Enoch, Leviathan, Behemoth, and hurricane politics

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: The book of 1 Enoch is cited in the St. Louis Jewish Light in connection with recent hurricane politics. You don't see that every day.

Editorial: Kookie Monster

Posted: Wednesday, September 7, 2011 11:54 am

In the Book of Enoch, a second century BCE Jewish Apocrypha, the Behemoth (who is also referenced in the Book of Job) is the land monster and Leviathan the sea monster (there's also Ziz, the sky monster, but we'll save him for another day).

Last week on the East Coast, Behemoth and Leviathan squared off, as the latter tried to rip the shreds out of the former with his proxy, Hurricane Irene. Behemoth stood his ground, despite taking on some fairly significant damage.

But another couple forces of nature, both Jews, faced off in the aftermath of the fierce land-water battle, albeit somewhat indirectly. In Leviathan's corner stood United States Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), defiant in the face of disaster relief, suggesting that additional assistance for storm-ravaged places and people be contingent on removing dollars from elsewhere in the budget.

Standing up for those on land was Paul Krugman, noted leftist, Nobel-winning Princeton professor and New York Times columnist. Krugman flung back on Cantor like a whirling earthen dervish, calling Cantor out as both hypocritical and callously indifferent to the plight of the suffering. Hypocritical because Cantor supported an Iraq war of almost a trillion dollars without raising revenue to pay for it, and because he voted against a similar pay-as-you-go bill in 2004 when his Virginia was hit by an earlier tropical storm.

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The reference to Leviathan and Behemoth is found in 1 Enoch 60:7-8. It is in the part of the book known as the Similitudes or Parables of Enoch, which dates to the first century BCE or the first century CE. Behemoth and Leviathan are also mentioned at greater length in Job 40-41.