviathan in Yahweh's speech is ambiguous. The debate among Biblical scholars continues as to whether Leviathan in Job 41 is an earthly creature (presumably a crocodile) or a mythic beast. 17 The confusion may very well be intentional. As part of the created order, Leviathan is no threat to God. It is from a human perspective that Leviathan takes on the mythic dimensions of a monster of chaos. Job has invoked the mythic Leviathan, but ~od's response deflates the myth. The Book of Job critiques two widely accepted assumptions in

the ancient world about the ways of God-the theory of retribution, which insists that God guarantees the moral order, and the mythic view, which makes the conflict between chaos and order, good and evil, the cosmic sovereign's problem.18 Ultimately, Job learns that the truth lies beyond the confines of any humanly devised dogma or theory. Leviathan in Job is presented from two different

perspectives-the human, which creates a myth, and the divine, which undercuts the myth and forces man into a direct confrontation with the natural world, just as the deflation of the theory of retribution in the Book of Job forces the recognition that morality is a human responsibility.

Ill. LEVIATHAN IN MOBY-DICK Interpreters who agree that the Book of Job had a crucial

impact on Moby-Dick divide on the question of which of the



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392 SOUNDINGS major protagonists in the novel is the Johan hero-Ahab or Ishmael. If Ahab's "heroic rebellion against cosmic malignity"19 is seen as the focus, thenMoby-Dick is perhaps best understood as an "inversion of the Book of Job."20 Whereas Job repents when confronted by the power and the mystery of God, Ahab maintains his rebellion against God to the end. Evil and chaos seem triumphant. Others consider Ishmael the Johan hero, stressing that he learns from his voyage the Johan "lesson of acceptance of the world as it is."21 A way out of this interpretive dilemma may be found through

the recognition that Melville used the separat~ experiences of Ahab and Ishmael with Leviathan to illustrate the flaws of both the orthodox and liberal Christian perspectives. Just as the J oban author presents conflicting perspectives on Leviathan to undercut the dominant metaphysical and moral doctrines of his day, Melville presents two different approaches to Leviathan, which expose the contradictions of the most influential religious philosophies of his period. In so doing, Melville penetrates to the level of the "deep wisdom" of Job, in the context of other Biblical wisdom literature. There can be no doubt Melville is intentionally engaging in

Biblical interpretation. The Extracts with which Moby-Dick begins include, among the first five, three references to Leviathan in the King James Version.22 Although Melville was not apparently aware of the mythic reference to Leviathan in Job 3:8, he does quote Isaiah 27:1, which is a clearly mythic allusion to the eschatological destruction of the mythic "crooked serpent ... the dragon that is in the sea." ln addition, of the six other direct allusions to Job in Moby-Dick, half are to the descriptiori of Leviathan in Yahweh's second speech.23 Throughout the novel virtually every dragon-slaying myth known to Melville is mentioned in relation to Leviathan.24 In the style of the new science of comparative mythology, Melville is suggesting a universal myth with various manifestations. There can be little doubt, however, that the Biblical Leviathan is the primary reference.25 Captain Ahab has a clearly mythic understanding of Le

viathan. His namesake, the wicked King Ahab of Israel, is remembered as the Israelite monarch who introduced the Canaanite religion of Baal into Israel (First Kings 16:30-31). We now know, from the Ugaritic texts, the place of Lotan (= Leviathan) in Canaanite mythology. Although Melville lived a



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LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB ANDMOBY-DICK 393

century before the discovery of these texts, "the Biblical scholarship of Melville's day inclined to equate the Tyrian Baal ... and the Babylonian Bel,"26 and there is evidence in Moby-Dick that Melville knew the myth of Bel and the dragon.27 In sympathy with the view that myths are human creations, he dramatizes Ahab, imparting mythic status to the white whale , not in the context of the ancient Near Eastern mythology which the author of Job utilized, but the Calvinist mythology, which viewed Leviathan as the wrath of God personified. Ahab's Leviathan is no cosmic adversary of God. In his mad

ness Ahab has taken the mythic dimension of Job's Leviathan to its Calvinist extreme. Leviathan is God in his cosmic malignancy. Melville tells us that Ahab subscribes "to the outblown rumors of the white whale [which] did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and half-formed fetal suggestions of supernatural agencies .... "28 As various interpreters have realized, "Ahab traces the actions of Moby Dick to his Creator and views the whale's malevolence as indicating an essential corruption at the heart of the universe."29 To this extent Melville deems Ahab's rebellion a logical extension of the Biblical Job's. Like his ancient fellow-sufferer, Ahab is a "spokesman for the legitimate grievances of mankind, crying out against divine injustice."30 Ahab's legitimate rebellion against divine injustice climaxes with Melville's statement that The white whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them .... He piled upon the white whale's hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down .... 31

Ahab captures the hearts and minds of the crew of the Pequod, symbolic of all mankind, because he taps this rage and gives it mythic focus. In so doing, Melville takes to the extreme the implications of the Calvinist myth. For if it is true, as Calvinist dogma maintained, that God is the source of evil, and that God uses the demonic forces to drive the reprobate to their destruction, then, in the words of a nineteenth-century critic of Calvinism, "heaven and hell could equally revolt at ... [God's plan] and all rational beings conspire to execrate the almighty. monster."32 It is possible to read Ahab's unholy quest as an unwilling endorsement on Melville's part of the Calvinist world view.33 Although Ahab, like the liberal critics of Melville's day , sensed



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394 SOUNDINGS the inadequacy of the Calvinist myth, he cannot transcend it. He accepts his reprobate status and allows "his heart to be hardened." In his rage he succumbs to the illusion that by killing the whale he will establish in himself the sovereignty of truth. "Who's over me?" he shouts at Starbuck. "Truth hath no confines."34 Once he has placed himself at the center of his mythically defined cosmos, his struggle against Leviathan has ultimate justification. Nothing can qualify it.

Here lies Melville's critique of Ahab's quest. In his private struggle against cosmic evil, Ahab is an heroic character. His flaunting of Calvinist dogma is appealing. His downfall is not his metaphysical challenge, but a moral deterioration which destroys the innate human tendency to act justly and with compassion. He uses manipulation and intimidation to enlist his crew in his private battle. He places his quest above aiding a fellow whaler in his search for his missing son and thus violates the fundamental rule of human morality, the Golden Rule, after which he forgives himself! 35 There is some evidence that at the end Ahab is struggling to reestablish within himself a modicum of human compassion and justice. He shows compassion to Starbuck, decides to break off the insane journey and return to his wife and family, but finally "his glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last cindered apple to the soil."36 In the final analysis, "Ahab becomes an accomplice of the divine malice to which he offers the worship of defiance."37 Ahab's quest, fated by a deadly combination of an American

individualism run rampant38 and a Calvinist world view taken to its extreme, ends in disaster. For the sake of his own integrity, he rejects not only the Judeo-Christian view of God,39 but also the moral dimension of Western religious tradition. He is no longer one of Rachel's children.40 The tragedy of Ahab's confrontation with a mythically de

fined Leviathan is, however, only one side of Melville's interpretation of Job's Leviathan. Ishmael's quest and ultimate confrontation with Leviathan follow a different course. The lack of interaction between Ahab and Ishmael suggests that Melville intends to separate their journeys and exploit the resultant ambiguity of meaning.41 In the end it is Ishmael, the spiritual orphan of Israel, who is saved by the Rachel, and who, in the words of Job, "escaped alone to tell thee."42 If Ahab's quest symbolizes the self-destr.\ictive dead end of the




Calvinist world view and the Calvinist approach to Scripture, Ishmael's journey must be seen in the context of the other major religious philosophy influential on Melville-liberalism, and its critical approach to the Bible. According to this view, human reason leads to an awareness of "a single divine reality which is conceived to lie at the heart of moral Truth."43 Ishmael's journey in the Pequod is an effort to vindicate a faith in "the great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy ."44 If Ahab represents Calvinism and American individualism, Ishmael symbolizes American faith in reason and democratic virtue. Ahab's Moby Dick is a personification of Job's Leviathan filtered through Calvinist dogma. Ishmael's Leviathan emerges as the rational, scientific response to such mythologizing. Ahab's battle with Leviathan takes the step beyond Job's mythic appeal, equating the monster with God himself. Ishmael's detached commentary on whales and whaling begins with Yahweh's description of Leviathan in Job 40. On the one hand, Ishmael's elaborate taxonomy of whales in the long cetological descriptions seem to parody the divine description of Job, "a challenge to the claim ... that God's mysteries cannot be penetrated."45 Indeed, Ishmael wonders whether he is not doing precisely what Yahweh warns Job against.

What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me. 'Will he' (the leviathan) 'make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is in vain!' But I have swum through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try.s

According to liberal theologians like William Paley, whom Melville studied and quotes in the Extracts, the scientific study of nature would reveal that God exists and that benevolence is the basic end of all things in creation.47 In the case of whales, science had brought new understanding. Melville had carefully studied, and through Ishmael relates, the latest scientific knowledge of whales.48 From the liberal perspective further study of nature, including Job's Leviathan, would confirm the power and benevolent intent of the Creator.49 However, Ishmael's experience with whales and whaling of

fers no such confirmation. On the one hand, Ishmael is as aware as Ahab of the malicious intent of the Leviathan, whose head seems designed for one purpose only- sinking ships.50 On the



396 SOUNDINGS

other hand, the success of Yankee whaling has humbled the power of the once proud beast of the sea.51 Leviathan is no longer an unambiguous symbol of divine power and order. Ishmael's experience with Leviathan is more complex, how

ever. Although his experience challenges the naive assumption of benevolence inherent in the order of things, he is at .the same time awed by the beauty and mystery of the seemingly arbitrary and malevolent world. Despite his awareness of the potential for evil in Moby Dick, when the whale is sighted, Ishmael exclaims: "A gentle joyousness-a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale."52 On another occasion, amidst a herd of whales, Ishmael describes "a wonderous fearlessness, and confidence, or else a still becharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at." Gazing at the domestic scene of whale mothers nursing their young, he saw "beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world . . "

53 Beyond the easy dichotomy of malevolence or benevolence is the truth of the essential ambiguity of the.natural world. Leviathan is neither a symbol of cosmic malignity nor of mercy. Although Ishmael's cetological study seems to deflate the mys

tery of Leviathan, and the references to the success of the whaling industry seem to undercut the power of Leviathan, Ishmael's own experience is again more complex. The attempt to describe the "Whiteness of the Whale" leaves Ishmael and the reader with a sense of the "inscrutable ambiguity" of Leviathan.54 Mankind may have succeeded in "hooking the nose of Leviathan," but the mystery remains nonetheless, beyond the most sophisticated grasp of human science and whaling technology. It is then accurate to say, as several interpreters have, that just

as "Leviathan in the Book of Job ... leads Job to humility and acceptance of mixed good and evil, Moby Dick fills the same role in the novel- not for Ahab, but for Ishmael."55 However, this is not to say Ishmael comes to some new unifying vision of the way things are, of God or God's ordering of the universe. Although Ishmael survives with an insight to share, it is not of the Truth which is at the heart of things. This is symbolized by the fact that although Ishmael's life buoy/coffin, a posthumous gift from his beloved Queequeg, is inscribed with "a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, a nuptial treatise. on the art of attaining truth,"56 it cannot be deciphered. At the end of the novel Ishmael is still at sea, literally and figuratively.



LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB ANDMOBY-D/CK 397

What would Ishmael (and Melville) have us learn? It is a moral, not a metaphysical lesson. "Ishmael rejects Ahab and his perverse spiritual certainties because he has come to the realization that all such certainties are in vain."57 In his own words, when he realizes that given the essential ambiguity of the world, a mystery which cannot be penetrated, "the truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. 'All is vanity.' ALL."58 The lesson the author Ecclesiastes claims to have learned is to enjoy the momentary pleasures of work and human love (Ecclesiastes 2:24, 3:12-13, 5:18-19, 7:14,,9:7-10, 11:9). In his relationship with Queequeg especially and through a revelation which comes to Ishmael while squeezing whale sperm on board the Pequod, touching the hands of others, he realizes "that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity ; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country: now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally."59 Ishmael, the outcast, becomes again one of Rachel's children, because of his intuitive grasp of the truth of things human, not things divine. In the two different views of Leviathan in Molry-Dick, Melville

has dramatized a radical questioning "which brought him to doubt the principle that liberal and orthodox controversialists agreed on, namely the implicit belief that a morally compelling scheme of truth could be organized around the concept of God."60 Replacing this is a deeper awareness of the ambiguity and mystery which defies either orthodox or rational synthesis, and a realization that without a moral order guaranteed by God, humanity must come itself to embrace love and justice, or else perish. T here are but a few who survive the longjourney to this truth, and the tragedy is that they are seldom heard in their own time. Melville was certainly one. Among his contemporaries Melville felt that only his close friend Nathaniel Hawthorne grasped what Molry-Dick was really about, but there are indications that even Hawthorne could not really fathom Melville's full intent.61 Today we are still discovering the depth of meaning in what he called his "wicked book."62

IV. CONCLUSION On the basis of Melville's interpretation of the Book of Job in



398 SOUNDINGS Moby-Dick, we can conclude that his approach to Scripture was both timely and timeless. We have seen that Melville's interpretation of the Joban Leviathan made the basic themes the Book of Job raises meaningful in nineteenth-century America even though his contemporaries were largely oblivious to them. Just as the Book of Job dramatizes the collapse of world views based on the monotheistic theory of retribution Ol"J>Olytheistic myth so dominant in the ancient world, Moby-Dick enacts the failure of both the orthodox Calvinist view of divine retribution and the distinctly American myth. We have also seen that Melville's representation of Job's Leviathan combines, but eclipses, both the orthodox and critical Biblical interpretation of his day, penetrating to the level of the timeless in the Book of Job. Moby-Dick, like Job, affirms the mystery of the sacred, beyond the human capacity to comprehend.63

NOTES

I. Nathalia Wright, Melville's Use of the Bible (New York: Octagon Books, 1949). Wright found 1400 allusions to the Bible in Melville's collected works.

2. Credit for the recognition of the importance of the Johan theme in MollyDick should probably go to Lawrence Thompson in Melville's Quarrel with God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952). Many of the subsequent studies cif the use of Job in Moby-Dick are mentioned in the notes below.

3. C. Hugh Holman, "The Reconciliation of Ishmael: Moby-Dick and the Book of Job," South Atlantic Quarterly, 57 (1958), 477.

4. Wright, pp. 7-8; Holman, 479. 5. Wright, p . 14. 6. In John .Calvin's sixty-five sermons on the Book of Job, "Leviathan was typically identified as the whale, and was adduced as a manifestation of divine power against human impudence." See Thomas Walter Herbert,Jr. Moby-Dick and Calvinism: A World Dismantled (Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1977), p. 112.

7. Ibid., pp. 135-36. 8. In a letter to Evert Duyckinck (April 5, 1849), Melville wrote " I bought a set of Bayle's Dictionary the other day, & .. . intend to lay the great old folios side by, side & go to sleep on t_hem .... " Merton M. Sealts, Jr. Melville's Reading (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), p. 39. On

Melville'~ use of the dictionary see H. Bruce Franklin, The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963), p. 8 and Millicent Bell, "Pierre Bayle and Moby-Dick," Publications of the Modem Language Association, 66 (1951), 626-48. As Franklin clearly shows, Melville h.ad a broad grasp of ancient and primitive mythologies.

9. Daniel Hoffman, "Moby-Dick: Jonah's Whale or Job's," Twentieth Century l nterpretaiion of Moby-Dick, ed. Michael Gilmore (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1977), p. 63.



LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB ANDMOBY-DICK 399 10. Wright, pp. 12-13, and Jay A. Holstein, "Melville's Inversion of Job in

Moby-Dick," lliff Review, 35 (1978), 13. Holstein cites Melville's journal of a Vi~it to Europe and the Levant (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 167 and Clare[, I, p. 136, as evidence of Melville's attitude.

I I. Wright, pp. 16-18. 12. Two of Melville's Bibles, both in the King James Version, one with the

Apocrypha, contain his own extensive annotations. See Sealts, p. 41. The most frequently marked books in Melville's Bibles were Psalms (77 times), Matthew (52), Isaiah (51),John (47), the Wisdom of Solomon (46), and Job (45). The Leviathan passage in Job 41 is marked several times. See Wright, pp. 10-ll.

I3. This section is based on a paper entitled "The Leviathan Debate," preSented at the 1980 Meeting of the Southeast Region of the Society of Biblical Literature.

14. The recognition that the noun ym in this verse should be pointed to read yam (sea), not yom (day) was first made by Hermann Gunkel, SchOpfung und Chaos in der Urzeit und Enduit (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1895), p. 59. The close association of Yamm and Lotan, the equivalent of Leviathan, in Ugaritic mythology, has caused virtually all modern interpreters to adopt Gunkel's suggestion. See, for example, Robert Gordis, The Book of job (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary Press, 1978), pp. 34-35.

15. The parenthetical nat11re of this verse indicates that the pronominal suffix refers not to the night of Job's conception, but to Yamm. This is also supported by an Aramaic curse formula, "I will cast spells on you with the spell of the sea and the spell of the dragon Leviathan." See Cyrus Gorden, "Leviathan: Symbol of Evil," Biblical Motifs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 8.

16. On the ritual exchange of curses before combat in ancient Near Eastern mythology see Theodor Gaster, Thespis (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 153.

17. For a recent discussion see Gordis, pp. 569-72. In one senseJob40, likeJob 38-39, may be an example of ancient "science," naming the inhabitants of the natural world and describing their basic nature and function. See Gerhard von Rad, "Job xxxviii and Ancient Egyptian Wisdom," The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 281-91.

18. On these points see Matitiahu Tsevat, "The Meaning of the Book of Job," Hebrew Union College Annual, 37 (1966), 73- 106.

19. Thompson, pp. 4- 5. 20. Holstein, 13-18. 21. Holman, 490. See also Janis Stout, "Melville's Use of the Book of Job,"

Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 25 (1970), 69- 83. 22. The second is from Job 40; the fourth , Psalm 104:26; and the fifth, Isaiah

27: I. Melville omits Job 3:8, probably because the KJV translates the verse incorrectly. He seems to overlook Psalm 74:14 . The eleventh extract is Rabelais' reference to Job and Leviathan.

23. For the references see Franklin, p. 227. 24. Franklin, p. 70. 25. Franklin (pp. 71 -83) offers an ingenious argument to defend the Egyptian

Typhon in the Myth of Osiris as the basis of Leviathan in Moby-Dick which fails, however, to explain why Typhon appears hardly at all as a title for the whale while the Biblical name Leviathan occurs 104 times in Moby-Dick. ~6. Ibid., p. 70.



400 SOUNDINGS 27. Captain Bildad admonishes Queequeg to "spurn Lhe idol Bel, and Lhe

hideous dragon, ... " ("His Mark," p. 85). All references to Molly-Dick will be by chapter and page and are to the Norton Critical Edition edited by Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967).

28. "Moby-Dick," p. 159. 29. Andrew J. Oravetz, Jr., "Out of Kings: An Inquiry into the Americanness

of the Classic American Novel," Diss. Ohio Stale University 1976, p. 51. 30. Herbert, p. 153. 31. "Moby-Dick," p. 160. 32. R. S. Foster, Objections to Calvinism, quoted by Herbert, pp. 123-24. 33. See, for example, Thompson's arguments in Melville's Quarrel with God. 34. "The Quarter-Deck," p. 144. 35. "The Pequod Meets the Rachel," pp. 433-36. On Ahab's dehumanization

of his crew see Hoffman, pp. 60-61, and Nancy Lee Richardson, "Herman Melville's Attitude Toward America," Diss. University of Delaware 1977, pp. 115- 16.

36. "The Symphony," pp. 443-44. 37. Herbert, p. 157. 38. Eloise Behnken, "The J oban Theme in Molly-Dick," The Iliff Review, 33 (1976),

47. 39. Various interpreters have observed that Ahab embraces a Manichean

dualism, personified in the character of his harpooner, Tashtego. See, for example, Holman, 487.

40. The reference to "Rachel, weeping for her children" ("The Pequod Meets the Rachel," p. 436) has both Jewish and Christian connotations. See J eremiah 31: 15 and Matthew 2: 18.

41. On Melville's tendency to have two central characters in his novels see William Rosenfeld, "Uncertain Faith: Queequeg's Coffin and Melville's Use of the Bible," Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 7 (1966), 317- 18.

42. "Epilogue," p . 470. 43. Herbert, p. 106. 44. "Kings and Squires," p. 104. 45. Herbert, p. 132. 46. "Cetology," p. ll8. 47. Herbert, p. 136. 48. Tyrus Hillway, Melville and the Whale (Fokroft, Pa.: Folcroft Press, 1969). 49. The quote in the Extracts from Paley (p. 7) points out that the pumping

power of the whale's heart is superior to the main pipe of the London waterworks.

50. "The Battering-Ram," pp. 285-86. As the journey begins Ishmael had stated, in agreement with Ahab, that "he could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill" ("Moby-Dick," p. 163).

51. Herbert, p. 132. 52. "The Chase-First Day," p. 447. 53. "The Grand Armada," p. 325. 54. "The Whiteness of the Whale," pp. 163- 70. 55. Stout, 76f. This point of view was first and probably best stated by Holman,

484-85. 56. "Queequeg and His Coffin," p. 399. 57. Herbert, pp. 162-63. 58. "The Try-Works," p. 355. 59. "A Squeeze of the Hand," p. 349. The quote that follows, " In visions of the




night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti," is an allusion to Job 4: 13.

60. Herbert, pp. 89-90, Herbert's exceedingly perceptive analysis of Moby-Dick is flawed only by his forced conclusion that Ishmael ultimately embraces polytheism. This conclusion contradicts Herbert's own recognition that Ishmael eschews spiritual certainties of all sorts.

61. Convinced that Hawthorne had understood the spiritual depth of MobyDick, Melville wrote to him, ecstatically: "A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book." The Letters of Hennan Melville, ed. Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), p. 142. Hawthorne, however, apparently considered Melville obsessed with a religious questioning which he himself thought to be "dismal and monotonous." See Nathaniel Hawthorne, The English Notebooks, ed. Randall Stewart (New York: MLA, 1941), p. 433.

62. Letters, p. 142. 63. Melville frequently marked those Biblical passages which emphasize that

God transcends human understanding and is not stibject to hi1manly determined moral standards. See Wright, pp. 185-88. He obviously realized the importance of this recurrent theme as a corrective on both dogmatic and critical interpretations not only of the Book of Job but the Bible in general.



Article Contentsp. 388p. 389p. 390p. 391p. 392p. 393p. 394p. 395p. 396p. 397p. 398p. 399p. 400p. 401

Issue Table of ContentsSoundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Winter 1982), pp. 369-488Front MatterEDITOR'S NOTES [pp. 369-371]THE GREAT COMMUNITY: Kang's and Ours [pp. 372-387]LEVIATHAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB AND "MOBY-DICK" [pp. 388-401]PSYCHOLOGY, THEOLOGY, AND WILLIAM JAMES [pp. 402-416]EMBODIMENTWINCH, SCIENCE, AND EMBODIMENT [pp. 417-429]THE NURSING MOTHER AND FEMININE METAPHYSICS: An Essay on Embodiment [pp. 430-443]

THE COLLEGE AS A COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY: A SYMPOSIUMIntroduction [pp. 444-446]COMMUNITY, COOPERATION, AND THE ADVENTURE OF LEARNING [pp. 447-455]TWO CHEERS FOR MODERNITY: The Case for the Contemporary Academy [pp. 456-464]THE LIBERAL ARTS DISEASE AND ITS NEO-SCHOLASTIC CURE [pp. 465-475]TOLERANCE AND NONPARTISANSHIP IN THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY [pp. 476-485]

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young, w.a.- leviathan in the book of job and moby-dick (article-1982)

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