Dinosaurs and the Bible by Brian Thomas

Author:Brian Thomas [Thomas, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780736965415
Published: 2015-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

3

DINOSAURS IN THE BIBLE

So far, we have tried to show how Scripture best explains what fossils and human history reveal about dinosaurs. But additional insights from the Bible further establish the clear connection between dinosaurs and the Word of God.

What Was Behemoth?

When a Scottish friend recently visited my family’s home in Texas, I asked how he was introduced to the Lord Jesus and how he came to believe in biblical creation. He told us that even though he grew up as a secularist, he responded to preaching about Christ during a church service that he visited in Spain. Only a few weeks later, a kind man from his new church asked him, “Did you know that dinosaurs were described in the pages of Scripture?”

He said he had no idea but was curious. So the man showed him Job 40. What a great way to introduce a new Christian to the trustworthiness of Scripture—showing how the Bible itself answers questions about dinosaurs!

In Job 40:15-24, God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind, inviting him to consider a very large creature and what its size and strength imply about God’s greatness:

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. He is the first of the ways of God; only He who made him can bring near His sword. Surely the mountains yield food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there. He lies under the lotus trees, in a covert of reeds and marsh. The lotus trees cover him with their shade; the willows by the brook surround him. Indeed the river may rage, yet he is not disturbed; he is confident, though the Jordan gushes into his mouth, though he takes it in his eyes, or one pierces his nose with a snare.

Translators, unsure what modern animal might best represent behemoth, inserted English letters that sound out the original Hebrew. Occurring only here in Scripture, the word “behemoth” appears to be the masculine plural form of behemah. This term referred to many different animals in the Old Testament, typically those that walk on four feet, distinguishing them from flying animals. The King James Version translates the word as “cattle” in the early chapters of Genesis and as “beasts” in the Flood account. This could include sheep, bears, elephants, elk, alligators, and other quadrupeds. To which animal was God referring? Perhaps the best match for the Job 40 description is a sauropod.

First, we should determine why the category of behemah (“beasts”) would include dinosaurs. Examining a comparable word in another language helps establish the definition of a word. The fact that multiple languages sometimes contain similar words indicates that the words carry a real and shared meaning.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.