DRAGON. – A (mythical) monster which in the ancient Orient symbolized the cosmic forces obstructing life and human well-being; it represents the devil (q.v.) or Satan in Rev 12–13 and 20:2. A terrible beast, usually lurking in the watery abyss, it was conceived as an enormous reptile or serpent.
The Greek term (δράκων, from δράκωμα “fixed gaze”) occurs 26 times in the Septuagint (Vulg. draco), where it translates 12 times the Heb. tannîm (2 times tannîn; Ezek 29:3; 32:2), 5 times liwyāṯān (q.V. LEVITAZIONE), twice nāḥāš (“serpent”), and the rest mistakenly tan (“jackal,” also in Lam 4:3, Vulg. lamiae), kĕp̄îr “lion cub,” pĕtěn “viper,” ‘attûḏ “he-goat.” The Septuagint uses δράκων another 8 times: Esth 1:1 and 10:3c (Vulg. 11:6; 10:7); Wis 16:10; Sir 25:16 (Vulg. 23); Dan (Bel et draco, Vulg.) 14:22–27, where the serpent cult at Babylon is treated.
The tannîm (from tānâ “to stretch out”) was a sea monster or cetacean (Gen 1:21 is rendered κῆτος, but Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion: δράκων; Ps 148:7; cf. Job 7:12; Isa 27:1), or a fearsome serpent (Ex 7:9–12; Deut 32:33; Ps 91[90]:13). In poetic passages this monster becomes an image of the powers of evil, sometimes joined to rāhāḇ “fury,” which also designates a sea monster: Isa 51:9 (God shatters rāhāḇ, pierces tannîm, then dries up tĕhôm; lacking in the Septuagint), Job 26:12–13 (God shatters rāhāḇ and captures nāḥāš). Like rāhāḇ, tannîm figuratively denotes the political enemy (Egypt: Isa 27:1; Ezek 29:3; 32:2), or in general the forces beyond human control that bring danger and death (Isa 51:9; Jer 51:34; Job 7:12; Ps 74[73]:13; 91[90]:13). God does not kill the dragon, but wounds or captures it and thereby displays His power; the dragon is a creature of Jahweh (Gen 1:21; Ps 104[103]:26: liwyāṯān in the sea), before whom it must tremble (Ps 148:7). An enemy of mankind, the tannîm (or liwyāṯān, or nāḥāš) never appears as a direct enemy of God, unlike the dragon of Rev 12–20.
From Ex 7:9–15 it follows that tannîm and nāḥāš are equivalent (Vulg.: vv. 9–10 coluber, vv. 12 and 15 draco). Nāḥāš is rendered δράκων in Amos 9:3 (in the sea) and Job 26:13, while elsewhere it is translated ὄφις “serpent,” even in
Gen 3:1–14, where P. Jóuon proposes to understand “dragon” or a reptile (cf. P. F. Ceuppens, De historia primaeva, Rome 1934, pp. 166–79).
The Greeks too understood δράκων as an enormous serpent, from Homer (Il. XII, 202) to Pausanias (II, 28, 1); the tragedians use the feminine δράκαινα for the Furies: δράκων (Euripides, Iph. Taur., 286; Aeschylus, Eum., 128).
Texts from Ras Shamra show that among the Phoenicians of Ugarit the dragons tnn and ltn (= tannîm and liwyāṯān) were known (c. 15th cent. B.C.). The dragon was to represent the elemental forces of nature threatening man: usually the hidden peril in the waters, while the serpent with its venom was akin to the earth both in Babylon and Egypt (cf. St. Epiphanius, Haer., 45, 1). In India the nāga “serpent” was feared, which could deify itself or take anthropomorphic form; the chief “king of serpents” (nāgarāja) is Śeṣa or Ananta “the serpent called ‘serpent,’” who could deify the princes of the nāgas.
Infinite, sovereign of the universal sea “stretched out in the waters” and bearing the earth upon its head or many heads (R. Goossens, p. 415). This dragon was called by Ctesias (fr. 27) σκώληξ “worm” (cf. Dante, Inf., VI, 22: “Cerberus, the great worm”; XXXIV, 108: Lucifer is “the guilty worm”). The Greeks (cf. R. Goossens, pp. 428–35) knew the “king of serpents,” or basiliskos “of fragrant odor.” Hence the “basilisk” corresponds to venomous serpents (Heb. pĕtěn and ‘eph’eh) in the Septuagint (Ps 90:13; Isa 59:5 [Vulg. regulus]); in the Vulgate it renders basiliscus 6 times and regulus 6 times; Aquila has basiliskos (for δράκων) in Deut 32:33 and Isa 59:5 (with ξύλινος), Symmachus in Isa 30:6. R. Goossens identifies with it the odorodrakon (cf. Wis 16:10). The basilisk has 7 heads, in Pistis Sophia, 88:34.
Liwyāṯān has many heads (Ps 74[73]:14: “dragon” in Septuagint and Vulgate), and other hybrid, terrifying monsters appear in the poetic or allegorical passages of the Old Testament: the four beasts of Dan 7:3–8, the goat with 4 horns (Dan 8:5–22), but these are mere symbols not identifiable with the dragon. In the apocrypha the dragon recurs as equivalent to Satan or Death, or their instruments: Ps. Sol. 2:25–31 (pagan power [Pompey] whose ‘ἐπιμηχανία’ is noted as “βρυξ”); Apoc. Baruch Gr. 4 (wind of the dragon and the Abyss), Od. Sol. 22:3 (7 heads of the dragon that has “roots” and “seed”; V. 7 is “slandered” or devil). Midrashim and Talmud identify the “serpent” of Gen 3:1–4 with Satan, called “the ancient serpent” (Siphre Deut. 32:33), “the envious serpent” (Sanhedrin 59b; Sōṭah 9b), with horns and feet (Gen. rabbah 19:1).
The biblical dragon has no affinity with the mythical Babylonian dragon. According to the interpretation of many moderns, in Babylonia the origin of the world was conceived as a struggle against chaos, sometimes personified in a monster. It is certain that Enlil of Nippur was venerated as subduer of the dragon and artificer of the world; when Babylon attained supremacy, it replaced Enlil with Marduk, whose struggle against Tiāmat for the creation of the world is narrated in the Enuma eliš, a poem recited at every New Year. Ninurta (Ninurta) son of the god Enlil was celebrated as victor over the dragon. Every Babylonian city celebrated its god as victor over the dragon, transforming the god of the defeated city into a dragon.
Similarly in Egypt, the baleful Seth-Typhon (serpent or crocodile) was vanquished by the young sun-god Horus, son of the goddess Isis persecuted by Seth. The Hittites celebrated the god Tešub for his victory over the serpent Iluyankaš. The Indians told of the dragon Vṛtra vanquished by Indra; the Persians of the serpentiform dragon Aži-Dahāka, enemy of mankind. In Greek mythology Apollo killed the dragon Python, a huge dragon, son of Earth (B. Allo, L’Apoc., pp. 189 ff. and 197 ff.); Hercules killed the dragon son of Typhon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, besides the Hydra of Lerna; for the dragon of Asclepius, cf. Macrobius, Saturn., I, 20. Macrobius (loc. cit., 9) reports: “The Phoenicians... fashioned the dragon as a circle swallowing its own tail, to show that the world both nourishes itself from within and resolves back into itself.”
By abusing certain biblical poetic images, H. Gunkel (followed by A. Jeremias, H. Gressmann, etc.) asserts that creation and divine providence in the Bible are conceived as a struggle against chaos personified, and likens the dragon to tĕhôm, which he identifies with Tiāmat; he includes among these reflections of the Babylonian myth of Marduk’s struggle against the dragon also tannîm and liwyāṯān, rāhāḇ, bəhēmôt (q.v.) and tĕhôm, none of which are ever rendered βάζων by the ancients. Gunkel’s thesis still has various adherents. But even if the Babylonians had a metaphysical-dualistic conception of the origin of the world expressed in the struggle against the dragon, as expounded thoroughly by M. Witzel, in the Bible no trace of this is found. Nothing allows us to affirm that tannîm and liwyāṯān take part in a drama of creation or represent chaos there. The tĕhôm “abyss” never appears as a living monster; it is the vast sea, viewed poetically, which God limits and contains. It is moreover false to identify the dragon with Tiāmat, and hence the struggle against the dragon with creation; the dragon vanquished by Marduk (later by Nabû) was the mušruṣû, a hybrid of lion, serpent and bird, depicted on the gate of the temple of Ištar in Babylon; in many Babylonian cylinders and engravings this dragon appears, often with horns, sometimes with diadems.
F. Boll (followed by W. Bousset, A. Loisy, etc.) gives the dragon a Hellenistic astronomical origin; this is well refuted by J. Freundorfer. Moreover, a connection was sometimes posited between the dragon and constellations (Job 3:8: Leviathan in the sky). The error of these critics lies in seeking precise meanings and ideological derivations in ancient documents where the allegory of danger and evil was magically expressed, rich in variations across the sagas of all times and even in modern poetic imagery, from Dante to Calderón, Goethe, and C. Brentano. The struggle of a god or hero against a dragon was a common theme among all peoples, from which poetry and apocalyptic literature could draw.
In the Apocalypse, the dragon is the principal symbol, after the Lamb (v.), of which it is the chief enemy; it wages all the battles, open or hidden, against Him and His saints (B. Allo, L'Apoc., p. LXX); it is identified (12:9) with the “ancient serpent” (of Gen 3:1-15), with the devil (v.) or Satan (v.).
The climax of the book is chapter 12, where the dragon appears as a “great sign”: a Woman (“Ecclesia”: Victorinus of Pettau; “civitas Dei”: St. Augustine; secondary sense: the Blessed Virgin Mary) clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, crowned with twelve stars, about to give birth; but in opposition there appears “another sign”: a great fiery-colored dragon (cf. Euripides, Iphig. Taur., 1245: οἰνοπός δράζων; Plutarch, Is. et Osir., 22: τῶν Τύρωνα ... πυρφόν) with seven heads (opposite the “seven spirits of God”: 1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6) crowned and ten horns (Dan 7:7). It is a king: “the ruler of this world” (John 16:11, etc.). Defeated in heaven by the angelic host, the dragon has fallen “with his angels” to earth, where it confronts the Woman to devour her newborn (the future universal king, caught up to God’s throne); the Woman flees, borne on “the two wings of the great eagle (God)”, into the wilderness for three and a half years (until the dragon is vanquished at the parousia), while the saints rejoice at the dragon’s fall (cf. Luke 10:18; John 12:31), which wages “war against the rest of the Woman’s seed” (Rev 12:1-17). In more dramatic form, this is “the hostility” described in Gen 3:15 (J. Bover, p. 325 ff.) between the serpent (the δράζων of vv. 3-9, 13, 16 ff. is called ὄφις “serpent” in vv. 9 and 14 ff.) and the Woman, whose “seed” (already in Gen 3:15) is persecuted by Satan (cf. Esth 10:6-8 [LXX, 3 c-e]: two dragons confront each other, and the river of persecution vanishes [Rev 12:15 ff.]).
The dragon fights the Church by raising Allies (v.) of twofold form (Rev 13:1-18); but it is defeated: “the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan” is bound for a thousand years (20:2; cf. J. Ph. Vogel, p. 199: the “king of serpents” Sega is hung upside down for a thousand years). Cf. John 12:31; Rom 16:20; Heb 2:14. Even in 1 Pet 5:8 the devil is a dragon that “devours”: here the dragon has nothing in common with Tiamat, still less with Tiāmat as H. Gunkel would have it, who maintains the Babylonian origin of Rev 12; it is not a cosmic or mythical monster, but a malefic spiritual power, Satan (v.), the perpetual principle of evil.
The dragon remained among Christians a frequent metaphor for the devil (Passio s. Perpetuae, 4); in magical papyri it is often mentioned (K. Preisendanz, 4, 994: δει δεινά ... σαγχάνον βάζων; cf. 2 Thess 2:6). But naturalists concerned themselves with describing, besides the basilisk or “regulus” (Pliny, VIII, 21 [33]; St. Isidore of Seville, Etymol., XII, 4, 6: “king of serpents”), the dragon in nature: St. Isidore, loc. cit., 4-5, “draco maior ceterorum serpentium, sive omnium animantium super terram”; St. Albert the Great, De animalibus, XXV: “dracones indici”; cf. Physiologus, IV, 155 ff. Ulisse Aldrovandi collected such “science” in Serpentum et draconum historiae libri duo, Bologna 1640.