Ziz

The Ziz (Hebrew: זיז‎) is a giant griffin-like bird in Jewish mythology, said to be large enough to be able to block out the sun with its wingspan.

Like Leviathan, so Ziz is a delicacy to be served to the pious at the end of time, to compensate them for the privations which abstaining from the unclean fowls imposed upon them.

[4] His text is echoed in English by Samuel Purchas in 1613:[5] Elias Leuita reporteth of a huge bird, also called Bariuchne, to be rosted at this feast; of which the Talmud saith, that an egge sometime falling out of her nest, did ouerthrow and breake downe three hundred tall Cedars; with which fall the egge being broken, ouerflowed and carried away sixtie Villages...

Psalme auerreth out of Rabbi Iehudah, that Ziz is a bird so great, that with spreading abroad his wings, he hideth the Sunne, and darkeneth all the world.

And (to leape back into the Talmud) a certaine Rabbi sayling on the Sea, saw a bird in the middle of the Sea, so high, that the water reached but to her knees; whereupon he wished his companions there to wash, because it was so shallow; Doe it not (saith a voyce from heauen) for it is seuen yeares space since a Hatchet, by chance falling out of a mans hand in this place, and alwayes descending, is not yet come at the bottome.Humphrey Prideaux in 1698 describes the Ziz as being like a giant celestial rooster: For in the Tract Bava Bathra of the Babylonish Talmud, we have a Story of such a prodigious Bird, called Ziz, which standing with his Feet upon the Earth, reacheth up unto the Heavens with his head, and with the spreading of his Wings darkneth the whole Orb of the Sun, and causeth a total Eclipse thereof.

This Bird the Chaldee Paraphrast on the Psalms says, is a Cock, which he describes of the same bigness, and tells us that he crows before the Lord.

And the Chaldee Paraphrast on Job also tells us of him, and of his crowing every morning before the Lord, and that God giveth him Wisdom for this purpose.