This week we continued in discussing questions submitted by the students. The two questions we looked at were not exactly crucial in understanding how to live the Christian walk faithfully. In fact, the answer to both questions is really, “We don’t/can’t know.” Even so, they were still fun to look at and think about how we might answer them from the Bible.
The first question was, “What language did Adam and Eve speak?” There really is no way of knowing what language Adam and Eve spoke, and many different suggestions have been given throughout history. Some believe they would have spoken Hebrew, which is the language that most of the Old Testament was written in. Details of the story have elements that are very meaningful in the Hebrew language, so it is possible that this language even went back to the beginning. For instance, their very names are meaningful. Adam means “man” or “humanity,” and Eve means “life-giver.”
But when we factor the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) into the equation, we don’t know how an original language may have been affected. When the people of the earth at that time failed to spread out into the earth and fill it with God’s glory, but instead came together to attempt to build a tower that would (in their minds) let them take the place of God, the Lord scattered them and confused their language, giving birth to the many different languages of the world. It is possible that if Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew (or another known language), it would have been preserved through the family tree that would lead to Abraham and Israel. But it is also possible that the people before Babel spoke a language that was totally changed when God confused all language. So, long story short, we don’t/can’t really know what language Adam and Eve spoke (sadly).
Our second question was, “Does Leviathan still exist today?” Again, the short answer is, We don’t know. The Leviathan is pictured in Scripture as a great sea creature rivaled by nothing else in creation. Some believe this was a real creature, but others believe it was a mythical creature used to symbolize the forces of evil and chaos in the world that try to war against God. It’s not talked about enough in Scripture to get a firm answer to these different options, but I like to believe it was a real creature (and maybe still is). So let’s see how the Bible describes it.
First, we see that it is a great sea creature that only God himself can stand against. Job 41 gives us the most extensive description of this creature, as the Lord is speaking to Job to prove that he is infinitely more wise and powerful than Job had perhaps thought. In this chapter we see Leviathan described as having incredible armor and being unable to be caught, tamed, fought, or killed. It swims in the deep and causes the water to boil, as it is described as breathing fire. It makes anyone tremble who comes near and tries to stand against it. Only God himself can do anything about this creature. Similarly, Psalm 104:26 says that God created Leviathan to “play” in the sea, symbolizing that God’s power is so great that even the scariest beast in the vast and chaotic sea is just seen as “playing” to God.
We also see Leviathan described as possibly having multiple heads. Psalm 74:14 says, “You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.” “Heads” here is plural, but the following clause uses a singular word (“him”). This does not necessarily mean it’s a multi-headed beast, but it does open the possibility that it could have been perceived as such. We also see in Isaiah 27:1 that Leviathan is described as “the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent,…the dragon that is in the sea.” In this verse, it is possibly identified with evil forces that God will destroy at the end of time.
So again we don’t really know if it still exists today, or even existed at all. It is entirely possible that it was a mythical beast that symbolized the forces of evil and chaos in the world, perhaps even being identified with Satan as the dragon/beast that would be destroyed in Revelation. It is also possible that it was indeed a real creature. If this is the case, I imagine that it may still exist today, since Isaiah 27:1 talks about it being destroyed “in that day,” which is typically a way of talking about the final judgment that will come when Christ returns and destroys sin and death from the world. The sea is such a vastly unexplored part of our world, and explorers are constantly discovering new creatures. Who knows, maybe Leviathan is one that has been hiding in the ocean’s depths, waiting to reemerge for our modern day?
