Dinosaurs in the Bible?

Question

When I was about 8 years old, I picked up a Children's Bible and started reading it from the beginning. I never got all the way to the end. But the thing that really puzzled me at that age was dinosaurs.

From what I could recall, the world began with Adam & Eve. There was no mention of dinosaurs living thousands of years before that. (Unless I missed it.)

So when I was learning about dinosaurs in school, I kept telling the teacher that I didn't believe in them because they weren't in the Bible.

Now, I am not here to dispute science or their existence... nor to refute anyone's faith.

What I am curious about is....

1. Did you have any conflicting thoughts as a kid between science and the Bible?

2. And how have dinosaurs been explained in the Christian world where there is clearly a conflict of information?

Just something I have pondered...

(..and again, I am not looking for proof that dinosaurs did exist... I already know about all that now that I am older

The part that clashed for me at that age is that I was thinking that Adam & Eve were the first living creatures. And that if they were the first... how could it be possible that dinosaurs had come and gone before them.

It's not a question over what name they had, if the word dinosaur was around back then, or any of that.

I found my own resolution as a teen when someone told me that the length of "days" in the bible were similar to thousands of years to us.

But the actual question was what ideas did you have as a kid... and what were you taught about the conflict of Dinosaurs.

I actually never knew that many people had differing opinions on the subject... or that it was sometimes a heated subject.

I guess my Children's Bible was still too hard of a read at 8 years old. LOL. I was a pretty advanced reader... but still not adult level back then.

And admittedly, I never really went back to read it over later.

Answer 1

The way it was put to me is that, since the garden of Eden resembled Heaven or divine paradise or whatever, our concept of "time" did not exist. In Heaven, it's believed by many that time will stand still, and that a split second, or 1000 years, will seem like the same period of time.

Yes, if you believe in the Bible's description of the Creation, God made the world in six days, but if the meaning of "day" was different than what it is after the fall of man, six days in "Eden-time" could be thousands, or even millions of years.

Then keep in mind a few other things:

1. The Bible does not say Adam and Eve were the first living creatures. It says they were the first PEOPLE. If you buy into the alternative-time theory, dinosaurs could have been around at the same time, or before, Adam was even created. There isn't a time frame given to account for the time that passed since God rested on the seventh day of Creation, and the time he decided to create Adam. Dinosaurs COULD have come and gone in that period of time.

2. The Bible does not name off all the animals present in the beginning. The lack of mention of a dinosaur may have no more importance than the lack of mention of Dodo bird.

3. Clearly, there was something OUTSIDE the Garden of Eden. We don't know what it was, exactly, but since they were exiled to the outside, you have to assume SOMETHING was outside for them to move on to. Maybe dinosaurs aren't mentioned in the Bible because they were "outsiders", and were around outside the Garden, where our story takes place.

I don't know for sure how I feel about it all now, but the alternate time thing is the only way that I can explain the concepts of scientific history that seem to be able to be proven, like evolution, dinosaurs or the Big Bang theory.

Evolution: the Bible says Adam was created from dust. Considering there was no knowledge of molecules, atoms, single cell organisms, etc., isn't it possible that to a person who lived back then, having been created from dust could be a very very amature way to describe habing been created from single cell organisms and evolving over a long period of time?

With the Big Bang theory or evolution, it says God did it. It doesn't say how. God said "Let there be light", and boom! There's light. Sounds like a big bang to me. It says God created man from dust (small particles). It doesn't say how long it took for that to happen. What we call evolution could have been the process used for God to create man.

I realize, to the unbeliever or the skeptics, it sounds like I'm just fooling myself, and maybe I am. But I think they're interesting, valid arguements that at least allow for scientific evidence to not necessarily dispute Biblical teachings.

Answer 2

Dear Friend,

The world didn't quite begin with Adam and Eve. Perhaps I can refresh your memory (grin). Let's go back... to Genesis.

Genesis 1:24, 25 "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."

A description of the creation of Man, both male and female, follows in verses 26, 27, and then verse 31 tells us that God saw everything that He had made, and it was very good--"And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

Thus, the Bible tells us that God made Man and the dinosaurs (included among the beasts of the earth) on the sixth day of creation. Verse 21 of the first Chapter of Genesis mentions that God created "great whales" on the fifth day of creation. This same word is translated 'dragon' in other places in the Old Testament, so perhaps the marine reptiles were created on that day. Some have also called these creatures...marine 'dinosaurs.'

The Bible gives us some other clues that Man and the dinosaurs lived at the same time, for in the Book of Job, we find a pretty good description of a dinosaur, indicating that people living in those days, after the great Flood of Noah, still remembered dinosaurs. Read Job 40:15-24.

I hope this information was beneficial.

Sincerely in Christ Jesus,


lostnsavd...

Answer 3

The Bible for the most part is silent on this. Naturally any animal that did exist might have just been noted as common place. There are some references to giant monsters though that can be talked about as dinosaurs. If you look at Job 40:15 - 41:34 you will find several creatures that don't seem to fit modern animals. A couple of passages in Psalms talks about certain creatures being destroyed because they are so destructive. It is also possible that the dinosaurs died out very early on or after the flood when you notice that even man started not to live as long. It is an interesting topic.

Answer 4

The word dinosaur is a fairly new word in our vocabulary, about 200+/- years. So you would not see it in the Bible. Actually, most creatures on this earth are not mentioned in the Bible. There is the behemoth and the leviathan. We have no idea what they were, but they were very large from their description. The Bible does not tell us that there were large animals on the earth before man, but that all things were created in six days. We can calculate an approximate age of the earth from the Bible to be about 6200 years. Evolutionist and most scientist would place the age of the earth in the billions of years. There is no proof for this argument, only speculation.

Answer 5

Some people think that one of God's days was really an extended period of time as we know it on earth. If you read Genesis you will see that birds and reptiles (dinosaurs)were created prior to the mammals.

Some people think that God's day was a 24 hour period and that Dinosaurs were on the earth at the same time as man and that they were destroyed during the flood of Noah's time, hence all the dinosaur graveyards around the earth.

When I grew up I thought that God's day was thousands of years long. I have only recently (within the last 4 months)heard of the young earth theory and I am 57 years old.

Answer 6

After I watched Jurassic Park when i was eleven, I asked my mom, how did Noah get velociraptors on the Ark.

She said that God made them peaceful for that event.

Okay, but what did they feed the raptors and other scary dinosaurs on the Ark?

No answer

As I grew older I still had the question, creationists as far as I have conversed with say that "the great flood" is what killed off all the dinosaurs.

Doesn't make sense to me, still holes in the story.

Answer 7

I am a Christian. My son LOVES dinosaurs. I know you said not looking for proof dinos existed, but the Bible does speak of great beasts. There isn't really a conflict of information. I don't think anyway. My idea about science versus the Bible, is this. I am a nurse so science is my thing. However, all scientist will come to a point where they can no longer explain things. Like Spontaneous Generation. It can't happen. Something has to initiate all generation. I certainly don't have all the answers. But I have faith. That is just me.

Answer 8

~I've never thought of science and the bible as contradicting.

~The term "Dinosaurs" came in the 18th or 19th century, I think it's the 18th. But there is another word "Bohemoth" which is thousands of years old. It is described as a land animal with a big stomach, something else (I forget) but is common with elaphants, hippos, and dinosaurs. But the Bohemoth has a tail like a cedar tree, which takes out the possibility of the Bohemoth being a elephant or hippo.
Some think a Bohemoth is a dinosaur, some don't I guess. It's very likely.

Answer 9

Personally, I belive that dinosaurs exist. However, though they are not adequetly mentioned in the bible, it doesn't mean they never existed. Hamburgers aren't mentioned in the bible but do they exist? Gorillas and chimpanzees, two-toed sloths aren't mentioned in the bible but do they exist?

You have to remember the purpose that the bible was written for. The authors of the books of the bible wrote what they did more or less, to log certain events for religeous, moral, civil and like reasons. The bible wasn't a math text book, nor was it a record of what is in existance or not. It is a book communicating the acts of God toward mankind and is in existance so that we can know who he is and how he works.

Just because the bible doesn't mention some kind of scientific principle or some animal or species doensn't mean the bible is against it. Problems occur when things contradict what the bible specifically has to say about them.

Answer 10

There's no mention of saber tooth tigers, mammoths, trilobites, megalodons, bony fish and billions of other prehistoric species either. This is because the account of Genesis shouldn't be taken literally.

Creationists love to say dinosaurs are in there in the Bible because they're so popular but dinosaurs only existed for roughly 150 million years, a blink of time in geologic history. If people had a better grasp of the natural history of the earth and the billions of other species besides the dinosaurs that existed they would realize that either God had to actively create new species when older ones went extinct which is a bit like evolution or that God created all the trillions of species in genesis 6000 years ago which is impossible because there isn't enough room on the earth for every species to coexist. This is shown by the billions of fossils which only represent a tiny proportion of all the lifeforms that actually existed.