The Biblical Leviathan is often considered to be a demon associated with Satan or the Devil, and held by some to be the same monster as Rahab (Isaiah 51:9). The Biblical references to Leviathan appear to have evolved from a Canaanite legend involving a confrontation between Baal and a seven headed sea monster which Baal defeats with the aid of Mot[?], and they also resemble a Babylonian myth in which the storm god Marduk slays the sea monster Tiamat and creates the earth and sky from the two halves of her corpse.
Leviathan may also be interpreted as the sea itself, with its counterpart, Behemoth, being the land.
The word has been reused (not only in literature) over and again:
- in the 1660 book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
- in the Illuminatus trilogy
- in Moby-Dick as a reference to the whale
- in the Final Fantasy games
- in the Farscape science fiction series (living spaceship)
In Hebrew, leviathan also means a device for washing raw wool.