"Disintegration and Death:" Dragons in The Symbolic Imagination of Ancient Israel

While we think of dragons as creatures of folktales and children's stories, Israel's writers conjured them as images of the forces of disintegration and death that lurk in the background of our world and threaten its stability.
--Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Elaine Pagel 

Image: St. George Killing the Dragon, Vittore Carpaccio, 1507

Click on image to see much larger, more detailed version; I urge you to pay special attention to the wonderfully rendered bits of human remains littering the ground around the dragon. Image sourced here.

And special thanks to Amy Slonaker for introducing me to this wonderful book.