“What about the Dinosaurs?”

Many people think that the dinosaurs are a problem for those people who believe in the Genesis account of creation. How could they fit into the Bible account – they walked on earth too long ago, didn’t they? The Bible doesn’t mention them, does it? Ah, we’ll see about that.

We need to realize that the Bible does not set out to chronicle all the events that have happened on earth. In the same way it does not seek to categorize all the creatures that have lived on earth, but occasionally we get tantalizing glimpses.

In the Book of Job there is a creature called the Behemoth. We do not have a creature of that name today, but that alone is not surprising as we are dealing with a name in the Hebrew language. The behemoth has frustrated people for generations – what is this creature. Some have suggested that it was an elephant, or perhaps a hippopotamus. Let’s take a look at the description in Job and see what we think it might have been.

“Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you;
He eats grass like an ox.
See now, his strength is in his hips,
And his power is in his stomach muscles.
He moves his tail like a cedar;
The sinews of his thighs are tightly knit.
His bones are like beams of bronze,
His ribs like bars of iron.” Job 40:15-18

I can see in this description there are things that remind me of a elephant. However, there is one line that definitely does not sound like an elephant, “He moves his tail like a cedar”. Now, I don’t know how many elephants you have seen, and if you have looked at their tails, but I can assure you they could not be described as cedars! It is totally ridiculous to even entertain the idea that an elephant’s small tail could be likened to a might cedar tree. No, this behemoth was not an elephant! Many be we will never know for sure, but for me this description seems to fit a dinosaur called Brachiosaurus far better than any living animal.

If you are interested, you could look at the next chapter of Job, chapter 41 and read about the Leviathan, and decide what sort of animal that might have been.

We know that many different species of animals have become extinct. The group of animals that we now know as dinosaurs are just such animals. They seem unusual to us because we have not seen them, but wouldn’t a giraffe or a rhinoceros if they had become extinct many years ago.

The purpose of this blog is to provide you the readers with an opportunity to ask questions of a Biblical nature. There is a whole lot of information buzzing around the world today what with live coverage of news events and the internet, but sadly there is not a lot of information about spiritual matters. We believe the Bible is God’s holy word and in it we can find the answers to the most important questions of this life. If you have any Bible questions please send them into to us.