Dinosaurs, dragons, behemoths and leviathans

EXCREATIONIST

Some quotes from Helen from various threads and my responses:

from http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=24&t=000466&p=2

...there were dinosaurs after the Flood. In fact, there is a history of 'dragons' in many places all over the world, even up to the time of "St. George and the Dragon." The thing we HAVE to understand about these stories is that they were not made up out of whole cloth. They were all based on something.

Here's some pictures of St. George and the dragon:
http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/imggrg.html

Images of St. George Throughout the Ages
http://www.innotts.co.uk/~asperges/george/george2.html#legend

Information about St. George and the dragon


There are lots of other legends of fantastic creatures as well - were they all based on things like dinosaurs too? And how could dinosaurs exist on just about every continent about 4000 years ago, then later all disappear without a trace?
Do you have any other examples of legends besides St. George?

And to restart our debate over what Job 40:15-24:34 is referring to, I think
that the behemoth is an elephant (and as the NIV text note says, "tail" could mean trunk) and that the leviathan is a crocodile. Part of the description in Job 41 doesn't apply to crocodiles though - the part about breathing fire.

from Serpent, Dragon or Whale? http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=36&t=000071

In checking Leviathan in Job, I saw that there were no legs mentioned, but that "his undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment." The above verses from Isaiah mention him as 'coiling' and 'gliding.' So I think it is safe to say that one of the points made about Leviathan is that it was snake-like in having no legs. Thus, it was not a dragon or dinosaur as we would think of them, as they were land creatures. But there is another class of extinct 'biggies' which dwelt in the sea, and were referred to as 'sea monsters' up to the time of Columbus, if not later. So it seems a Leviathan was, in the physical sense, a serpent-like sea monster of rather enormous size, which terrified men.

Job 41:12

http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=JOB+41:12&langu age=english&version=NASB&showfn=on&showxref=on
- "I will not keep silence concerning his limbs..."

And from
http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=03882&version=

Crosswalk.com - The meaning of "Leviathan":
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>1. leviathan, sea monster, dragon
a. large aquatic animal
b. perhaps the extinct dinosaur, plesiosaurus, exact meaning unknown ++++ Some think this to be a crocodile but from the description in Job 41 this is patently absurd. It appears to ba a large fire breathing animal of some sort. Just as the bomardier beetle has an explosion producing mechanism, so the great sea dragon may have an explosive producing mechanism to enable it to be a real fire breathing dragon.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So it seems that the leviathan has limbs - it isn't legless.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Did it expel fire? The Bible says it did. The Lord in the Book of Job makes very explicit mention of that....I personally don't have any trouble accepting the idea that there was a very large sea creature who could expel fire or firey material from somewhere in his face or snout. Some time ago, who would have scorned electric eels, or iridescent and fluorescent sea-dwelling creatures? There is just so much we don't know!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well Job lived in the land of Uz (Job 1:1), which the NIV says is east of Jordan. I think that to make sense, the behemoth and the leviathan would have to have lived around that area - rather than be hidden in some remote part of the world at that time.

To close, here's a quote from Encarta - Dragon
http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761565866
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Dragon, a legendary reptilian monster similar in form to a crocodile and usually represented as having wings, huge claws, and a fiery breath.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Administrator ]

[ February 21, 2002: Message edited by: Administrator ]

 

PAUL OF EUGENE

From Paul of Eugene

Since it is perfectly possible that God, in speaking to Job, did not confine the examples of the marvels of His creation to those found only on our planet, or only in our geological era, we have no basis for complaining about the alledgedly fantastic descriptions of behemoth or leviathan.

 

HELEN

To Excreationist:
There are plenty of records of various creatures, some of whom were
dinosaurs and none of which are known today, in various legends and
histories.

I don’t normally refer to creation websites because I know they will be
scoffed at by those who think creationists are idiots, but you might be
interested in the following one anyway which treats this subject rather
dispassionately:
http://www.genesispark.com/genpark/history/history.htm


In the meantime, dinosaurs did NOT disappear without a trace. We have
written accounts, carved pictures, painted pictures, and fossils. What
other traces would you like?


To Paul of Eugene:

God says to Job, in Job 40:15, “LOOK at the behemoth, which I made,
ALONG WITH YOU.”

At the beginning of Job 41, God asks Job, “Can YOU pull in the leviathan
with a fishhook?…”

The implication is clearly that Job was quite aware of these animals,
and therefore that they lived on earth and close enough to his
geographical area so that he at least knew about them whether or not he
had seen them himself.

 

KEVIN KLEIN

Helen wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>In the meantime, dinosaurs did NOT disappear without a trace. We have
written accounts, carved pictures, painted pictures, and fossils. What
other traces would you like?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Fossils I can believe, but "written accounts, carved pictures, [and] painted
pictures". This seems quite impossible given that the dinosaurs died out 70
MILLION years before the first hominids appeared. But I'm willing to be
persuaded by the evidence, if you can provide any.

If dinosaurs and humans truly coexisted (which is what I think you mean to
imply), then how come we never find any human artifacts in the same strata
as dinosaur fossils? Where are the stone and metal tools, fire pits,
dwellings, and other artifacts of human existence?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>God says to Job, in Job 40:15, "LOOK at the behemoth, which I made,
ALONG WITH YOU."

At the beginning of Job 41, God asks Job, "Can YOU pull in the leviathan
with a fishhook?"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It seems to me these quotes are referring to elephants and whales. How do
you figure that "behemoth" and "leviathan" must be dinosaurs? After all,
the majority of dinosaurs weren't much bigger than bears or cows (and some
were much smaller than that).

[ February 21, 2002: Message edited by: Administrator ]

 

POIKILOTHERM

Helen, you said:" There are plenty of records of various creatures, some of
whom were dinosaurs and none of which are known today, in various legends
and histories.
I don’t normally refer to creation websites because I know they will be
scoffed at by those who think creationists are idiots, but you might be
interested in the following one anyway which treats this subject rather
dispassionately:
http://www.genesispark.com/genpark/history/history.htm


In the meantime, dinosaurs did NOT disappear without a trace. We have
written accounts, carved pictures, painted pictures, and fossils. What
other traces would you like?

Helen, I can only suggest that you go to this wonderful site here:
http://webhome.idirect.com/~donlong/monsters/monsters.htm

and peruse the fabulous collection of monsters and mythical beasties. Pay
attention to the hippogrif, the peyton,and scylla. Are you taking the
stories of such animals as “evidence” that they coexsisted with humans? I am
not trying to mock, but I must seriously question what else is to be
considered “scientific” evidence: fairies, pixies, kobolds and
poltergeists? How about a beanstalk that reaches to heaven: is this proof of
Yggdrsil, the world tree of the Norse legends? If legends, hero tales and
wonder tales are to be considered “evidence” in biology, we should not be
selective.

I would further note that if we accept folktales as evidence, you should
also easliy accept the notion that a reptile can have feathers like a bird:
look under the heading “basilisk” at the link provided. Either folktales are
just that: folk tales (that’s my theory), or you have indeed discovered the
perfect transitional form between birds and dinosaurs.

 

PATRICK PARSON

We have, from Cro-Magnons on, very detailed and realistic renderings of
extinct animals. However, they are only the animals that science says were
living at the time of Cro-Magnons. No dinosaurs. No mammals that science
says became extinct before humans appeared, either.
Some of the drawings, like those of the Irish Elk, are so well rendered that
we can learn about the animal's appearance and anatomy from them.

But no Pteranodons. No Baluchotherium. Only the ones that are "supposed"
to be there, based on the evidence in the fossil record.

 

PAUL OF EUGENE


Helen posted these comments to me:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>To Paul of Eugene:

God says to Job, in Job 40:15, “LOOK at the behemoth, which I made,
ALONG WITH YOU.”

At the beginning of Job 41, God asks Job, “Can YOU pull in the leviathan
with a fishhook?…”

The implication is clearly that Job was quite aware of these animals,
and therefore that they lived on earth and close enough to his
geographical area so that he at least knew about them whether or not he
had seen them himself.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I'm sure Job was quite aware of them after God told him about them.
The LOOK command could have been accompanied by an appropriate vision.
The question "can you" was surely a rhetorical question at any event, and would make perfect sense even if he was showing him the animal involved for the very first time. I don't claim for certain these are extra-terrestrial beasts; I merely say we can't surely rule that possibility out. I'd certainly agree to a less than 50/50 chance that is the case.

 

EXCREATIONIST
(Additional notes)
Reading through the verses again, it initially seems that Job 40:15 doesn't
apply to elephants - "...which feeds on grass like an ox." If it is saying
that behemoths eat grass then there is no problem since I think elephants
also eat grass. But if it means that behemoths bite grass from the ground
directly with their teeth like an ox, then there is a problem since
elephants don't do this. The part in Job 40:24 about "Can anyone....trap him
and piece his nose" sounds fairly appropriate when talking about elephants.
Maybe "nose" refers to the end of the trunk, and "tail" refers to the
swaying part. "Can anyone capture him by the eyes..." doesn't make much
sense though.
Paul of Eugene -
as Helen has pointed out, the behemoth and the leviathan would have lived
near Job, rather than on a different planet or at a different time in
history. And I don't think the description of the behemoth is very amazing
assuming that the Hebrew word in 40:17 is translated as "trunk" - as the NIV
suggests. The part about the leviathan breathing fire and smoke is pretty
amazing though.

Helen -
You have said that there is a lot of evidence that dragon legends refer to
dinosaurs, but so far you have only given me ONE link to support this
assertion.

That very short article has a few references that appear agree with the
article's theme.

It also has a few images that I believe would have been drawn recently - the
iguana picture in front of a castle, the picture of St. George and the
dinosaur, the dead triceratops and the pterosaur flying in the desert. The
second picture of a dragon is obviously modern, but it has chosen because it
was similar-looking to a dinosaur, even though the artist would have partly
been getting his influence from pictures of dinosaurs.

Images of St. George Throughout the Ages http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/imggrg.html

This is a link I gave earlier which shows what different artists in the past
thought dragons looked like. Look at all the pictures in the "Western Art"
section... you'll see that at least half of them don't look anything like
dinosaurs. And the early pictures don't look like dinosaurs with the later
ones looking more and more abstract - it is just random whether an artist's
dragon looks like a dinosaur or not.

I think dragons are just serpents, except that they are more frightening.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=serpent+dragon
Here I did a search using "google" for serpent and dragon and got over a
100,000 matches.

The Bible also sees them as similar:

Revelation 12:9a - "The great dragon was hurled down-that ancient
serpent called the devil, or Satan...."
Revelation 20:2a - "He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is
the devil, or Satan...."

Isaiah 27:1 - "....Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the
coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea...." and in Job
41, it says that the leviathan has limbs and breathes smoke and fire.

Also, the serpent in Genesis originally had legs.

And if you look at the Japanese pictures of dragons, you'd see that they are
basically just serpents with legs.

So that is a common theme in many cultures - snakes that are much more
terrifying than normal - they are large and have legs - and sometimes also
breathe fire. Sometimes they have bat-like wings as well - another way of
making them look evil.

Do you have ANY examples of ancient artwork that looks extremely similar to
a dinosaur? That black and white picture of a sea monster on that link you
gave looks pretty old but it basically looks like a long thin snake with
legs. Are there any dinosaurs that look like that? (I don't think there are,
as far as I know)

What I'm looking for is ancient pictures, not just vague stories about some
flying creature. As Patrick Parson pointed out, ancient peoples were able to
draw very accurate pictures of animals they saw, including some that are now
extinct.

Kevin Klein said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If dinosaurs and humans truly coexisted (which is what I think you
mean to
imply), then how come we never find any human artifacts in the same strata
as dinosaur fossils? Where are the stone and metal tools, fire pits,
dwellings, and other artifacts of human existence?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I want to just offer an answer, since I was a creationist. Basically the
dinosaurs are at the lower strata because they couldn't get to higher ground
and also sunk down after they drowned due to hydraulic sorting. Also,
dinosaurs probably lived in the marshes. Mammals might have preferred higher
ground and are intelligent enough to get there. There are some problems
though - velociraptors were probably fairly agile and intelligent and yet
they are consistently found in lower strata and animals like hippos and
sloths are less nimble, and hippos in particular like the marshes and they
are probably only found in higher strata (not with dinosaurs).
I guess the humans didn't lived at low atitudes, like near the ocean. I
guess they just built their houses and used their tools on top of hills.
Note that in Genesis 4:17 there were already cities under construction, and
in Genesis 4:22, tools were made out of bronze and iron. Since God sent a
global flood there probably would have been people living all around the
world. And many or most of them would have made bronze and iron tools that
they might have lost sometimes. There might be iron spear-heads in dinosaur
bones, etc... (since humans eventually wiped out all of the dinosaurs, and
climate change was partly responsible)

Kevin Klein said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>It seems to me these quotes are referring to elephants and
whales.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I disagree. As I mentioned earlier, the leviathan clearly had limbs. And
whales don't have have rows of shields on their back (Job 41:15-17) And I
think crocodiles snort a bit (Job 41:18) (not sure though).
Job 41:22-33 says "Strength resides in his neck... The folds of his
flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. His chest is hard as
rock...The sword that reaches him has no effect...His undersides are jagged
potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a thresing sledge...a creature
without fear"
Isaiah 27:1 says "....Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the
coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea...."
This is also an excellent description of a crocodile. The *only* problem I
see when comparing it to a crocodile is that crocodiles don't breathe smoke
or fire.