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Behemoth is the name of a creature mentioned in the it can be rendered as '''בהמות''', '''Bəhēmôth''', '''Behemot''', '''B'hemot'''; in Arabic بهيموث ('''Bahīmūth''') or بهموت (''' Bahamūt ''') . The word is most likely a plural form of בהמה (''bəhēmāh'' ("animal")). It may be an example of ''pluralis excellentiae'', a Hebrew method of expressing greatness by pluralizing a noun; it thus indicates that Behemoth is the largest and most powerful animal. Metaphor ically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful creature. CHARACTERISTICS The text from the Book Of Job 40 ( King James Version Bible) is as follows: 15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. The passage describes a large powerful animal that appears to be herbivorous (40:15). In Jewish belief, Behemoth is the primal unconquerable monster of the land, as Leviathan is the primal monster of the waters of the sea, There is a legend that the Leviathan and the Behemoth shall hold the battle of the end of the world. They shall kill each other and a huge number of other creatures in the big battle. The two will finally kill each other, and the surviving men will feast on their meat. According to Midrash recording traditions, it is impossible for anyone to kill a behemoth except for the person who created it, in this case YHWH . A later Jewish Haggadic tradition furthermore holds that at the banquet at the end of the world, the behemoth will be served up along with the Leviathan and Ziz . MEANING Behemoth can be interpreted as a mythical animal. However, some have attempted to identify it with real-life animals. In the book of Job, both Behemoth and Leviathan are listed alongside a number of mundane animals, such as Goat s, Eagle s, and Hawk s, leading many Christian scholars to surmise that Behemoth and Leviathan may also be mundane creatures. Suggested animals include the Water Buffalo and the Elephant , but the most common suggestion is the Hippopotamus . Some readers also identify a hippopotamus in '' Isaiah '''s ''bahamot negeb'' or "beasts of the south" (30:6). Although the animal's tail "moves like a cedar" (40:17), an unlikely description for any of these animals, "tail' could be a euphemism for an elephant's trunk. (Mitchell, 1987) Others disagree, pointing to the fact that Behemoth is called "chief of the ways of God" (40:19), indicating that it is not a mere animal. A rather less popular proposal is that the Behemoth is a Dinosaur . The Apatosaurus is usually proposed since the large sauropods had tails "like a cedar". This viewpoint is usually advanced by Young-earth Creationists who believe that mankind and dinosaurs co-existed less than 10,000 years ago. One weakness of this view is that the Bible does not say that Behemoth's tail is ''as large as'' a cedar, only that it tail ''moves like'' a cedar. OTHER CULTURES The Hebrew behemoth is sometimes equated with the Persian Hadhayosh , as the leviathan is with the Kar and the ziz with the Simurgh . IN POPULAR CULTURE See Behemoth (disambiguation) . FURTHER READING Mitchell, Steven, 1987. ''The Book of Job''. San Francisco: North Point Press. Cited in R. T. Pennock, 1999, Tower of Babel, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. EXTERNAL LINKS
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