Dinosaurs -
What the Bible Says about Them & What Should We Say about Them

T. rex, NHM, London.

The only evidence we have of the existence of dinosaurs are from the fossil remains they have left behind. These fossil remains have been known since antiquities though their nature was only understood in the last two hundred years or so. Two of the first naturalists to discern that such fossil finds were the remains of animals long dead and to adopt a scientific rather than a mythic approach to their study were the English 'Aristotle' John Ray (1627-1705) and the French geologist Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686). But palaeontology, as the study of fossils is called, did not begin in ernest until the late 18th and early 19thCent, at about the same time as geology, when it was aided in large part by the need of the Industrial Revolution in England to dig canals to provide speedy transport of goods from one part of the country to another. One of the most famous fossil hunters of the time, however, was a lady amateur named Mary Annings (1799-1847) who became the first person to uncover an Ichthyosaur fossil1 as well as the first person to identify coprolites as fossilized feacal matters. The word dinosaur, meaning "terrible lizard," however, was coined by the English pioneer in comparative anatomy Richard Owens in 1846.2

But are dinosaurs real? Did they really exist? And if so, are they mentioned in the Bible?

Are Dinosaurs Real?

It may surprise many people to discover that there are still Christians, though they are in the minority, who believe that dinosaurs never existed and that the so-called fossils were just "resemblances" of animal remains God has placed there "to test our faith." We believe both propositions are unworthy of Christian intellectual and spiritual integrity.

First, to argue that dinosaurs never existed is to ignore the voluminous fossil evidences and research by thousands of honest scientists around the world. Palaeontology has advanced to such a stage that—especially with the findings in the new fossil fields in China in the last 30 years—it is able to discern micro-biological structures. Intellectual honesty can no longer deny the facts of dinosaurs' existence. The more difficult task is to make sense of them in our understanding of things.

The problem with the second suggestion that the fossils are merely artifacts placed there by God in order "test our faith" is problematic. It is not so much whether God can or cannot do it if He chooses to. It is simply a question of what such a suggestion implies about God. The suggestion imagines a very un-Scriptural view of God, a God who is facile and unkind in character. The God of the Bible is not a god of confusion, nor is He one who encourages such confusion by posing such unkind taunts to our intellect or our faith in Him. Furthermore, His grace precludes Him from such meaningless jibes; He knows we already have enough to stretch our faith. He is rather the God who leads us on the level path, and with Him there is no dishonesty. He casts light not dazzling shadows that can be imagined to be this or that. To suggest that fossils—though they may be examined and understood in every way to be remains of once living creatures—are mere resemblances of living creatures imputes to God a character that is contrary to what Scriptures says about Him.

Where in the Bible Do We Fit the Dinosaurs?

It is only natural that many Christians would like to know if dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible, and where their existence may be placed in the chronological scheme of the creation accounts.

Some Bible teachers claim that dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible, though not by that name (the word was, afterall, coined only in 1846). It has been asserted, e.g., that dinosaurs are what was meant by the leviathan, a near-mythic creature mentioned half a dozen times in the Bible:

May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan. (Job 3:8)

Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? (Job 41:14)

It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert. (Psm 74:14)

There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. (Psm 104:26)

In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword, his fierce, great and powerful sword, Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea. (Isa 27:1)

Many also think that dinosaurs are referred to in the behemoth:

Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. (Job 40:15)

A somewhat more desperate attempt is to identify the dinosaurs with the tannim, a Hebrew word often translated "creatures/monsters of the sea" (Gen 1:21; Psm 74:13; 91:13; 148:7; Isa 27:1; 51:9; Eze 29:3; 32:2) or "snake/serpent" (Exo 7:9, 10, 12; Jer 51:34).

Though most of the fossil specimens paleontologists possess today come from careful excavations, fossils have long been found scattered on many desert floors in plain sight of passers-by. These different Hebrew words—esp., 'leviathan' and 'behemoth'—may possibly be what the ancients thought were the living monsters represented by such fossil sightings. That said, however, we are simply guessing here. There is no philological or exegetical basis for such identifications. Identifying leviathan and behemoth with dinosaurs may provide a sense of security that there is indeed a place for everything we wish to know in the Bible; that comfort, however, is sadly false because the interpretational grounds upon which that identification is made is so extremely speculative as to be plainly useless.

Some Bible teachers, who believe that dinosaurs were "land creatures," would naturally claim that they were created on the sixth day of creation, the same day as humans (Gen 1: 24ff). Those Bible-teachers who identify dinosaurs with the tannim (sea-creatures) would claim that they were created on the fifth day (Gen 1:23). So would those who identify dinosaurs with the Leviathan, since they seem to be aquatic.

Some Bible-teachers believe that Noah had a pair each of the dinosaurs with him in the ark. With regards to their death, most would teach that they died out in the flood—though why is often left unexplained—and the fossils we find of them today are their remains.

Again we say, the kindest comment we can conjure for these teachings is that they are dubious speculations at best. There is simply no basis whatsoever for any of them.

This brings us to a very important question. What then are Christians, and especially parents, to teach their children about dinosaurs?

Concluding Thoughts

Many Bible-teachers feel that they are required to give to every question an answer filled in with biblical references in order to qualify as a "faith-ful" answer. The truth is that any honest answer is a "faith-ful" answer even if Scriptures have not a single word to say about it. Faith means staying true to the One in whom we have put our trust, not in the conjuring up of mirages of certainty in things which have only the pretensions of substance. We are not acting in integrity nor modeling it—intellectually or spiritually—when we present as truths what are mere speculations that have only our interpretation as the basis of certainty.3 Our children may accept our answers because they trust us when they are young. There are, however, far too many tragic testimonies of intelligent thinking scientists who have given up the faith of their Christian parents because they were not taught when young the difference between what Scriptures say and our interpretations and reading of things into Scriptures. When they grew up and discovered that their parents had believed in myths for truths, they threw out the baby with the bath-water and turned away from their Christian upbringing. Stephen O'Brien is the head of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institutes, National Institutes of Health, USA, and is internationally renowned for his contribution to the advances made in molecular genetic research. He provides us with a good example of such tragic parental 'good intentions' that backfired. In his riveting and heart-stirring book on the wonders of the genetic 'back-stories' of animal species, Tears of the Cheetah, he tells us something of the stuff he was nurtured on while growing up:

The Old Testament, as interpreted by the esteemed seventeenth-century archbishop James Ussher, tells us that the earth is 6,005 years old and that Noah boarded his ark 4,348 years ago. As I grew up in the Christian religion of my parents and theirs, I was taught to accept on faith these and other biblical truths. Although my questions would be answered sincerely, there was peril in being too querulous, in not being convinced of the accuracy of the tenets of theological history. The danger was to be branded a heretic, an apostate, a pariah.4

Now it is unfortunate that Dr O'Brien failed to distinguish between the "interpretations" of James Ussher and the "other biblical truths." When parents insists, however, that "interpretations" should also be accepted "on faith" as "biblical truths," and hanging over our children "the peril of being too querulous, in not being convinced" of what they are told, the child cannot be blamed for confusing them, or for rejecting them when they can make up their own minds. The honest answer—that we in fact know at the moment very little about how dinosaurs relate to the Bible, and may never know—may not be very settling, but in the long run, our children will appreciate that we have modeled and told the truth. That is the best gift we can leave to our children in their journey of faith.

Low Chai Hok

Resources:

Richard F. Carlson, "What Should I Say about Dinosaurs? A Christian Physicist Reflects on the Origin of Life," Fuller Studio (Fuller Seminary).
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©Alberith, 2022