Where do dinosaurs fit into your world when you talk about creation?

[Wil Munny]

The bible nevers talks about the sea monsters and dinosaurs that are being found. No reference of them are made in Genisis.

If man was created at the same time all other life there is a big gap based on the number science follows. What do you think?


Table 7-1 is an overview of the various estimates of the age of mankind in the scientific community over the last decades. It shows how dramatically these estimates have changed and how wrong the initial estimates were by “modern” science. This table also shows the age of the oldest evidences of human civilizations and peoples, based on archaeological finds. Most of these ancient leftovers of human habitation date back only 15,000 years ago. Claims for older finds are rarely presented.
Time period
Estimated age of mankind

In the late 1950s
5 - 15 million years old

In the mid 1970s
5 - 7 million years old

In the late 1970s
1 million years old

In the mid 1980s
800,000 years old

In the late 1980s
50,000 – 200,000 years old

In the mid 1990s
43,000 years old

Current estimates
37,000 (or less) – 49,000 years old

Oldest historical record of civilizations
8,000 – 25,000 years old

The Bible
6,000 – 25,000 years old [11]


Table 7- 1 : Estimated Age of Mankind during the Last Decades

[Wil Munny]

I have a friend that believes this. I had never heard of it. But thought I pass on his opinion.

Although the Bible does not tell us exactly how long ago it was that God made the world and its creatures, we can make a good estimate of the date of creation by reading through the Bible and noting some interesting passages:

God made everything in six days. He did this, by the way, to set a pattern for mankind, which has become our seven day week (as described in Exodus 20:11). God worked for six days and rested for one, as a model for us. Furthermore, Bible scholars will tell you that the Hebrew word for day used in Genesis 1, can only mean an ordinary day in this context.

We are told God created the first man and woman—Adam and Eve—on Day Six. Many facts about when their children and their children’s children were born are given in Genesis. These genealogies are recorded throughout the Old Testament, up until the time of Christ. They certainly were not chronologies lasting millions of years.

As you add up all of the dates, and accepting that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to Earth almost 2000 years ago, we come to the conclusion that the creation of the Earth and animals (including the dinosaurs) occurred only thousands of years ago (perhaps only 6000!), not millions of years. Thus, if the Bible is right (and it is!), dinosaurs must have lived within the past thousands of years.

[vexed less]

^^^hmmmm....intersting.
i probably wont adapt that theory into my own belief system, but it does seem to have a point to it.

[Sosa]

In the book of Job...moses..who is supposedly the author...describes a dragon....

[Sosa]

One theory that I hold on to is that even if you believe that creation of Adam and Eve began 6000 years ago....its is possible that this earth is millions...even billions of years old....Genesis describes this world as being disorderly and without form...we dont know if there was a previous creation on this earth before Adam and Eve....so it is possible that there were dinosaurs milions of years ago....

Second....The creation story is taken as myth by many Jewish scholars....myth not as in fairy tale...myth means that which is most true...it was an oral story to help understand how humanity came about...no one was there first hand to see this actually happen...there is alot of metaphor in the creation story of Genesis...

Lets say it literally was six days of creation....we dont know how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden before they sinned....It is not said whether they sinned the day after...the week after...or even thousands of millions of years after they were created...there is a gap between their creation and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden....

Some scholars believe that if there were dinosaurs in creation they were probably made extinct during the Great Flood

[Dr. ibarfly Jones]

interesting. I never heard the theory about dinosaurs dying out from the great flood. I thought it was worldly recongized that there was no great flood once man arrived.

as for the dinosaurs and man coexisting. I don't think so. never has there been any physical evidence to support that. is it possible? I guess.

[Sosa]

Dinosaurs could have existed before "creation" which could explain the millions of years if you believe that creation happened 6,000 years ago...another theory is that if man and dinosaurs co-existed dinosaurs could have lived in other parts of the world far from man....i dont know the population of ancient times..pre-deluvian..but I dont know of any fossils found in the middle east of africa...I could be wrong about that though

[Dr. ibarfly Jones]

it see what u are saying. creation to you is when man appeared on the planet. right?

[Sosa]

what I meant by "creation" above was the creation recorded in Genesis....

[Nastradamus]

I believe that the dinosaurs died in the flood. I watched a Christian movie series that had a part dedicated to this. There are millions of species and it would seem impossible to get all of them onto a boat. What do you feed the T-Rexes? I think the entire reptile kingdom could be represented by a few smaller reptiles. Formations like the Grand Canyon might take a long time to create with the river as big as it currently is today, but if the entire world was covered in water and the wrath of God is in effect, it could happen much more quickly. The dinosaurs are covered in many feet of stone and sediment. If there was a flood cutting up the landscape, there would be plenty of sediment to cover them up. Why would there be so many young healthy dinosaur skeletons found intact if there was no great disaster? There are legends of Atlantis all around the world, and a flood would be an explanation. So many things can be traced back to the flood, its amazing.
I still wonder if there wasn't another age on earth with life. If there really is a God, I wonder if everything that happened in our current world will be explained in the end, or if it will just all be forgotten.

[GeorgiaBoi]

This is what I've heard:

There's a passage in Genesis where Adam and Eve are told to replenish the Earth suggesting that there were creatures that existed before they did.

[Boogiedown10459]

Actually, dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible, and we will prove it by doing the following three things:

Examining the Bible’s text and the related scientific facts.
Explaining the accuracy of the Bible.
Exploring what we are taught in school and through the media.


The Bible’s Text
The Bible refers to many the common animals we know today. The list includes lions, wolves, bears, sheep, cattle and dogs along with various kinds of birds, rodents, reptiles, and insects. What is interesting is that this extensive list includes three animals that we no longer recognize. These three are (in the original Hebrew language) tanniyn, b@hemowth (yes, it’s spelled correctly—at least as close as we can get in Roman characters), and livyathan.

Although we alter the spelling of behemoth and Leviathan slightly, we still use those same words in bibles today. However, tanniyn is always translated into another word when we write it in English. Tanniyn occurs 28 times in the Bible and is normally translated “dragon.” It is also translated “serpent,” “sea monster,” “dinosaur,” “great creature,” and “reptile.” Behemoth and Leviathan are relatively specific creatures, perhaps each was a single kind of animal. Tanniyn is a more general term, and it can be thought of as the original version of the word “dinosaur.” The word “dinosaur” was originally coined in 1841, more than three thousand years after the Bible first referred to “Tanniyn.” To make things clearer, we constructed the following table comparing the scientific names with the Biblical names tanniyn, behemoth, and Leviathan.

“Dinosaur” Names, Then and Now
Name and date first written in the Bible Scientific Name (best estimate) and date the name appeared
tanniyn (dragon) before 1400 BC dinosaur 1841 AD
behemoth before 1400 BC brachiosaurus 1903 AD
Leviathan before 1400 BC kronosaurus 1901 AD

How we got these new names is interesting. In 1822, Mary Ann Mantell became the first person to discover and correctly identify a strange bone as part of a large, unknown reptile. Her husband, Dr. Gideon Mantell, later named this creature an “Iguanodon.” From that time forward, these forgotten animals were given names chosen by the people who rediscovered them. Of course, the Bible, written between approximately 1450 BC and 95 AD, does not include any of these names.

Reading the Bible carefully, you will realize that no living creature matches the descriptions of behemoth and Leviathan. However, if you grab your kid’s dinosaur book, you will notice several possible matches for each one. Let’s examine those.

Behemoth has the following attributes according to Job 40:15-24


It “eats grass like an ox.”
It “moves his tail like a cedar.” (In Hebrew, this literally reads, “he lets hang his tail like a cedar.”)
Its “bones are like beams of bronze,
His ribs like bars of iron.”
“He is the first of the ways of God.”
“He lies under the lotus trees,
In a covert of reeds and marsh.”
Some bibles and study bibles will translate the word “behemoth” as “elephant” or “hippopotamus.” Others will put a note at the edge or bottom of the page, stating that behemoth was probably an elephant or a hippopotamus. Although an elephant or hippopotamus can eat grass (or lie in a covert of reeds and marsh), neither an elephant or a hippopotamus has a “tail like a cedar” (that is, a tail like a large, tapered tree trunk). In your kid’s dinosaur book you will find lots of animals that have “tails like a cedar.”

We would expect behemoth to be a large land animal whose bones are like beams of bronze and so forth, so whatever a behemoth is, it is large. A key phrase is “He is the first of the ways of God.” This phrase in the original Hebrew implied that behemoth was the biggest animal created. Although an elephant or a hippopotamus are big, they are less than one-tenth the size of a Brachiosaurus, the largest (complete) dinosaur ever discovered.[1] A Brachiosaurus could therefore easily be described as “the first of the ways of God.”

Comparing all this information to the description in your kid’s dinosaur book, you may come to the conclusion that “behemoth” is not a normal animal, it is a dinosaur—the brachiosaurus. We agree with that conclusion!

Note: Some paleontologists have found fragmentary leg bones, ribs, or vertebrae which they propose belong to “new” sauropods larger than Brachiosaurus. Examples of these include Amphicoelias, Argentinasaurus, Sauroposeidon, Seismosaurus, Supersaurus and Ultrasaurus. There currently is not enough evidence to really determine the size of any of these, and some paleontologists believe that they are merely large examples of known dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus or Diplodocus. In any case, only the “modern scientific name” of behemoth would change. The point would still remain that behemoth refers to a dinosaur, not a “modern animal” like an elephant or hippopotamus.
Leviathan has the following attributes according to Job chapter 41, Psalm 104:25,26 and Isaiah 27:1. This is only a partial listing—just enough to make the point.


“No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up.”
“Who can open the doors of his face, with his terrible teeth all around?”
“His rows of scales are his pride, shut up tightly as with a seal; one is so near another that no air can come between them; they are joined one to another, they stick together and cannot be parted.”
“His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.”
“Though the sword reaches him, it cannot avail; nor does spear, dart, or javelin. He regards iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee; slingstones become like stubble to him. Darts are regarded as straw; he laughs at the threat of javelins.”
“On earth there is nothing like him, which is made without fear.”
Leviathan “played” in the “great and wide sea” (a paraphrase of Psalm 104 verses 25 and 26—get the exact sense by reading them yourself).
Leviathan is a “reptile [a] that is in the sea.” (Isaiah 27:1)
[a] Note: The word translated “reptile” here is the Hebrew word tanniyn. This shows that “Leviathan” was also a “tanniyn” (dragon).

Unlike behemoth, who is huge, Leviathan is ferocious and terrifying. Many references (we have not listed them all) refer to the sea, so Leviathan is probably a sea creature. Although some bibles refer to Leviathan as an alligator or crocodile (and both of these are fierce) neither of these is a sea creature. They like the water, but they spend much of their time on land. Further, the question “Who can open the doors of his face. . . .” implies that nobody can open Leviathan’s jaws. Although an alligator's jaws cannot normally be forced open, a punch to their sensitive snout or poke in eye might startle them enough to release their grip.[2] Although this is a good description of an alligator characteristic, it does not fit perfectly with the description of Leviathan, which in the context of the Bible was supposed to describe an essentially impossible event, and we are not done yet.

The description of the scales is interesting. Several verses describe these great scales. Compared to Leviathan’s armor, iron is like straw and arrows ca not make it flee. Let’s face it, an arrow can do a lot of damage to a crocodile or alligator. This is not a description of either of them—or any living animal we are aware of.

And now for the key ingredient: fire. It is hard to read Job 41:18-21 without realizing the Bible is telling us that Leviathan breathes fire. That alone will eliminate almost every living animal. Yes, there is one animal like that in today’s world. It is called a bombardier beetle. This beetle is a native of Central America, and has a nozzle in its hind end that acts like a little flame thrower. It sprays a high-temperature jet of gas (fueled by hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide with oxidative enzymes) for protection. Now, if a Central American beetle can do it, so could Leviathan. By the way, crocodiles and alligators are out of the picture on this one, don’t you agree?

Before we leave the topic of fire, there are two more notes you may find interesting:

The history of every culture is filled with stories of fire-breathing dragons. If you think about it, in all the past ages wouldn’t someone have made up a story of a fire-breathing lion or something? Nobody did because the dragon stories are based on truth, and only “dragons” breathed fire. It is easy to imagine Leviathan as a member of the dragon (tanniyn) family. (Plus, Isaiah 27:1 strongly implies this connection.)
Many fossil dinosaur skulls contain unexplained, empty passages. Scientists have not been able to guess the reason for these passages. Would it make sense that some dinosaurs used these passages as “gas tanks” for the combustible mixture used to “breathe fire?” We believe it does.
Comparing all this information to the description in your kid’s dinosaur book, you may come up with the conclusion that Leviathan is a kronosaurus. We have heard (and read) other suggestions, but the kronosaurus is the best match of any known creature to the description of Leviathan.

The Accuracy of the Bible
Some people believe that the Bible is not a scientifically accurate book, and that it is only a “spiritual book,” that forgot about dinosaurs or described them incorrectly. This is not the case. Nobody has ever proven that the Bible contains any inaccurately recorded information. (If you think someone has such evidence, contact us and show us the evidence. We will post that evidence with our reply in our FAQ section for the world to see—literally.) You do not have to believe the Bible just because someone says you are supposed to. That is blind faith, and blind faith is something you do not need with Christianity. The Bible and Christianity have been proven to be true. (See our page called “How Do You Know The Bible Is True?”) There is no other religion or “holy writing” that can honestly make the same claim. You may also wish to get a copy of the book “Know Why You Believe” by Paul Little. It addresses the facts that support Christianity in clear and simple terms.

What We Are Taught (In School and Through the Media)
Since humans are in the Bible, we unconsciously think that dinosaurs were extinct—and therefore not mentioned in the Bible. As you have just seen, the Bible not only refers to dinosaurs, but has detailed information about two of them.

Unfortunately, our public school system and the media have convinced us that dinosaurs were extinct at least 60 million years before man appeared on earth. They have done such a good job in this area that we can not imagine people and dinosaurs living at the same time. The fact is that dinosaurs were created no more than one day before mankind, not many millions of years earlier—and we have evidence to support that statement. Click here to see our Creation and Evolution page, and a link to many sites that fully prove this.

There is a lot of quality scientific information available regarding dinosaurs in the Bible. In time, we will put together a list of links (or recommend a good list of links we find on the web). For now, we would like to recommend two excellent sources of books, video tapes, and audio cassettes on this topic.

[Dr. ibarfly Jones]

interesting. so you think man and dinosaurs walked the earth together? I am only interested in what people believe. To me that is what is interesting.

[Sosa]

The great flood is an oral myth...every civilization has its own version of it...and even if there was a great flood in Noah's time scientist coclude that it would have only covered pretty much the country of Iraq and Iran and not the whole earth...back then that was considered "the world" and the only populated area by humans.