The Wyrm That Never Dies (Part Two)
Scripture versus the Serpent, Literary Legendry, and the Dragonslayer Saints
SCRIPTURE VERSUS THE SERPENT
Dragon references abound in the Bible1, and the number expands exponentially if you include the broader catchall term serpent. Issues of translation aside, some notable passages include:
Their wine is the gall of dragons, and the venom of asps (Deuteronomy 32:33)
I was the brother of dragons (Job 30:29)
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all ye deeps (Psalm 148:7)
Unknown beasts of a new kind, full of rage: either breathing out a fiery vapour, or sending forth a stinking smoke, or shooting horrible sparks out of their eyes (Wisdom 11:19)
Hast not thou struck the proud one, and wounded the dragon? (Isaiah 51:9)
Den of dragons (Jeremiah 9:11)
Behold, I come against thee, Pharao king of Egypt, thou great dragon that liest in the midst of thy rivers (Ezekiel 29:3)
While many of these verses use the word “dragon” as a general descriptor of metaphorical monstrosities, an ostensibly overt reference to the bona fide beast (in physical terms) occurs in the Book of Job—which doesn’t actually use the word dragon, but leviathan2:
Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.
His body is like molten shields, shut close up with scales pressing upon one another.
One is joined to another, and not so much as any air can come between them:
They stick one to another and they hold one another fast, and shall not be separated.
His sneezing is like the shining of fire, and his eyes like the eyelids of the morning.
Out of his mouth go forth lamps, like torches of lighted fire.
Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, like that of a pot heated and boiling.
His breath kindleth coals, and a flame cometh forth out of his mouth.
In his neck strength shall dwell, and want goeth before his face.
The members of his flesh cleave one to another: he shall send lightnings against him, and they shall not be carried to another place.
His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith's anvil.
When he shall raise him up, the angels shall fear, and being affrighted shall purify themselves.
When a sword shall lay at him, it shall not be able to hold, nor a spear, nor a breastplate.
For he shall esteem iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.
The archer shall not put him to flight, the stones of the sling are to him like stubble.
As stubble will he esteem the hammer, and he will laugh him to scorn who shaketh the spear.
The beams of the sun shall be under him, and he shall strew gold under him like mire.
He shall make the deep sea to boil like a pot, and shall make it as when ointments boil.
A path shall shine after him, he shall esteem the deep as growing old.
There is no power upon earth that can be compared with him who was made to fear no one.
He beholdeth every high thing, he is king over all the children of pride.
—The Book of Job, Chapter 41, verses 5 through 25
If that ain’t a dragon, I don’t know what is!3
Arguably the biggest biblical references to the dragon occur in the Bible’s bookends, Genesis and Revelation.
And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed among all cattle, and beasts of the earth: upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.
I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.
—The Book of Genesis, chapter 3, verses 14 through 15
This protoevangelium in Genesis prophesies the millennia-long warfare destined to take place between man and monster—a war instigated when the snake first slithered into the Garden of Eden at the dawn of creation.
It has been observed4 that the perennial myths of dragonslaying heroes saving damsels in distress are really just wish fulfillment—imaginary do-overs of Adam’s first failure to protect Eve from the serpent.
In a book known for its stunning and (literally) apocalyptic imagery, the dragon passages in Revelation stand out as some of the most striking.
And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads, and ten horns: and on his head seven diadems (Revelation 12:3)
And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world (Revelation 12:9)
And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years (Revelation 20:2)
Thus the slithering serpent doomed to crawl on its belly, here unequivocally identified as Satan5, has evolved (or devolved) into the demonic dragon chained for a thousand years deep inside the pits of hell.
Honorable mention must be given to Bel and the Dragon, the Book of Daniel’s deuterocanonical polemic against idol worship. The titular dragon passage seemingly tosses symbolism aside for another literal depiction of a living, breathing (and, most importantly, eating) dragon:
And there was a great dragon in that place, and the Babylonians worshipped him.
And the king said to Daniel: Behold thou canst not say now, that this is not a living god: adore him therefore.
And Daniel said: I adore the Lord my God: for he is the living God: but that is no living god.
But give me leave, O king, and I will kill this dragon without sword or club. And the king said: I give thee leave.
Then Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and boiled them together: and he made lumps, and put them into the dragon's mouth, and the dragon burst asunder. And he said: Behold him whom you worshipped.
—The Book of Daniel, chapter 14, verses 22 through 26
LITERARY LEGENDRY
European folklore is teeming with wyrms and wyverns, with two Pan-Germanic legends in particular serving as seminal stories of dragons and dragonslaying.
The Saga of Sigurd and the Ballad of Beowulf both materialized in manuscript form sometime around the 10th and 11th centuries (with the oral traditions on which they were based likely being several centuries older still).
Each in their own way tells the tale of a questing hero’s epic confrontation with (you guessed it) a dragon.
In Beowulf, the aging warrior-king enters into his martial swansong against a nameless dragon brooding atop a mountain of gold, his elegiac endeavor being an unmistakable allegory for the Passion of Christ (in case the copious biblical references from the unknown-but-clearly-Christian poet didn’t make that clear).
The Christian connection to the (arguably) purely pagan tale of Nordic knight-errant Sigurd’s duel with dwarf-turned-dragon Fáfnir is a little less clear—but taking into consideration C.S. Lewis’s contention that all heathen myths are anticipations of the myth made fact in the Incarnation—as well as the Norse pantheon’s personal twilight of the gods at the sunrise (or rather Son Rise) of the One True God, I’d say the comparison is justified.
Indeed, the Christian correlations between Sigurd and Beowulf become retroactively sturdier once cradle Catholic J.R.R Tolkien6 breathed new life into those old tales by re-casting the gold-greedy dragons into literary dragon par excellence, Smaug.
THE DRAGONSLAYER SAINTS
To speak of dragonslaying saints is to speak almost certainly of Saint George.
The Roman legionary turned Christian martyr’s heroic virtue was so much the stuff of legend that, in the Middle Ages, his spiritual duel with the devil turned into physical battle to the death against a dragon, earning him the title of patron saint of the aforementioned Merry Old England.
But it turns out Saint George is far from alone in that accolade—his continental confrere, Saint Romain, earned similar renown when he smote a dragon that was plaguing a port town in 7th century France (or more specifically, he smote the dragon’s gothic cousin, the gargoyle.
As stated earlier, the saintly knight in shining armor rescuing the fair maiden from the gaping jaws of the bloodthirsty drake embodies the spirit of Christian chivalry and flies in the face of selfish heathenism—the pagans of old being far more likely to sacrifice a frightened virgin to a dragon than save her from it!
One virgin who was anything but a damsel in distress is Saint Marina.
Despite being the go-to patroness for sufferers of kidney disease, her pre-congregational canonization was ensured (so the crowd-pleasing legend goes) when she freed herself from the belly of the devil (in dragon form) via the sign of the cross.7
***
Last month, The View host Joy Behar attempted to mock popular podcaster Joe Rogan by indignantly asserting that he “believes in dragons!”
While this provided plenty of fodder for the usual culture war commentary, I can’t help but wonder if a little less dragon skepticism and a little more childlike credulity might not do us all a little good.
To that end, I’ll leave the final word to an apocryphal but apt Chestertonian aphorism:
Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist.
Children already know that dragons exist.
Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.
NEXT WEEK: Of Lobsters and Men
Bible quotes in this article are from the Douay-Rheims edition.
Canst thou draw out the leviathan with a hook, or canst thou tie his tongue with a cord? (Job 40:20)
I’ve always found naturalistic theories about the origin of Leviathan (and his land-dwelling counterpart, Behemoth) to be underwhelming but, leaving the explanations to the exegetes, it’s undeniable that Job’s description is remarkably draconian.
(Unless I’m misremembering) I recall seeing a quote or post making this very point here on Substack, but I’ve been unable to track it down.
Indeed, the devil and the dragon share more than just ontological similarities, but (non-literally) biological: the sharp fangs and claws, the squamous red skin and membranous wings, the pointy tail and horns, and a marked affinity for fire.
The only piece of (non-scriptural, non-devotional, non-magisterial) Catholic literature that gives The Lord of the Rings a run for its money (if you’ll forgive such an understatement) is Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, but there’s not much dragon overlap to be found in that magnum opus apart from the appearance of etymologically-draconian demon Draghignazzo and the many scaly-winged illustrations of Gustave Doré.