Were there Dinosaurs in the Bible?

This isn't a serious argument is it?
Let's face the facts. The Behemoth of old testament times was a discription of something either mythological or perhaps a water bull (hippo).I don't believe that it can be set in stone that the dinosaurs died 65 million years ago. They may have been much more recent.But We simply do not have the hard evidence they existed with men in ancient times.The Paluxy tracks were hoaxes. The Ica stones are hoaxes. Some of the woven materiels from central america do contain dinosaurian figures, but they can easily be attributed to other animals.The many petroglyphs of alleged dinosaurs made by Indians cannot be proven authentic.We just don't have the same geological age of dino's and men together - unlike mammoth bones which do show human involvement. Unless someone one day finds other evidence, I am convinced the Dinosaurs lived before man.Thus Job saw an Elephant, er, Hippopotamus.

A very few of the Paluxy tracks are hoaxes. Of course, none of them are human tracks.

ironically, it is very much set in stone. that does tend to be where fossils are found, you know.no dinosaur is found above the k-t boundary. there is a thick line of dust, with a rather high concentration of iridium, between the cretaceous and tertiary layers.this layer is dated at 65 mya. i see nothing mythological about it. it sounds like an elephant to me.now, leviathan, there's a mythological creature.

I just want to apologize to Loudmouth. I'm sorry. I did not think you were serious. I had never heard anyone argue that perhaps the tail is referring to a penis. My personal opinion still remains that it is a tail not a penis. I believe if God meant penis He would have used the word for penis. Which is "gzat". He used "zanab". Which is Hebrew for tail. There is no evidence that I have seen yet that shows Hebrews ever used "zanab" euphemistically to mean penis. If anyone has a clear example please show it to me, I would appreciate it. I also do not see the point in mentioning an animal's penis in the description. So, please accept my apology. I'm very busy right now, but I do have several reason's why I don't interpret this passage the way you do. Also, why I don't believe it is an elephant. I also do not doubt that dinosaurs existed at the same time as man, whether or not behemoth is a dinosaur.

well, apologize to him, not me. except that god did not write the book of job. job did not write the book of job. we have LOTS of instances of words specifically being replaced in the bible. the name of god is a rather prominent case. do you really think that god didn't use his own name to a whole generation of people? yet there it isn't in some important passages of the bible. so what god said does not exactly translate into what was written, should that section of job actually be god really speaking.and it's quite obviously a euphemism. uh, well, that passage in job is the example.let's play fill in the blanks.

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Job 40:16,17:

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His strength is in his loins,
His might in the muscles of his belly.

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He makes his _____ stand up like a cedar;
The sinews of his thighs are knit together.

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now, this is CLASSIC parallelism. strength/might, loins/belly. it's talking out basically the same thing: virility. his strength is in his loins. think about it for a second. what are of the body are we focusing on?oh look what's next. thighs? KJV renders this "stones" which is also the way it renders "testicles" in deuteronomy. it's clear what they were thinking when they read it. but think about it more. what's parallel to thighs (or even testicles)?here's another curiosity of the verse. the move (or in my rendering "stand up") is move as in "that moved me emotionally." it's often translated as "delight" in other parts of the bible. what sort of tail could cause delight in its owner?so in summary, what's it talking about? sexuality and virility.i couldn't find a better picture, but the elephant is extremely well hung: notice it's basically vertical (like a cedar), unlike a dinosaur's tail, which remains horizontal. dinosaurs are not found above the k-t boundary, and humans are not found below (let alone anywhere close to) the k-t boundary.

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I just want to apologize to Loudmouth. I'm sorry.

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Hey, we all make mistakes. At least you are capable of admitting that you make mistakes, a sure sign of maturity. Thanks.

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I believe if God meant penis He would have used the word for penis. Which is "gzat". He used "zanab". Which is Hebrew for tail.

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Imagine that a current day author wrote "The man sat in the corner and played with his cock." Would you picture a man sitting in the corner playing with a chicken? I sure wouldn't. Euphemisms are found throughout the Old Testament. Perhaps the most famous is the euphimism "knew" instead of "slept with", as in the phrase "Adam knew his wife". Even the Greek Septigunt, one of the earliest translations of the OT, knew that "tail" was a euphemism for penis.

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There is no evidence that I have seen yet that shows Hebrews ever used "zanab" euphemistically to mean penis. If anyone has a clear example please show it to me, I would appreciate it.

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I think I already did.

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I also do not see the point in mentioning an animal's penis in the description.

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City folk see no reason for mentioning genitalia, but rural fok such as myself know all too well what it is referencing. When you raise animals, such as the Jews, large testicles and penises are a sign of potency. Bulls that have large testicles are better able to impregnate more cows, for example. Bulls are actually bred for large testicles. The author was trying to relate the POWER and VIRILITY of the beast. It was not an attempt to write something dirty or perverse.

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I also do not doubt that dinosaurs existed at the same time as man, whether or not behemoth is a dinosaur.

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What evidence do you base this on?

*chuckles*

ITYM "When you raise animals, such as the Jews did, ..."

The idea that the Behemoth's tail like a cedar refers to an elephant's erection is very funny. It certainly wasn't a tail if that were the case.Neither hippo's or Elephants have tails like ceders. But they both do play and inhabit the water. What sort of animal described in the book of Job would live near the Jordan river, or atleast the vicinity of Palestine and Egypt contemporary with man? Hippos are now extinct in Egypt but, they were common in the biblical times. Maybe they lived as far north as Palestine, hence Job's description of them? We know that Lions lived in parts of Europe as recently as 100 AD, and still existed in Palestine till the early 1900's. Maybe Hippo's inhabited the Jordan also?

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ITYM "When you raise animals, such as the Jews did, ..."

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Hehe, thanks for the editing.This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 12-07-2004 04:01 PM

uh, we've pretty much already covered that it doesn't mean "tail" literally.

yeah that could have been bad....

Who knows, maybe the chroniclers of Job had a sense of pius humor concerning the Erectine Elephants...The Behemoth doesn't really match an Elephant or a Hippo in every specific detail unfortunately. It's the tail which discounts them both. According to the details given, it sounds much more like a creature with a long tail(duh). A "Cedar" like tail. Cedar is a figurative sense of measurement of course. The Cedar Job refers to, is most likely the "Cedar of Lebanon" which grows between 40 and 120ft tall in the middle-east.If we read the scriptures to the most literal sense as many fundi-creationists do, then the Behemoth has a tail which is in the neighborhood of 40-120ft long.If we apply that same literalist view to Amos 2:9, then the bible tells us the "Amorite" (possibly of King Og fame, Deut:3)was between 40 and 120 feet of height.Amos 2:9 "Yet destroyed I the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath"I beleive that the Behemoth is most likely a mythological creature. Yes, I guess some saurapods had tails that were between 40-120ft long, but I would sooner believe in walking trees than dinosaurs and mankind living together.

not if it's a penis it doesn't. are you following this thread at all? we've shown pretty conclusively that it's talking about sexual prowess, virility, and fertility. saying penis makes TOTAL sense in this context. that's a long penis! but seriously, it's the girth, not the length.actually, that brings up a very serious problem. HOW is it like a cedar? size? orientation? color? ....HARDNESS? assuming it does mean size, as amos does here, do either of them mean literal size? or just big? it sounds like he's just figuratively saying "big and strong" doesn't it?language is weird and not very specific. if i were to say that there are a myriad different ways of reading teh book of job, and you can only find 4 or 5 thousand of that 10 (myriad = 10k), am i wrong? or does "myriad" just mean "a lot of" now? yes, but i wouldn't describe a dinosaurs tail, or ANYTHING's tail as being "like a cedar." why? even though dino tails are thick and massive.... they're horizontal. cedars are usually verticle, especially when trying to convey the idea of strength.

Like most places on earth, Greece, Persia, Arabia and North Africa have their share of fossil dinosaurs. They have biguns and little ones. They also have fossils of many mammalian critters as well.Is it possible that all the accounts of fabulous critters resulted from Bronze and Stone Age folk finding such remains and then trying to imagine just what the critter looked like?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion