Plaything of Sekhmet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ikhet_sekhmet) wrote2005-09-30 06:21 pm
ikhet_sekhmet) wrote2005-09-30 06:21 pm
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Tiamat: some relevant Bible passages
From the King James Version:
Psalms 74: 12-13
[12] For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
[13] Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Psalms 89:9-10
[9] Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.
[10] Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.
Isaiah 27:1
[1] In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Isaiah 51:9-10
[9] Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
[10] Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?
ETA: I was prompted to look these up by a terrific short article in the magazine The Christian Century, which describes Psalm 148: "In this beautiful hymn, sea monsters lead a parade of chaos agents that have been subdued to glorify God--deeps, fire, hail, frost and storm... these mythical serpents represented a universe unrestrained and unredeemed by God's loving intervention." The article continues, with a powerful idea: "...Not long after the September 11 attacks, I got a letter from an old friend... he said: As a Christian, there is no room in my religion for making war to gain vengeance. Making war to prevent the further senseless slaughter of my countrymen is perfectly justified, however... By choosing to massively attack innocent people, the perpetrators of these acts have lost any right to have their point of view considered by civilized people. Reading that letter still chills me. Beyond the rage I see the profile of the chaos monster. My friend is making a bargain with the creature: let me use you, briefly, in hopes that I can stop others from enlisting your services. Leviathan co-opts a disciple of Jesus into the merciless cycle of violence..." (Kraybill, J. Nelson. Here be dragons. The Christian Century 121(9) May 4 2004 p20.)
Psalms 74: 12-13
[12] For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
[13] Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Psalms 89:9-10
[9] Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.
[10] Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.
Isaiah 27:1
[1] In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Isaiah 51:9-10
[9] Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
[10] Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?
ETA: I was prompted to look these up by a terrific short article in the magazine The Christian Century, which describes Psalm 148: "In this beautiful hymn, sea monsters lead a parade of chaos agents that have been subdued to glorify God--deeps, fire, hail, frost and storm... these mythical serpents represented a universe unrestrained and unredeemed by God's loving intervention." The article continues, with a powerful idea: "...Not long after the September 11 attacks, I got a letter from an old friend... he said: As a Christian, there is no room in my religion for making war to gain vengeance. Making war to prevent the further senseless slaughter of my countrymen is perfectly justified, however... By choosing to massively attack innocent people, the perpetrators of these acts have lost any right to have their point of view considered by civilized people. Reading that letter still chills me. Beyond the rage I see the profile of the chaos monster. My friend is making a bargain with the creature: let me use you, briefly, in hopes that I can stop others from enlisting your services. Leviathan co-opts a disciple of Jesus into the merciless cycle of violence..." (Kraybill, J. Nelson. Here be dragons. The Christian Century 121(9) May 4 2004 p20.)
no subject
I mention this not to clutter your mythological discussion with silly gamer nonsense, but because like everything else they wrote for D&D, the source material must be out there -- so perhaps this is the source of the idea that Tiamat has five heads, or incorporates five distinct sorts of chaos and danger. (There is another beast with seven heads in Revelations, of course.)
Many of the monsters I know from gaming I recognized from mythology, even way back in 1982 when I started playing. Some of them were obvious, but I have often wondered where some of those concepts came from. What better to represent chaos and danger and greed than a five-headed dragon whose very nature was to be at war with itself? (And of course the number 5 is significant in many ways, too, as I am certain I don't need to remind anyone who's a member of the pentacle club.)
So I wonder, is this a case of Gygax & co taking this biblical concept of five distinct serpentine dangers and applying an elemental take on it to color-classify dragons, and then unifying them with Tiamat? (The hydra comes to mind as a possible inspiration for a multi-headed monster, but that's a distinct critter in gaming circles, comes from Greek mythology rather than Sumerian, and is more about approaches to multitasking than anything else.)
Or is there some further basis for the concept of Tiamat with five heads with distinct natures?
no subject
Did you spot the seven-headed dragon in Serenity?