TANNEEN or, pl. vnn), a generic name for a large animal of the serPen't class. It is used for a land serpent (Exod. vii. 9, X. 12 ; Deut. xxxii. 33 ; Ps. xci. 13 ; Jer. li. 34), and also of some monster of the deep (Gen. i. 21 ; Job vii. I 2 ; Ps. bcxiv. 13, cxlviii. 7 ; Is. xxvii. 1, xxi. 9 ; Ezek. xxix. 3 ; xxxiii. 2 [where inn is used]). In these last passages some suppose that it designates the crocodile ; but tbis is purely conjectural. The A. V. renders by whale or 'whales in several of these passages, and there is no reason why, this may not be accepted. The word is evidently used with very wide application.
The LXX. in some of these passages give 4707, and from the application of this term to the fish 01) which swallowed Jonah, a very general belief has been established that this was a whale. The Greek word, however, no more fixes the meaning to whale than does the Hebrew ; it is simply a generic name of wide significancy (comp. Hesych. in vac.), and may be used of the shark or any large monster of the deep. It may be observed also that cetace ous animals, though less frequent in the Mediter ranean than in the ocean, are far from being un known there. Joppa, now Jaffa, the very place whence Jonah set sail, displayed for ages in one ot its pagan temples huge bones of a species of whale, which the legends of the place pretended were those of the dragon monster slain by Perseus, as repre sented in the Arkite mythus of that hero and An dromeda ; and which remained in that spot till the conquering Romans carried them in triumph to the great city. Procopius mentions a huge sea-monster in the Propontis, taken during his prmfecture of Constantinople, in the 36th year of Justinian (A. D.
562), after having destroyed vessels at certain inter vals for more than fifty years. Rondoletius enu merates several whales stranded or taken on the coasts of the Mediterranean : these were most likely all arca:, physeters, or campedolios—i.e. toothed whales, as large and more fierce than the mysticetes, which have balein in the mouth, and at present vary rarely make their way further south than the Bay of Biscay ; though in early times it is probable they visited the Mediterranean, since the present writer has seen them within the tropics. In the Syrian seas, the Belgian pilgrim Lavaers, on his passage from Malta to Palestine, incidentally mentions a Tonynvisch,' which he further denominates an ` oil-fish,' longer than the vessel, leisurely swimming along, and which the seamen said prognosticated bad weather. On the island of Zerbi, close to the African coast, the late Commander Davies, R. N., found the bones of a cachalot on the beach. Shaw mentions an orca more than sixty feet in length, stranded at Algiers ; and the late Admiral Ross Donelly saw one in the Mediterranean near the island of Albarran. There are, besides, numerous sharks of the largest species in the seas of the Le vant, and also in the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea, as well as cetacea, of which bakena bitan is the largest in those seas, and two species of halicore or tlugong, which are herbivorous animals, inter mediate between whales and seals.—(C. H. S.)' —NV. L. A.