Though the Bible does not use the word, “dinosaur,” it does use the Hebrew word tanim, approximately twenty-five times in the Old Testament. Tanim, though often mistranslated in the King James Version of the Bible as “jackal,” should be rendered “dragon.” Unfortunately, some modern translations have followed the KJV tradition and maintained the mistranslation of some verses.
In Job 40:15, God, speaking to Job, says of one of the greatest animals of His creation: “Look at the behemoth which I made along with you . . . .” [NIV] “Behemoth” is certainly not the elephant or hippopotamus as some modern translations editorially suggest. And Job 40:17 says of the behemoth that its tail “sways like a cedar [tree].” (nothing like the small rope-like tail of the elephant, or the stub of a hippo). Its description could very well be that of a brontosaurus-type dinosaur.
In Job 41, the Creator describes an even more fearsome creature named “Leviathan,” with hide of impenetrable iron-like scales. A creature that is able to breathe fire and ignite coals with his breath. Indeed, God, the Creator brags in Job 41:33-34, of Leviathan that “nothing on earth is his equal—a creature without fear. He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.” [NIV] Dragons—mythological no more! Sadly, several modern translations (NIV included) have the audacity to suggest that perhaps this fire-breathing, awesome and fearless animal that is the pinnacle of God’s creation, could be the “alligator” or “crocodile.”
There was no “pre-Creation” event in which dinosaurs were created just to exist and die out millions of years before humans. Air-breathing, land animals were created on the sixth day of creation “along with” mankind. All of the created kinds of animals mentioned in Genesis 1:24-25 are also mentioned in Genesis 7:14-15 as having been taken with Noah onto the Ark. Indeed, if there was a worldwide flood as Scripture records, and if living dinosaurs are re-discovered, then it should be obvious that dinosaurs were taken on the ark. Indeed, God told Noah that the very purpose in building the Ark was to preserve all the various kinds of animals upon the earth [Genesis 7:2-3].
The world was created as a perfect environment without death. The animals were neither created as, nor initially intended as carnivores (Genesis 1:28-29). If, as the Bible records, death entered the world only after the sin of Adam and Eve, then why were the dinosaurs suffering from death, disease, and chaos for untold millennia? It was the sin of man that brought about death and disease, not the machinations of dinosaurs. [see book chapter on "the Scriptural Advent of Animal Carnivorousness"]
Carnivorous activity began only after the flood—Noah did not have to contend with large, man-eating carnivores on the Ark. [see book chapter on “the Scriptural Advent of Animal Carnivory”] Indeed, it is most likely that juvenile animals of all types were brought onto the ark in order to allow them to live longest and reproduce most generations after the flood.
The biblical account neither teaches nor allows for millions of years of time, let alone billions of years, nor an evolutionary process. Animals reproduce “after their own kind.” |