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Why aren't Dinosaurs Mentioned in the Biblical Creation Account?
by Rich Deem
Introduction
Why would God have left out a description of the dinosaurs from the creation account found in the Bible? Skeptics claim that this omission proves that the Bible wasn't written by God's inspiration, but is just a compilation of the words of fallible men. First, we should understand the origin of the Genesis creation account and its purpose in the Bible. The first five books of the Bible, including Genesis, were written by Moses. Since nobody except God was present at the creation, the Genesis creation account was given to Moses by God. If one is attempting to second guess the Author of Genesis, one must take these facts into account.
Purpose of the creation account
God was not interested in giving Moses a scientific treatise on the creation of the world. The Bible indicates that God's communication to Moses was centered on the relationship between God and man and the rules by which God wanted man to live. Therefore, the creation account mirrors the content of the rest of the Bible, which centers on mankind and his relationship to God. The question, "Why would God leave out a description of the dinosaurs?" is a bad one to begin with. A more appropriate question should be "What would God want to relate to man about His description of the creation?"
Dinosaurs in the Bible?
Many who have studied the Bible believe that it does mention dinosaurs in the text. Specifically, Genesis 1:21 says that God created "great sea monsters" on the fifth day.[SUP]1[/SUP] The Hebrew word tannîyn, can have several meanings, including "dragon," "serpent," "sea monster," or "venomous snake."[SUP]2[/SUP] An analysis of other Old Testament verses indicates that this word usually refers to contemporary aquatic animals or snakes:
Genesis 1:21 Ancient (?) Aquatic Animal Exodus 7:9 Contemporary Snake Exodus 7:10 Contemporary Snake Exodus 7:12 Contemporary Snake Deuteronomy 32:33 Contemporary Snake Job 7:12 Contemporary Aquatic Animal Psalm 74:13 Contemporary Aquatic Animal Psalm 91:13 Contemporary Snake Psalm 148:7 Contemporary Aquatic Animal Isaiah 27:1 Contemporary Aquatic Animal Isaiah 51:9 Ancient Land Animal Jeremiah 51:34 Contemporary Land Animal Ezekiel 29:3 Contemporary Aquatic Animal Ezekiel 32:2 Contemporary Aquatic Animal
So, although tannîyn could refer to a dinosaur in Genesis 1, in most other usage throughout the Old Testament, the word refers to species that existed at the time the Old Testament books were written.
The second instance where the Bible might refer to dinosaurs occurs first in the book of Job. The Leviathan[SUP]4[/SUP] is described as being an armored aquatic creature in the book of Job, the Psalms, and Isaiah.[SUP]5[/SUP] The descriptions claim that the creature was contemporary with the writers of the Bible, and are not inconsistent with large alligators or crocodiles. Although dinosaurs are not specifically mentioned in the Bible, the fossil deposits they produced are described as being used by early humans in the opening chapters of Genesis.[SUP]6[/SUP]
Problems with including dinosaurs
There are some technical problems that God would have faced in including dinosaurs in the creation account. There is no word for "dinosaur" in the Hebrew language. Now, God could have invented a Hebrew word for dinosaur and explained what those animals were like and how they had died out. However, this is a one page description of the creation of the world and life in it. Trying to explain about an extinct group of creatures would have taken a lot of space and distracted from the rest of the creation account.
Obviously, there were a lot more creatures than just dinosaurs that were left out of the creation account. If God were to have included every creature in the creation account (well over one billion), such inclusion would have completely lost the spiritual significance of the passage (and would be much longer than the Bible itself). The purpose of the Genesis creation account is to give an account of how God created mankind and provided for him. The account, like the entire Bible, centers on God and His miraculous workings for mankind. Therefore, in the creation account, we find the supernatural creation of the universe by God, indicating that the universe wasn't always here, but created by God for man. Next, it talks about the creation of plants, which are important to humans, since we eat them, and also important to the animals that we rely upon, which also eat them. Then, it talks about the sea creatures and birds, which we also eat. It next talks about the beasts of the field, which we eat and use for labor. Then it talks about the creation of mankind and how he is to have dominion and manage the earth and its creatures.
The second chapter of Genesis gives a spiritual account of the creation of mankind and man's relationship to God. The entire account is centered on God and man. Therefore, one would expect the creation account to describe events that are important to mankind.
Dinosaurs - a modern mindset
Those who claim that the lack of dinosaurs in the creation account is a mistake are looking at the topic on the basis of our modern perspective, which values sensationalism over practicality. Dinosaurs are fascinating! The idea that these creatures walked the same earth that we live on intrigues us. However, the fact that they lived has virtually no effect upon our practical lives.
Some might say that dinosaurs were important in providing fossil fuels (which products were important even in biblical events[SUP]1[/SUP]). Even the fossil fuel argument is not a strong one, since the overwhelming majority of oil came from the bodies of plants and trees - not dinosaurs. Most of those who complain about the lack of dinosaurs in the Bible are looking at the natural world from an evolutionary perspective, in which mankind is just an evolutionary fluke - a recent upstart who doesn't figure prominently in the overall evolutionary history of the earth. Even from an naturalistic perspective, dinosaurs are a failed evolutionary experiment that couldn't compete with their mammalian descendents.
Conclusion
The fact is that dinosaurs are as unimportant to us as they were to the Hebrews to whom the creation account was given. The purpose of the creation account is to provide an explanation of how God provided for mankind and created him as the one spiritual animal on earth. The account is purposely brief and centered upon mankind - the only creature God created on earth to enter into a personal relationship with Him. The Genesis creation account contains all the information necessary to fulfill the purpose given for the recording of the pages of the Bible. As an exercise to illustrate the point, you might want to write your own one page creation account. In doing this, you should center the account on mankind and the creation miracles God used to prepare the earth for him. What you will find is that there is not room to discuss dinosaurs or any other extinct species of life.
Dinosaurs FAQ
Did dinosaurs and humans coexist?
No. All the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago by a huge asteroid that impacted near the Yucatan Peninsula. The impact was so devastating that if wiped out 30%-80% of other land-dwelling species, as well as over 50% of plant species.[SUP]7[/SUP] This is Scientific American's (August, 1995, page 86) description of the result of a collision of the large asteroid with the earth:"Sixty-five million years ago an object somewhat larger than Haley's comet slammed into what is now the coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. The impact gouged a crater 170 kilometers across and launched debris world-wide. As the multitude of tiny ballistic missiles fell beck to earth, meteors filled the sky, and the atmosphere became red-hot. Fires erupted over the earth's surface, but the global inferno was soon followed by persistent darkness."What about dinosaur along side human footprints?
Carl Baugh made famous the idea that there exist human footprints along side dinosaur ones at the Paluxy Riverbed near Glen Rose, Texas. However, the "human" prints are huge at about 2 feet long. In addition, they are highly filled in so that the prints are not clear at all. However, some of the prints show three separate areas, suggestive that they come from a three-toed dinosaur. We don't see any biblical evidence of three-toed people, so we are guessing that the "human" prints are really just the prints of smaller dinosaurs. In fact, ICR president John Morris admitted in 1986 that the Paluxy footprints are probably not human but are eroded dinosaur footprints (ICR Impact #151).
What about cave drawings showing dinosaurs?
We haven't seen any caveman drawings that suggest they saw dinosaurs. Some of the better drawings allow us to identify now extinct large mammals. However, when one is trying to interpret caveman scribbles, they could be just about anything, including aliens, rockets or Twinkies.
Did Noah take dinosaurs on the ark?
No. There weren't any dinosaurs to take along at that point in time, since they had died 65 million years ago. In fact, since the flood was likely local in extent, Noah probably did not take Polar Bears, penguins, or giraffes.
References
- God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:21)
- Brown-Driver-Briggs' Hebrew Definitions:
tannîyn/tannîym/
(Strong's H8577)
Part of Speech: noun masculine
- dragon, serpent, sea monster
- dragon or dinosaur
- sea or river monster
- serpent, venomous snake
A Related Word by BDB/Strong
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