266 On the Animals designated in the Scriptures by 



Than is described as giving suck to its young ones. But the 

 whole book is highly poetical ; and we might be at liberty to 

 imagine a poetical licence. Without that we must reflect that 

 it would have been only in consistency with what takes place in 

 all countries, had the later Hebrews designated an animal, some- 

 what like a reptile, for which their ancestors had no name, as a 

 seal, or one of the whales, by a name for a reptile long esta- 

 blished in their nation ; and such was the term Than, for it oc- 

 curs so early as in the first chapter of Genesis. 



The term Than, then, was not a name confined to the Croco- 

 dile of the Nile alone. But that saurian so much surpassed in 

 size all others known to the Hebrews, and was so distinguished 

 from them by a strength and ferocity dangerous to man, that we 

 might naturally expect they would have a specific name for 

 it ; and such a name, I will now briefly shew, they had in 

 Leviathan. I would refer in proof of this to Isa. xxvii. 1, 

 which Mr Thompson has quoted with a contrary view. It is 

 quite obvious from the concluding verses of the chapter, where 

 Egypt is expressly named, that, in the opening of his subject, 

 in the beginning of the chapter, announcing the punishment of 

 Leviathan and Thanin, Isaiah refers to an inhabitant or inhabi- 

 tants of the Egyptian river then existing. Will it be said that 

 the Megalosaurus existed in the Nile> so lately as the time of 

 Isaiah, — about 300 years only before the age of Herodotus? 

 Mr Thompson will see the force of this objection to Leviathan 

 being the Megalosaurus ; for to obviate a similar objection in 

 reference to the Leviathan in Job, he observes, " that the period 

 of Job's existence is uncertain, but most critics think he lived 

 long prior to the time of Moses : possibly even before the 

 flood.'" — (P. 319). 



But it is quite in accordance with a phraseology very com- 

 mon in Hebrew poetical writings, such as those of Isaiah, that 

 we should understand both Leviathan and Thanin, in this 

 verse, to mean the same animal. It is common in these writ- 

 ings, when any thing is predicated in them of any subject 

 whatever, for which the writers had more than one name, that 

 two or more names are introduced in the course of the predica- 

 tion, and names quite equivalent to each other, and definitions 

 of subjects are multiplied in them in the same manner as names. 



