The identical test, posed and failed: the world-encircling sea-serpent hooked from a small boat, drawn up just far enough for a face-to-face look, and then lost. In both texts the climax is not combat but the unbearable sight — the gaze exchanged at the gunwale — after which the serpent returns to the deep untaken and intact. Job frames it as a rhetorical impossibility; the Edda narrates the one attempt and even its narrator concedes 'the Midgard-serpent still lives and lies in the ocean.'
'Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?... Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more... shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?' (Job 41:1, 8-9) — the sea-serpent posed as a fishing problem that no man can complete.
Thor baits 'a very strong line' with an ox-head; the Midgard Serpent takes the hook and is hauled to the gunwale — 'no one has ever seen a more terrible sight than when Thor whet his eyes on the serpent, and the latter stared at him and spouted venom' — then Hymir cuts the line 'whereby the serpent sank back into the sea.'
Both passages verified verbatim in the cited editions: hook, line, boat, the terror at sight of him, the broken attempt, the serpent surviving in the sea.
Our fact-checkers corrected the first draft:
The incognito divine guest in a mortal house: the name is refused (or withheld) for the duration of the visit, and the moment of the name · asked for or finally spoken · coincides with fire, the god's departure, and mortal peril for the host.
Encirclement as the serpent's resting posture: neither text has the serpent attack · Jormungandr simply lies around all the earth in the surrounding sea, mouth closed on his own tail; Ahi lies 'couched around the waters,' holding the goddesses 'encompassed.' In both, the coil is a form of custody · the serpent holds a whole category of the world (the dry earth, the celestial waters) enclosed within its ring, keeping rather than devouring, and the enclosure persists until an outside force (Ragnarok, the bolt) breaks it.
The same three-stage avian reconnaissance protocol from a grounded vessel, with overlapping species (dove, raven) and the identical inferential logic: the bird that does not come back is the good news.
An identical four-beat sequence: landing → burnt offering → the deity smells the smoke and is moved → vow of never-again sealed by a physical token of remembrance (a string of sky-blue lapis at the goddess's throat; a bow of color in the cloud).