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Hobbes's Biblical Beasts: Leviathan and Behemoth Author(S): Patricia Springborg Source: Political Theory, Vol Hobbes's Biblical Beasts: Leviathan and Behemoth Author(s): Patricia Springborg Source: Political Theory, Vol. 23, No. 2 (May, 1995), pp. 353-375 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191883 . Accessed: 19/02/2014 11:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Theory. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 46.18.27.5 on Wed, 19 Feb 2014 11:36:00 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HOBBES'SBIBLICAL BEASTS Leviathan and Behemoth PATRICIASPRINGBORG Universityof Sydney Beyond the actual works of nature a poet may now go; but beyond the conceived possibilityof nature,never. I can allow a Geographerto make in the Sea, a Fish or a Ship, which by the scale of his map would be two or threehundred mile long, andthink it done for ornament,because it is done withoutthe precinctsof his undertaking;but when he paints an Elephantso, I presentlyapprehend it as ignoranceand a plain confession of Terraincognita. Hobbes'sAnswer to Sir WilliamDavenant's DedicatoryPreface to Gondibert,1651, 81. (1) HOBBES'SBEAST, THEBIBLICAL LEVIATHAN In Hobbes'slittle discussed published response to Davenant'spreface to Gondibert,dedicated to him, Hobbes reproves Davenant, the rigorous acolyte who claims to have learnedhis epistemologyfrom Hobbes.Ghosts and spooksare one thing,Hobbes suggests, but to abandonthe entireWestern fabuloustradition of rhetoricand poesy was to abandonwhat distinguished civilizationfrom the rude culture of theAmericas. Civilization is thework of theimagination, "fancy," and the only restrictions on its exercisewere those of appropriateness.There is, aswe shallshow, symptomatic irony in Hobbes's choiceof themetaphor of theelephant. In theseventeenth century, Leviathan was takenfor a greatship, a crocodile,or a whale,and Behemoth for an elephant.The O4ordEnglish Dictionary credits Hobbes with lexical inno- vation,as the first to use the termLeviathan-the biblical serpent or sea monster,a hugeship or personof immensepower and the "greatSatan" of Isaiah27:1 -as the synonymfor a commonwealth.'Hobbes's Leviathan is POLITICALTHEORY, Vol. 23 No. 2, May 1995 353-375 ( 1995 Sage Publications,Inc. 353 This content downloaded from 46.18.27.5 on Wed, 19 Feb 2014 11:36:00 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 354 POLITICALTHEORY / May 1995 indeeda workof the imagination,a creatureof artificerather than nature, a mortalGod, and scripture vouches for it. Commentatorshave focused considerable attention on theiconography of the engravedfrontispiece to Leviathan,believed to havebeen produced by the printerAndrew Crooke, under Hobbes's supervision, and perhaps the workof Hobbes'sacquaintance and Charles's former tutor in drawing,the engraverWenceslaus Holler.2 The frontispiece depicts an image of Leviathan, a kinglikefigure wielding sword and crozier, his giganticbody composed of thesmall bodies of thepeople of hisrealm. Overhead flies the banner headline fromthe Book of Job41:334, "Thereis no powerover earth than compares to him,"the conclusion of whichis reservedfor the text: "a creature without fear... kingover all the sons of pride."Much less attentionhas been focused on the significanceof the biblicalnames Leviathan and Behemoth, in what would,in theseventeenth century, have been a moststartling usage. Hobbes, in choosingLeviathan and Behemoth as histitles, drops enough hints to make it clearto his audiencethat he refersto noneother than the beastsof the Apocrypha,familiar from the Hebrew Theogony and associated in chiliastic thoughtwith the SecondComing. How does he meanthe names then?3 And whatis theirsignificance for his religiousdoctrine? In a recentarticle, Tracy Strong argues, correctly I believe,that "God- givengeometry is [Hobbes's]model of andfor power to whichnone on earth compare,"because men cannot only readit butsee it. He cites Job38:1-7, the beginningof thepassage that leads to Hobbes'sheadline epigraph: Then the Lord answeredJob out of the tempest:who is this whose ignorantwords cloud my design in darkness?Brace yourself andstand up like a man;I will ask questions,and you shall answer.Where were you when I laid the earth'sfoundations? Tell me, if you know and understand.Who settled its dimensions? Surely you should know. Who stretchedthis measuring-lineover it? On what do its supportingpillars rest? Who set its comer-stone in place, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted aloud?(Job 38:1-7)4 Theinvention of geometryis creditedto theancient Egyptians as a rapid methodto recalculateproperty boundaries washed away by the annual innundationof the Nile. It was appropriatethat God shouldhave used the languageof geometryin theHebrew theogony to establishhis proprietorship in anantediluvian world-and trumpthe Egyptians. It wasequally appropri- atethat Hobbes should have taken geometry as proofof his epistemology.If geometry,which laid the foundationsof the world,belonged to the designs of Godthat could be seen, the Bible belonged to a dispensationof sacredtexts thatcould be read,rendering superfluous the interventionsof philosophers This content downloaded from 46.18.27.5 on Wed, 19 Feb 2014 11:36:00 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Springborg/ HOBBES'S BIBLICALBEASTS 355 andtheologians. So evenJob 41:9-11 can be givena moreoptimistic reading. Thedivine show of strengthis a showand tell:5 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even in the sight of him? None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to standbefore me? Who hath preventedme, that I shouldrepay him? whatsoeveris underthe whole heaven is mine. Leviathanmay be an image of theabsolutist state, projected as a necessary, almost natural,work of creation.But as a work of creationit is not self-generatingand, like Job, we mustturn to its authorfor the sourceof its power.Absolute governments, the Leviathansof this world,from their archetypesin ancientEgypt and Babylon to theirearly modem types in the papacy,Spain, and France, were also constructed. Let us see howthey were built,Hobbes says, andthen ask the questionwhence their power derives. Leviathanand Behemoth, as perhapsGod's answer to Jobwas intendedto imply,are mortal Gods who have a rolein thescheme of theimmortal God. Theyhave their own cycles of generationand decay and their maintenance is also a workof art. Leviathanis the state,created by manin his imageas manis createdin the imageof God,with divine sanction, indirectly as a continuationof the workof creation,or directlyas an extensionof the originalFiat, by which the worldwas made.Hobbes embroidered the metaphor,focusing on the "artificiality"of the stateby creatinga figurefor the stateas a speciesof Automata,with a spring,string, and wheels as heart,nerves, and joints, and Soveraigntyas the "ArtificiallSoul," "giving life andmotion to the whole body."6In the importantfirst chapter of part2 of Leviathan,chapter 17, "Of the Causes, Generationand Definitionof a COMMON-WEALTH,"Hobbes notedof thecovenants by whichthe artificial unity of thestate is createdand its sovereignauthorized: "the Multitude so unitedin one Person,is calleda COMMON-WEALTH,in latine CIVITAS. This is thegeneration of thatgreat LEVIATHAN,or rather(to speakemore reverently) of thatMortall God, to whichwee owe underthe ImmortalGod, our peace and defence."7 At this point,Leviathan is no longerthe body politic but the sovereign who personi- fies it. Returningin chapter28 to theimage of theautomaton and "the nature of Punishment,and Reward; which are, as it were,the Nerves and Tendons, thatmove the limbes and joynts of a Common-wealth,"8Hobbes concluded: HithertoI have set forth the natureof Man ... together with the great power of his Governour,whom I comparedto Leviathan,taking that comparisonout of the two last verses of the one and fortieth of Job; where God having set forth the great power of Leviathan, calleth him King of the Proud. There is nothing, saith he, on earth to be This content downloaded from 46.18.27.5 on Wed, 19 Feb 2014 11:36:00 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 356 POLITICALTHEORY/ May 1995 comparedwith him. He is madeso as notto be afraid.Hee seeth every high thing below him; and is King of all the childrenof pride. But because he is mortall,and subject to decay, as all otherEarthly creatures are; and because thereis thatin heaven, (thoughnot on earth)that he should stand in fear of, and whose Lawes he ought to obey; I shall in the next following Chaptersspeak of his Diseases, and the causes of his Mortality;and of what Lawes of Naturehe is boundto obey.9 This is a startlinginnovation in the readingof the biblicalLeviathan, especiallyin an age in whichallegorical interpretations were eschewed in favourof a literalreading of thebible. How precisely did Hobbes expect his audienceto receivehis Leviathan?And how was it received? A wordof cautionmight be introducedhere about the distinction between a literaland an allegoricalreading of theBible. In his surveyof Protestant
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