Dinosaurs and 'round earth' in bible?

Question

How is the bible able to describe dinosaurs and a round earth?

Job 40:15-18
"Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron."

Isaiah 40:22
"He [God] sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in."

(See also other parts of Psalms and Job)

Have you seen any elephants with a "tail like a cedar"? If you know of any animal that fits this description, I would love to hear it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar

Answer 1

There is nothing here to say it does either. The Bible is not always to be taken literally and especially not by people of modern times who have no knowledge and education in the language and use of the language of the ancients.

Job 40:15-18

Thou judgest what thou does not understand and from thy judgment comes error. This section could just as easily refer to an elephant, which would be a behemoth to ancient peoples.

Isaiah 40:22

Circles can be flat too.

Answer 2

This is just silly.

The description of behemoth could refer to an elephant, a hippopotamus, a tortoise, an eland, a cow or absolutely any large creature that at least occasionally eats grass. Most pertinent, there were no grasses when they dinosaurs lived. Grasses evolved long after the dinosaurs were all extinct, so no dinosaurs ever ate grass.

Quite clearly the behemoth could NOT be a dinosaur.

The passage from Isaiah is even more meaningless. At the time the book was written it was already common knowledge amongst the Greeks and Persians that the Earth was a sphere. That knowledge probably originated in Babylon over 4000 years ago.

I know that you Americans are taught that Columbus somehow showed people that the world was round, but that is not correct. People knew that the world was a sphere thousands of years before Columbus was born.

Since the true shape of the Earth was already common knowledge in the bronze age it would hardly be surprising if the author of Isaiah, who would have been an educated scribe, knew the fact as well.

Added to that that the word used in Isaiah translates as ring, or disc or heap. It doesn't actually refer to a sphere.


This is just ignorant nonsense from some Bible thumper.