Science in the Bible – Dinosaurs

(4 Minute Read)

Dinosaurs have captured imaginations worldwide! Kids love them, but dinosaurs intrigue people of any age. In natural history museums, dinosaurs are among the most popular exhibits.

Dinosaur fossils have been discovered on every continent beginning in the 1820s. Most are in massive water-deposited bone graveyards, probably resulting from Noah’s Flood of 4500 years ago.

Today scientists claim dinosaurs ruled the earth for 140 million years but died out some 70 million years before man appeared. This supposedly ancient provenance is part of what gives dinosaurs their appealing mystery. But is this purported history true?

The Bible spoke of dinosaurs long before modern scientists started digging up dinosaur fossils. It calls them dragons.

“Dinosaur” comes from two Greek words meaning “terrible lizard.” The word “dinosaur” is not in the English Bible, because it was not coined until 1841 by creationist scientist and head of the British museum Dr. Richard Owen, centuries after the King James Version was translated.

St. George and the Dragon

The truth is that men and dinosaurs lived at the same time starting about 6,000 years ago. Evolutionary age estimates have been torpedoed over the last 20 years by startling fossil discoveries. At fossil digs, fossilized dinosaur bones have broken open to reveal soft tissue, including flexible blood vessels — impossible if the bones were millions of years old.

Dinosaurs in the Bible

The Great Creator made land dinosaurs the same day He made Adam and Eve — on Creation Day Six. Dinosaurs would fall in the category of “beasts of the earth.”
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:24-25)

Later that day Adam named the “beasts of the field.” So Adam named dinosaurs.
God formed every beast of the field…and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. … The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field. (Genesis 2:18-20)

Noah took specimens of every kind of land animal on the ark, and this would include dinosaurs (Genesis 6:19-20). Although hundreds of dinosaur species have been given names, many from scanty evidence, yet only about 50 dinosaur kinds would be needed for the ark. All baby dinosaurs were small, since the largest fossilized dinosaur eggs ever found are football size. Noah probably took hatchlings or young dinosaurs to save space, and to ensure that their entire reproductive life cycle would be available for replenishing the earth.

The Story of Noah's Ark
Advent Calendar by
Dorothy Sayers & Fritz Wegner

Literary scholar Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) is best-known for her intricate mysteries featuring British detective Lord Peter Wimsey. She was a good friend of Christian apologist and Narnia author C. S. Lewis.

Sayers also authored a children’s advent calendar The Story of Noah’s Ark in 1956. Fritz Wegner’s accompanying full-color illustration with calendar doors that opened showed animals, including dragons (dinosaurs) at lower left, gathering to board the Ark shortly before the impending Flood. Three pages of text by Sayers gave a detailed description of the picture.

Sayers wrote, “To be sure there were Dragons in the Ark, or there wouldn’t have been one for St. George to fight.” Sayers logically deduced the presence of dragons (dinosaurs) on Noah’s Ark from history’s evidence of St. George’s battle with a dragon and from the Genesis record that all air-breathing animals outside the Ark died (Genesis 6:17; 7:21-23).

The Bible’s most extensive description of any animal (44 verses) portrays two terrifying dinosaurs, Behemoth and Leviathan. Behemoth was a monstrous beast with a tree-like tail, bones like bronze, and limbs like bars of iron. Leviathan was king of God’s creation, an enormous fire-breathing dinosaur with vicious teeth and stone-hard impenetrable scales. Leviathan probably spawned the fire-breathing-dragon stories of antiquity. (Job 40:15-41:34)

The evolutionary dogma that men never saw dinosaurs has infected many Bible commentators. Thus Study Bible notes and commentaries often identify Behemoth as an elephant or hippopotamus and Leviathan as a crocodile. This is absurd in light of the actual Biblical descriptions. The only reason for these interpretive gymnastics is to avoid the obvious conclusion that the Biblical authors saw dinosaurs vividly and repeatedly, and expected the reader to recognize a detailed eyewitness description.

The Bible has many references to dinosaurs or dragons. The words “dragon” or “monster” (Hebrew tanniyn, Greek drakon) appear 48 times in the Bible and probably refer to dinosaurs (Job 7:12; Psalm 74:13; 148:7; Isaiah 27:1; 51:9; Jeremiah 51:34; Ezekiel 29:3). The flying serpent of Isaiah 30:6 may be a winged dinosaur. In Revelation, the figurative use of “dragon” for Satan (13 times) was surely based on the Apostle John’s awareness of horrifying real monsters which we would call dinosaurs.

Some Bible verses mention dragons right along with other well-known animals:
You will tread upon the lion and cobra,
The young lion and the dragon (literally, tanniyn) you will trample down. (Psalm 91:13)
The Psalmist expected readers to recognize the dragon (dinosaur) creature just as they would a lion or cobra.

Contrary to evolutionary belief, dinosaurs were contemporary with man. Adam named them about 6,000 years ago. They were on the Ark with Noah around 2500 BC. They were well known to Job (circa 2000 BC). Dinosaurs were familiar to Isaiah (700 BC), Jeremiah and Ezekiel (600 BC), and the Apostle John (50 AD). Dinosaurs run, swim, and fly through the Bible — starting with Adam in Genesis all the way to the Apostle John in Revelation.

Science Catches Up to the Bible

Thousands of years before paleontologists dug up dinosaur fossils, the Bible spoke of dinosaurs, including detailed descriptions.

Although the Bible is not primarily a science textbook, it does contain many scientific truths like these and those mentioned in this Science in the Bible series, truths that long pre-date their discovery by today’s scientists. This is strong evidence of divine authorship of the Bible.

Questions to Ponder

1. If dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark, what happened to them?
2. How can Bible passages about dragons spark your kids’ interest in Scripture?

Share your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. It could encourage or help another reader.

Soli Deo Gloria.

This is the 23rd article in the Science in the Bible series of blog posts. While there is much science connected with Creation and Noah’s Flood, this series will focus on lesser known scientific truths that were alluded to in the Bible long before they were known to scientists.
Read the prequels:
1. Science in the Bible – Blood
2. Science in the Bible – Ocean Currents
3. Science in the Bible – Undersea Mountains
4. Science in the Bible – Ocean Reservoirs
5. Science in the Bible – Good Medicine
6. Science in the Bible – Round Earth
7. Science in the Bible – Don’t Marry Kin
8. Science in the Bible – Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
9. Science in the Bible – Hanging Earth
10. Science in the Bible – Thermodynamics
11. Science in the Bible – Water Cycle
12. Science in the Bible – Quarantine
13. Science in the Bible – Starry Host
14. Science in the Bible – Turning Earth
15. Science in the Bible – Hygiene
16. Science in the Bible – Seed of Life
17. Science in the Bible – Circumcision
18. Science in the Bible – Expanding Universe
19. Science in the Bible – Visible From Invisible
20. Science in the Bible – The Sun
21. Science in the Bible – Atomic Fission
22. Science in the Bible – Surgery

Read the sequel:
24. Science in the Bible – Biogenesis

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©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
“contending earnestly for the faith”
“destroying speculations against the knowledge of God”
“for the defense of the gospel”
(Jude 1:3; 2 Cor 10:5; Phil 1:16)
Wednesday November 8, 2017 A.D.

Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105)