Dinosaurs in the Bible?

The description of Behemoth in Job 40 is the “evidence” cited by Christian fundies to “prove” that dinosaurs co-existed with people.

Actually, the argument really comes down to one six word phrase.

Job 40:17 His tail sways like a cedar;

That’s it really. The remainder of the description could apply to any number of actual animals or easily could be relegated to some mythical beast. Based upon these six words Bible thumpers have decided that this must be the description of a sauropod dinosaur with a thick tail similar to the thickness of a cedar tree.

If that’s the case, then I would think the rest of the description would fit your run of the mill sauropod as well. Does it? Well, not really.

First let’s consider Job 40:15 which says the Behemoth “…feeds on grass like an ox.” Sauropods didn’t eat grass. They stripped leaves, fronds and probably thin branches off of trees. A sauropod feeding won’t look at all like an ox doing the same thing.

Then there’s Job 40:21 which says that Behemoth lies “Under the lotus plants” and is“…hidden among the reeds in the marsh.”

You will excuse me but there is no way a sauropod dinosaur is going to be hidden among marsh reeds when even the runts of the species were some 20 feet long. Hell, the flag ship of the species, Diplodocus, could be over a hundred feet long!

How do you suppose other civilizations in the area, such as the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the Phoenicians managed to miss these puppies running around and trampling everything under foot?

The fact is they didn’t. The word Behemoth is most likely simply a plural form of the Hebrew Bahemah which simply means beast or large animal and may simply be an example of pluralis excellentiae, a Hebrew expressive form which, by pluralizing, indicates the ultimate of something. In this case it would indicate the largest or most powerful beast.

Did the author of Job have a specific beast in mind or did he leave it up to the imagination of the reader to conjure up in his mind the largest, most powerful beastie he could come up with? The description of Behemoth is general enough that it could simply be a clever literary device.

Who knows? But certainly these six words, open to a wide range of interpretation, when stacked up against the mountains of scientific evidence that says the last dinosaur disappeared some 65 million years before the first primate that could be called human evolved, isn’t much of an argument. I find it frightening that there are people out there that actually believe it is. That they are pitching this nonsense to pre-schoolers that are still in the "accept everything from an authority figure as true" stage of development infuriates me.