Season 10, Episode 25 - Home Again (Patreon)

NOTE: Sorry for the confusion with this episode earlier today - we accidentally made the post using Patreon's new 'drop' feature, which set 10.25 to release next Thursday. We've deleted that drop and are releasing the episode in the normal way, available immediately.

This week on MSB: Victory Gundam episode 25 and... Oliver is Uso-pilled, Odelo is getting better at romance, Peggie is waving death flags in both hands, Uso asks if Shahkti can come out and play, and Marbet is still just terrible at strategy. Plus, we get to meet the REAL star of the show.

Please listen to it!

Show Notes

• The original names of the Contio (Behemoth) and Abigor (Leviathan) are mentioned in Mark Simmons' Production History: Mobile Suit V Gundam, alongside early rough sketches of the two mobile suits.

• Behemoth and Leviathan in the Bible:

  • Both creatures appear in the Book of Job; Behemoth in Chapter 40 and Leviathan in 41; Leviathan also appears in Psalms 74 and 104.

  • The 1901 edition of The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, edited by Isidore Singer with Isaak Funk and Frank Vizetelly, includes an entry on Leviathan and Behemoth as they appear in the Old Testament of the Bible (full text online at the above link).

    • The text of the same article from the 1906 version is available here.

  • They are also discussed in the entry on Demonology, by Emil Hirsch et al.

  • Likewise, they appear in Jorge Luis Borges' fanciful Book of Imaginary Beings, Norman Thomas di Giovanni (tr.). E.P. Dutton, 1969.

  • An article on LearnReligions.com by Ariela Pelaia talks specifically about Behemoth.

  • An English-language blog post by Chen Malul for the National Library of Israel describes "The Three Jewish Monsters Charged With Saving the World," about Behemoth, Leviathan, and an avian counterpart called the Ziz.

    • The three monsters are also discussed in Leviathan, Behemoth, nad Ziz: Jewish Messianic Symobls in Art by Joseph Gutmann, Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. 39, 1968, pp. 219–30.

  • Mythology.net has articles on both Behemoth and Leviathan.

  • Thomas Aquinas made his own later interpretations of the Behemoth and Leviathan stories, in his Expositio super Iob ad litteram ('Commentary on the Book of Job'), trans. Brian Mulladay.

• Behemoth and Leviathan in Christian Demonology:

  • Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's classification of demons in De occulta philosophia (1509) is available in PDF form the Michigan State University Library.

  • Peter Binsfeld's 1589 De confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum.

  • The 1818 version of Jacques Colin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal.

    • The 1863 illustrated edition can be found here.

• Behemoth and Leviathan compared to other legends from the region:

  • An article by Indlieb Farazi Saber and Mohamad Elaasar for Middle East Eye talks about Bahamut, the giant whale who may be an Arabian combination of Behemoth and Leviathan.

  • Leviathan is compared with other similar dragons / monstrous serpents in the Middle Eastern legend in chapter 6: Leviathan Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Isaiah 27:1 in Isaiah's Kingship Polemic by William D. Barker, Mohr Siebeck (2014).

  • The link between Leviathan and Lotan is explored in J. A. Emerton's 1982 article Leviathan and ltn: The Vocalization of the Ugaritic Word for the Dragon. Vetus Testamentum, 32(3), 327–331.

  • General information about Yamm is available from Britannica.

  • More about the Ugaritic Ba'al Cycle:

    • Ugaritic Myths, Epics, and Legends from Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James Pritchard, trans. H.L. Ginsberg, Princeton UP (1969).

    • This page abut the Cycle of Ba'al Tablet 4, from the Syrian Virtual Museum.

    • Leviathan & Co.: More Canaanite Mythology in the Hebrew Bible by Wilrens Hornstra, July 2021.

    • Mark Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Volume I: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU 1.1.-1.2, Brill (1994).

• Demonology in Japanese Translation:

  • The two Japanese translations of Jacques Colin de Plancy's Dictionnaire infernal that would have been available to Victory's staff were 

    • 地獄の辞典 translated by 床鍋剛彦 in 1990 (abridged), and

    • 悪魔の事典 translated by 大瀧啓裕 in 1992 (complete).

Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced within Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Lenape, or Delaware, people. Before European settlers forced them to move west, the Lenape lived in New York City, New Jersey, and portions of New York State, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Lenapehoking is still the homeland of the Lenape diaspora, which includes communities living in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario.

You can learn more about Lenapehoking, the Lenape people, and ongoing efforts to honor the relationship between the land and indigenous peoples by visiting the websites of the Delaware Tribe and the Manhattan-based Lenape Center. Listeners in the Americas and Oceania can learn more about the indigenous people of your area at https://native-land.ca/.We would like to thank The Lenape Center for guiding us in creating this living land acknowledgment.

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The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licenses. All music used in the podcast has been edited to fit the text.

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